Copywriting Propaganda Part 2: Copywriting Advice to Ignore
Whoops! I tripped, fell, and did it again – I wrote another whole blog dedicated to the copywriting advice I wish savvy business owners would stop listening to ASAP.
Basically, I wrote Copywriting Propaganda Part 1 and realized I had even more copy propaganda I needed to get off my chest.
If you haven’t read that blog yet, go ahead and start there. I busted three particularly annoying pieces of copy prop, including:
AI is the ultimate time-saver.
You HAVE to hire a copywriter if you want good words.
You must sound super serious and professional if you want anyone to take you seriously.
To steal a line from the last blog…Boo. Hiss. Big fat no.
The plot twist is that those first three pieces of copy propaganda bother me the most of all. But when it comes to propaganda I absolutely need you to be aware of, I have six total that would keep me from sleeping at night if I didn’t share them with you.
That means I’ve got three more myths to bust.
Let’s get back to the propaganda (and why you need to ignore these problematic copy prop myths)!
LIL KEY TAKEAWAYS: THIS BLOG AT A GLANCE
Your brand voice isn’t a character you have to cosplay as. It’s the sticky sweet spot between who you already are and who your people need you to be.
Your messaging guide doesn’t get extra credit for being long. Good messaging strategy should make it easier to know what to say – not give you 97 pages of strategy to sift through every time you write.
AI making “good enough” writing easier actually makes YOUR words more valuable. Your specificity, experiences, opinions, weird little isms, and actual POVs are what help you stand out in a sea of perfectly fine words.
Human-sounding writing and human writing are NOT the same thing. AI can mimic your tone, but your actual brain, experiences, and sticky brand voice are the fingerprints worth protecting.
The anti-propaganda answer is pretty simple: Know what you want to say, know how YOU want to say it, and stop letting internet “best practices” make writing harder than it needs to be.
3 More Pieces of Copywriting Advice I’m Begging Savvy Business Owners to Completely Ignore
Copywriting Propaganda #4: Your Brand Voice Is a Character or Archetype
The Rebel. The Caregiver.
The Hot-Mess-Millennial-Aunt-Who-Drinks-Iced-Coffee-&Says-“Bestie”-Too-Much.
I’m gagging over here.
Listen, I’m not really here to start beef with “brand archetypes.” I very much understand how they can be a valuable jumping-off point to help you better understand your brand voice and step into it. And to be fair, they’re a perfectly useful brainstorming tool when you’re trying to figure out what your brand feels like.
What I am 100% here to start beef with is the idea that you need to invent a whole-ass character and then cosplay as them every time you write anything for your brand.
That’s wildly unsustainable.
Think about it. If you treat your brand voice as a character that has no overlap with who you are, who your people need, and how you already talk…you have to put on a costume every single time you plan to write anything for your brand.
I’m exhausted for you just thinking about that.
Because your brand voice isn't a “character.” It’s you – at your absolute best. At Boundless, we define brand voice as the sticky sweet spot between who you already are and who your people need you to be.
Both halves of that matter.
Your voice should pull from the things that are already interesting and recognizable about the way you communicate – your words, your phrases, your sentence structures, your weird little isms, your sense of humor, the things you ALWAYS capitalize, the analogies you make, the stories you tell.
Then, you strategically turn the volume up or down based on your brand and the people you want buying from it.
That elite combo is your brand voice.
Sure, you have to put some thought into showing up as the best, most refined version of you, but you don’t have to step into a costume version of a character you’re not every time you write for your brand.
If you're performing as a fictional character every time you write, eventually one of two things is gonna happen:
It’s going to sound fake.
You’re going to have a heck of a time staying consistent because you’re constantly trying to remember what your Brand Character™ would say instead of just talking.
How to Avoid the Brand-Voice-Is-a-Character Propaganda
Start by paying attention to your actual voice. Perk up and listen to how you talk to clients. Go read your old emails. Look at the Instagram captions that felt stupid-easy to write. Notice the words and phrases you use over and over without even thinking about it.
Then ask yourself: Which parts of this feel most like me AND resonate most with my people?
Those are the bits worth documenting and intentionally repeating.
And if you want some help finding your sticky sweet spot, this is what I actually teach inside Brand Voice Roundup.
Copywriting Propaganda #5: You Need a Massive Messaging Guide for Every Offer
I say this with love as a messaging strategist who gets paid actual money to create messaging guides:
You do not need a 47-page messaging guide for every single thing you sell.
There. I said it. I feel good about it, too.
I L-O-V-E messaging strategy. I think knowing what you want to say before you sit down to say it is one of the easiest ways to make writing your own copy so much easier.
But somewhere along the way, “messaging strategy is important” turned into “MORE MESSAGING STRATEGY IS MORE BETTER.”
And that’s not exactly the same thing.
More strategy does not automatically equal better strategy because your messaging guide is supposed to be something you actually use.
You’re supposed to be able to pull that sucker up when you’re writing an email, sales page, Instagram caption, or description of your offer and immediately remember:
Oh, right. This is who I’m talking to. This is what they care about. This is what I need to say.
Instead, you’ll open your 83-page messaging guide, scroll through six buyer personas, read three paragraphs about Ideal Client Tammy’s deepest hopes and dreams, forget what you originally opened the document for, get overwhelmed, close the tab, and be exactly where you started in the first place.
Not particularly helpful, right?
Your messaging guide does not get extra credit for being long, it only matters if it makes it actually easier to write.
I like to start with something a whole lot simpler: the 4Ps of Messaging.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I’d rather you have really great bullet point answers to those questions and those questions only than a whole messaging guide.
Now, does that mean I think every business only needs four bullet points scribbled on a Post-it note and we should all pack up our messaging strategy and go home?
No, obviously not.
Different offers are going to have different people, problems, promises, and POVs. And the more complex the offer, audience, or buying decision, the more strategy you may need to support it.
But your messaging strategy should always pass one very important test: Does this make it easier for me to know what the hell to say?
If the answer is no, I don’t care how comprehensive that sucker is. Something’s gone sideways.
How to Avoid the Messaging-Guide-Needs-to-Be-a-Novel Propaganda
Before you write something for an offer, make sure you can clearly identify its People, Problems, Promises, and POVs.
Write those guys down somewhere you can ACTUALLY FIND THEM. Keep them specific, useful, and ready to go.
Need a little help figuring out your 4Ps for an offer or your brand? The Mini Messaging Marker is a quick 12-minute training that walks you through exactly how to find them.
Copywriting Propaganda #6: Everyone Is Using AI, So It’s the New Normal
Technically this one isn’t entirely propaganda. A ton of people are actually using AI to write right now. But you know what? Everyone can tell when someone is using AI to write – and it’s usually not giving off warm and fuzzy feelings.
Here’s where I think the propaganda sneaks in: Everyone using AI does not mean you need to use AI to sound like everyone else.
I’d respectfully argue the exact opposite.
For a hot second, AI-generated copy felt like a huge advantage. Think about it – you could create more content even faster! What a huge advantage!
Except everyone can tell when you’re leaning too hard on AI to write your stuff. And even though your words are perfectly fine, they’re perfectly fine words that anyone (even a robot machine thing) could write.
AI might be making generic “good” writing easier to create, but I think that makes the stuff AI has a much harder time replicating even more valuable.
Think about it: Your oddly specific stories, actual experiences, highly-specialized expertise, or industry hills you’ll die on can’t be generated by a machine. That unique, human-specific thing is what people recognize you for.
Sounding “almost human” and just being a human are two very different things – and they’re things that people can absolutely put their finger on immediately.
If you feel behind because all of your competition is using AI, try to remember that.
How to Avoid the Everyone-Is-Using-AI Propaganda
I’m not gonna tell you to march over to ChatGPT, delete your account, and chuck your laptop out the window. Use AI if you want to use AI – who am I to tell you that an accessible tool is the devil or something?
But I do highly recommend that you stop outsourcing the parts of your writing that are actually yours – the things that make you qualified, interesting, and compelling are the things I desperately want you to protect.
And if you've gotten so used to asking AI what you think that you've forgotten how to start with your own brain? That’s why I made AI IS GARBAGE – my free email challenge that gets you writing all on your own again with a step-by-step process to follow.
What Copywriting Advice You Should Listen To
Here we are. Two blogs and six pieces of copywriting propaganda later, and I’ve spent a whole lot of time telling you what not to do.
Now, I’m going to tell you what you should do.
Know your brand. Know your people. Know what’s compelling. Know what makes your stick brand voice special.
Then use it and lean into it.
Yes, you need a messaging strategy that makes it stupid-easy to know what to say.You need a sticky brand voice that makes what you say recognizable, memorable, and yours.
And you need enough confidence in both of those things to write without constantly wondering whether you're doing it the way the internet told you to.
If you want some help getting there, that's pretty much what we do around here. You can DIY your way through the resources in the Boundless Copy Shop, work with me to nail down your messaging and sticky brand voice, or hand me the whole dang thing and let me write all your copy for you.
