As I sat down to write this post, I was hit by the exact blight that I am about to write about – writer’s block! Where do I start? What do I include? How do I best share my message? It made me laugh a little, and then I plunged in!
We’ve all been there as marketing professionals – ad copy needs to be drafted, your due date is looming, and yet your keyboard is silent and your fingers oddly actionless. Let me share with you the best strategies that I’ve found to help you get over your writer’s block and give you a head start on your next copywriting project!
- Brainstorming – You don’t know where to start, but you need to start somewhere, so you might as well jot down words, phrases, ideas, connections, thoughts, images – anything that comes to mind. As you push yourself to think, you’ll see some ideas start to flesh out, mental thought chains start connecting and before you know it a skeleton of a text lies before you.
- Immersion – Surround yourself by all the research material you have about a client and scour it until you have a complete understanding and picture of the product you’re writing about, the audience you’re trying to reach, and the goal you’re trying to achieve. Saturate your brain in this information and take another stab at your messaging.
- Relax & Move – Take a deep breath, brew yourself a cup of hot tea (or coffee, or any drink you enjoy), get a snack. Also, change your writing location – move to a different room in your house, go outside for half an hour, drive to a coffee shop. Movement shakes your brain up and joggles pieces, prompting them to fall into different places.
- Mix & Match – Focus on creating individual puzzle pieces (phrases, CTAs, subject lines, product descriptions, event highlights, taglines, etc.) as opposed to writing a cohesive text in one sitting. Then, add connecting puzzles until your jigsaw becomes whole and your text is complete. Feel free to rearrange the puzzle pieces until they fit perfectly.
- Music On/Off – This technique is also based on the principal of changing your surroundings in an effort to stimulate your brain activity. If you’ve been listening to music previously, turn it off and put on noise-cancelling headphones to remove distraction. If you’ve been buried in a silent catacomb of a room, turn on a fun playlist and sing along to the songs. Who knows, maybe some song lyrics you hear might make you start thinking in a new direction!
- Thesaurus Fun – Your copy is coming, but it’s feeling kind of old and stale, and you’ve run out of ideas for clever new and suggestive words. This means it’s time to spruce up your lexicon! Write down the words stumping you and explore their synonyms and antonyms on the thesaurus. You’ll find some lesser used gems that might be perfect for your copy.
- Be Inspired by Past Success – Review your previous copy, or copy for another event, or membership campaign for a different association – you might be surprised where a past perspective may inspire new work!
And if nothing works, then our advice to you is to switch gears and move on to a different project. Let your brain de-stress, and then, after an hour or a day, come back to the copywriting with a fresh and energetic mindset, and try again.
We hope that these tips, gathered from our own digital marketing team, will help you in your professional journey!
Written by Yaroslava Kuzina, Digital Marketing Specialist