Copywriting Software
(The best software for copywriters and bloggers)

 

The funny thing about copywriting software is...it doesn't exist! It's actually a whole bunch of tools you combine to make your own "stack" of software. Let me explain...

People always talk about "copywriting" or "writing" like it's just ONE thing. But the truth is, it's more like a process or a system with multiple steps.

For copywriting, these steps are

• doing research
• drafting the copy
• revising the copy
• publishing / sharing

The great part about working online is many of these tools work together.

There are a million options out there for each of the different steps of writing copy. So today I'm going to share my copywriting software "stack." Share your stack in the comments.  

 

Use Uberconference for market research calls

One area of writing copy people overlook is research. I've heard before "the best copy is not written, it's curated." Meaning, if you do your research right, you end up combining a bunch of ideas you came across in your research. You're not spending all your time making up the ideas.

My favorite way to do research for copywriting projects is talking to past customers or people in the niche I'm writing for. I ask them simple questions like:

• What are the biggest problems you face in --niche--?
• What have you tried to get rid of these problems?
• Can you describe about the first time you used --niche--?
• Tell me a story about a specific moment when you knew --niche-- was working for you?
• If I had someone here on the  line who was on the fence about --niche-- what would you tell them?

When I do these calls I use the free service called Uberconference. After both people are on the line (you can also have more than two people on the call), you simply press a button to record the call. Then you can download an audio file of the call to listen to and take notes.  

 

Try Rev.com to get your calls transcribed

 

The awesome part about doing market research calls is the pile of awesome ideas you'll have after the call. The terrible part is listening to 20, 30, even 45  minutes of talking, trying to scribble notes, rewind, and get things right.

Enter...Rev.com.

This is a tool I use all the time  because it's fast, affordable, and accurate. Right after finishing a market research calls, I follow these steps:

1. Download the mp3 audio file off Uberconference
2. Upload it to Rev.com
3. Enter the speaker names, special accents, or unique vocabulary words
4. By the next morning, the transcription is sitting in my inbox, looking like this:

 

I can then often use word for word quotes from market research interviews in headlines, bullet points, and testimonials in the copy.  

 

Use a headline analyzer to check your work (but don't get carried away)

If I'm writing a sales page, email, or blog post, I like to get some feedback on my headline before I test it. One way to do this is to use online headline analyzers that "rate" your headline based on length, the words used, and past performance of similar headlines.

These tools cool can be really useful, BUT! Don't get carried away. If you just follow the headline analyzer, you can get obsessed with achieving a high score. This leads to a non-sense headline, not matching your article.

For example, when trying to write a headline for this blog post, I did an experiment to see how high of a score I could get on Sharethrough headline analyzer. I kept following their suggestions until I came up with this:

So, while this website is definitely valuable software for a copywriter to know about, you shouldn't just blindly follow it's recommendations.  

 

Wordable.io will save you hours going from Google Docs to Wordpress

If you write copy for the web, chances are people will eventually ask you to use Wordpress. Since a huge number of websites run on Wordpress, it's a valuable platform to learn.

One thing that has always been a pain for me is going from drafting in Google Docs -----> to publishing in Wordpress. Whether it's a web page or a blog post, taking all of the copy, headings, links, formatting, and images over from Docs to Wordpress can take me hours.

You could say "just write it in Wordpress," which is a good point, but you can't beat Google Docs for collaborating or even making simple edits on a mobile device.

Everything changed recently when I discovered Wordable.io. It's a Wordpress plugin that exports your Google Docs perfectly into a Wordpress post or webpage. It happens in seconds. And it keeps everything just as you had it in Google Docs. That's the newest (and last) part of my copywriting software "stack."

Hope you learned and enjoyed!