Marisa Shadrick [00:00:00]:
There is so much content online. How do you set yourself apart? How do you write in a way that is different and doesn’t sound like everybody else? Well, in this podcast episode, I’m gonna share three copywriting tips that you can implement whether you use AI or not. These are critical so that your audience stops, reads, and engages with your content. So stay tuned. Welcome to the Amplify Your Authority podcast. I’m Marisa Shadrick, your host, AI marketing strategist, and certified copywriter. And today I’m gonna share three important copy tips that will help you with your content creation. But here’s the good news.

Marisa Shadrick [00:00:42]:
Whether you realize it or not, you’re a copywriter. Yes, you are. You do not need a certification to be a copywriter. The art of persuasion is something that we humans do all the time day in and day out. Whether you’re trying to persuade a friend to go to a certain restaurant for lunch, or you’re trying to persuade your family to a certain destination for summer vacation, or perhaps you have a son or daughter that you’re persuading to apply to a certain college, You are persuading all the time. You just may not realize it, and copywriting creates a structure to be able to use the art of persuasion in your marketing. So here’s an example to show you what I mean. I live in Tennessee, and my daughter’s on the West Coast.

Marisa Shadrick [00:01:24]:
I would love for her to live here in Tennessee. My son lives here in Tennessee with his wife. They’re getting ready to have a baby. I would love to have her here. It would make holidays and family gatherings so much easier. But when she mentioned she was considering moving to Tennessee, I didn’t just stop and say, oh, okay. Do you need help packing? Let me, let me book a flight and go out there and help you pack. No.

Marisa Shadrick [00:01:47]:
That’d be too soon, too pushy, because she hadn’t decided yet. She was still thinking about it. How often do we try to persuade people to buy before they’re ready? It’s something we have to be very sensitive about. So instead, I shared information that would help her make an informed decision. I told her about the area, the beautiful climate that we have. We actually have all four seasons, and we get sprinklings of snow. I told her about the entertainment that we have. I mean, Nashville, we have wonderful music.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:14]:
We have a football team here, hockey team here. I shared about affordable housing, all the wonderful schools that we have for my granddaughter. And, we don’t have to pay state income tax here. So I shared the information to help her make an informed decision. And that’s often what we have to do with our prospective clients, share information, tell them what sets us apart and how we can support them. The idea here is to understand your audience so well. I know my daughter so well that I couldn’t just say, let me help you pack. I have to help her make that decision herself, but I could provide her with information, especially information that’d be really interesting to her.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:54]:
And this is what we have to do in marketing. We have to kind of put ourselves in our audience’s place and figure out what information do they need right now. We can always send more later, but what do they need right now to make that first step? Now AI can help you do this, but it does need the human touch. AI can help you write things faster, but the input has to be very specific, very customized so that it begins to learn and provide better output. If you don’t use AI yet, you can still use these principles to write better content. But if you do use AI and you don’t add the human element, that’s where you can run into some problems and then think that AI just doesn’t work. You just haven’t given it enough information to be able to craft better output. AI may sound very polished, but it can feel hollow if you don’t give it that input.

Marisa Shadrick [00:03:44]:
It may be technically correct, but emotionally disconnected. It could provide tons of words, but fail to build trust, loyalty and action. So here are the three tips I wanna share with you. And again, you can use this with any of the content that you produce for online. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s written, if it’s video, if it’s audio. These principles have stood the test of time and they’re effective when used correctly. So the first one is the original point of view or your brand’s true voice. This is really important.

Marisa Shadrick [00:04:21]:
And why it matters, it’s because it’s what sets you apart. It’s the things that you believe and incorporates your values and your perspective and your worldview, and all of that comes together in the content that you write because that is unique and different. That voice is like no other voice. And so when we embed this into a prompt for AI or if you’re just writing it yourself and you consider, how can I weave in my perspective? And it can even be contrarian. Maybe you don’t follow the status quo. You can share that as well and explain why. It’s always nice to say, here’s why, so that people can understand why you have that perspective. So an example of this would be, AI can reproduce existing content and it does that day in and day out.

Marisa Shadrick [00:05:07]:
And it could suggest something like, use these 21 strategies to grow faster. However, you might be able to interject some information about your brand and yourself and then it’ll produce something a little different. Same objective, but a little different. It could say something like, sustainable growth doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from doing the right things well. Master one step, build from there. Now that’s one of my perspectives in business. It’s not about doing everything and being everywhere.

Marisa Shadrick [00:05:38]:
It’s about mastering one scale and then moving on from there, especially for solo business owners because they can become very overwhelmed. And so when you provide the information about your brand, your point of view, your perspectives, the outcome is slightly different and different from everything else they read online. The second copywriting tip is empathy. A lot of people call it emotional connection, but how do you get emotional connection? I go back to the root. It’s empathy. It’s really speaking to the heart and not the head. So how do we do this? Let me give you another example. When I competed in an international speech competition with over 35,000 contestants from all over the world, we’re talking China, Japan, India, Australia, everywhere, And all these people were all gathered in one room.

Marisa Shadrick [00:06:28]:
Different genders, men and women, different age demographics, different cultures. Right? What united them? What went through my mind was the human level, because we all experience things the same at the human level. We all cry over certain things, and we laugh over certain things. What are those things that bring us together? Where there’s empathy and understanding for another human being. And that’s what I did when I wrote a seven minute speech. I thought of the human level, what everybody in that room, regardless of their background, regardless of their culture, regardless of their gender, would understand and connect with the story because it had emotional connection. But you gotta get to the human level where we’re all experiencing that same type of emotion. And that’s what we need to interject in our writing, in our copy, in our podcast, whatever it is that we’re trying to do.

Marisa Shadrick [00:07:28]:
Interject a little bit. I don’t mean you have to do a lot of this, but you wanna keep it top of mind because you want to meet people where they are and speak to their heart and not their head. That’s so important. So when you use AI, for example, you wanna interject that as knowledge. You wanna explain to AI the empathy that you feel and why. A lot of people say, again, emotional connection, what’s their pain point, what keeps them up at night. I’m going a little deeper in this podcast to help you dig deep. Think of that human to human connection.

Marisa Shadrick [00:08:03]:
What is it that you’ve experienced? Right? Because you’ve experienced things as well. You’ve experienced probably failures, success. You’ve experienced frustration. All of these things that you’re trying to figure out for your audience, what are they experiencing? And I think this is probably one of the most important things to keep in mind as far as a copywriting principle. Again, they call it a lot of different things, emotional connection, everything else, but the bottom line is just having empathy for another human being. Empathy is profoundly a human trait, a human quality that turns words from noise into meaningful connections. So, let me give you an example, a simple one. Suppose you’re inviting entrepreneurs to a workshop.

Marisa Shadrick [00:08:48]:
A lot of us will do this. AI might suggest sign up now to grow your business. But a more empathetic invitation might sound like this. And, again, you would need to interject this. Right? You’re thinking about what the objection might be, where they’re at, trying to see them so they know that they’re seen and heard. It may sound like this when you interject some empathy. You’ve already built so much. Imagine what you can do or what you can achieve with a little more clarity, community, and confidence behind you.

Marisa Shadrick [00:09:24]:
Empathy invites action without putting added pressure. It’s just a slight tweak, but it makes a huge difference than same old, same old. And, again, what we’re trying to do is write things in a way that doesn’t sound like the status quo. They can almost finish the sentence because they see it so often. When they begin to read a sentence have you ever done that? You start reading something and you know what it’s gonna say because it’s so status quo. It’s almost cliche, and that’s what we need to break out of. Alright. Let me give you tip number three.

Marisa Shadrick [00:09:58]:
All copywriting principles. I’m just saying it a little differently in this podcast so we can really land the plane on this. The third is storytelling. Storytelling is huge. And I know you’ve heard this, but it’s so worth repeating. Stories are powerful. Brian Eisenberg was the first that coined the phrase, facts tell, stories sell. And that is so, so true.

Marisa Shadrick [00:10:23]:
When we weave in stories, all of a sudden, people are engaged. They’re pulled in. They begin to read more or listen, because they want to figure out how the story’s gonna end. They’re sucked in. And that engagement is important because no matter what we put online, the first step is to get them to stop. Right? The next step is to get them to read at least the first line, and the next step is to get them to read the rest. How are we gonna engage them? By just putting facts, it’s too boring and it doesn’t connect. And once again, stories help with that emotional connection.

Marisa Shadrick [00:11:00]:
And so storytelling is powerful. Facts will educate, but stories really, really connect with your audience. It opens the emotional doors that facts just can’t do. And so when we’re even talking about a product, this is why we say don’t just talk about features, talk about benefits. Because when you’re talking about benefits, then it’s something they can feel. Right? The benefit of maybe saving time, the benefit of maybe doing something faster, the benefit of not being overwhelmed. All of a sudden, the emotions are starting to connect than just features that are talking about modules and lessons and everything else that’s included. The benefits is what really sells because of this.

Marisa Shadrick [00:11:45]:
So in storytelling, that’s why we put case studies. That’s why we have testimonials because it’s their story in a few sentences of what this particular product or service did for them. And that’s what’s so compelling. Plus, it’s social proof. So it has kind of a two sides of the coin. But it’s really important to incorporate this. So here’s a storytelling example. For example, AI could lead with a statistic.

Marisa Shadrick [00:12:13]:
If you’re trying to stop the scroll, which is great, there’s nothing wrong with that, to have a a statistic that often can be eye catching, but we don’t wanna just leave it there. Right? We wanna make it personal. So how do we do that? So when you interject what you’re trying to do and maybe a story or some experience that you’ve had and you wanna weave this in, then it might sound like this. Two years ago, I thought hustle was the answer. I skipped vacations, worked through weekends, and wore exhaustion like a badge of honor until my health gave me a wake up call I couldn’t ignore. Now that will introduce more, but that is very eye catching. We want to know what happened. It creates that curiosity that we need so people will continue to read what we have.

Marisa Shadrick [00:13:05]:
They want to know the answer, and what was it that that person realized? And the wake up call, how did things shift? What did they do differently? And so this with storytelling and curiosity is very, very powerful. Stories lower the defense, so all of a sudden people don’t have that stranger danger. Right? They’re brought into the story. They can see themselves in a story. They can self identify and say, you know what? I’ve been through that too. And the emotional connection, of course. And so seeing themselves in the story is great because as you position the the result or the outcome or the solution, then they’re realizing, hey, if there is hope for that person, there’s hope for me, and they begin to believe in a new possibility. And this is important too.

Marisa Shadrick [00:13:58]:
So all of this can help. So even if you’re using AI, if you just add a little information and you don’t have to have it really polished, you can just say why this is important and the angle you wanna provide. And you can even ask AI to ask you questions. For example, if you’re not even sure what to add as far as a story or empathy, say, I’m struggling to weave in a story, and I wanna be more empathetic with my audience. Can you ask me questions that might jog my memory or help me think of something that I can provide you, and you’re talking to AI, so that we can work through this and write something better together? And so this is gonna help you improve the output. AI, you just can’t tell it to produce something because it’s going to pull from the Internet. It’s gonna be very generic. It’s great at reproducing stuff, but it’s gonna use a lot of adjectives.

Marisa Shadrick [00:14:55]:
It’s gonna sound very salesy. It needs your personal touch to be able to write great content that sounds like you and not like everybody else, and it’s gonna be better, and it’s gonna be faster. And the more you train it, the better it will get at this. You still have to do some edits, but it’s gonna save you so much time. So AI can’t fake it. It needs your input. AI is a tool, but writing and writing with copywriting in mind is really a craft, and we can get better at it because it’s a skill. And whatever skill you’re trying to learn, with practice, you get better at it.

Marisa Shadrick [00:15:35]:
That’s the wonderful thing about skills. You get better. Right now, I’m learning the piano, and I practice a little bit every day. Not much, just about five minutes, but I’m getting better because it’s a skill. And the more you practice the consistency, the better you’re gonna get. So when you write and you write from a place of sharing your original brand content, your perspective, your point of view, your values, When you add empathy, when you add stories or a metaphor or a simile or something, an anecdote, then you begin to build these bridges. And then you help people feel seen and understood and heard and also valued. And that’s important because that will build trust.

Marisa Shadrick [00:16:18]:
And then it inspires action, and that’s what we want. At the end of the day, we want them to take some kind of action. We want them to read something, or we want them to listen to something. We want them to download something or register for something. So you need all this to proceed that call to action, which is the final thing that you add at the very bottom of your content. So it will do it in a way that builds trust without pressure, because nobody likes pressure, and you’ll be able to build relationship with that reader from the very, very beginning. And that’s something that AI just can’t generate. It can get better because what AI does, it predicts an outcome.

Marisa Shadrick [00:16:56]:
If you say the apple is, it will say red, or it will say round. But if you’re someone that eats apples because of a health benefit, and you give it the context, you’ve heard the saying an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Right? But if you give it context, it may produce something totally different. It may talk about the apple from the nutritional value as opposed that it’s red and round, but it won’t know what kind of output to provide unless you give it context as far as your knowledge about that apple. So hopefully, that makes sense to you. So if you’re listening to this podcast and you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would go to Apple Podcasts. I’ll provide a link. Leave a five star review.

Marisa Shadrick [00:17:39]:
That would be so helpful. I would love it if you’d do that. Not everybody takes the time, so I would really appreciate it and love to give you a shout out on the podcast. But just incorporate these three things in your writing and see how it does. You can do this even with short videos, with reels. Just think of a story. Think of some way of connecting with your audience. If not with all three, maybe just one, depending on what type of content you’re using.

Marisa Shadrick [00:18:07]:
And I think you’re gonna see a difference. You’re gonna be happily surprised with the outcome. So until next time, take care. Bye bye.