Finding the right audience online takes some time and thoughtful research. Once you find those perfect people, you still have to get them to your website.

We’re not talking about search engines and keywords here. Your mission is to create a purposeful, person-to-person connection. You want the words that create a brief but compelling message that is delivered directly to your audience.

Headlines.

You might think a headline is a simple add-on to your content, but it’s much more than that. You need headlines to cut through In box clutter, even if your recipients look forward to your email newsletter, because you can’t know how busy they will be when it arrives.

You need compelling headlines when you post something new on your blog, or on Facebook or Twitter, to encourage people to read what you wrote.

A good headline gets eyeballs on your press release. If you want media attention, make it easy for reporters to write about you. A weak headline doesn’t help your cause.

Take a few tips from the newsstand
The next time you stand in line at the grocery checkout or visit a bookstore, take a good look at the magazine rack. Not at the tabloids, but the cooking, fashion, gardening, and decorating magazines. You can narrow down your research to the obvious—magazines geared toward creatives, and specifically your medium—but if you search farther afield, you get a better sense of how headlines work in general. You will see they tend to have a few things in common.

If you scan magazine headlines with a copywriter’s eye, you will notice they offer solutions to common problems or ways to improve something. “Five Easy Dinners for Families on the Go,” or “Secrets of Growing Great Herbs,” or “Fall Fashion Inspiration” are pretty standard fare.

Now go back to your medium for a minute. Some art/craft/design magazines are how-to guides, and some focus on exhibition reviews and feature artists and their work. So consider carefully: which ones get your attention? Which make you want to read on? Which are the best for the audience you want to reach?

Pay attention to the elements art magazines share with mainstream publications.

Watch for words that appear frequently—some form of “inspiration” shows up on the covers of watercolour painting, interior design, gardening magazines, and a whole lot more. That’s no accident. Whether you’re a maker or a buyer, the promise of something inspiring hits you where you live.

You can write your own headlines with those standards in mind.

Craft your headlines for your best audience members
If you hate the idea of writing formulaic headlines, of if you’re not writing how-to content, take your core idea and tailor your message to the people you most want to reach. Write the briefest summary you can, and include a little teaser so your reader will want to know more.

Here’s an example from Twitter to show you one approach, and the thought process behind it:

The shadowy world of design dabblers exposed: http://su.pr/8oUCZa /by @pamelaiwilson

This was a post by Pamela Wilson that I retweeted last week. The subject? When to use drop shadows with graphics. Pamela wrote the post with her usual combination of sensible advice and good humour, so I followed her lead and had some fun with my own headline. I took information directly from the post—people who dabble in design, as opposed to those who have some training, tend to overdo drop shadows—played with the concept of shadow, and gave the whole thing a tabloid twist, tongue planted firmly in cheek. The headline was aimed at an online audience with a notoriously short attention span, which consists mainly of a group of creatives who have a well-developed sense of fun and get pop culture references.

Write with clear intent
Is that Twitter headline 100% accurate? No. But it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t point to an article with life-or-death information (okay, not exactly life-or-death, but close. Ask me what I think about bad design sometime). It’s pretty clear from the inclusion of “design dabblers” that the headline is meant to be humorous. If the overall tone of Pamela’s post had been serious, I would have gone in a different direction.

Is the headline effective? Pamela liked it (in fact, her response inspired this post, hence the reprint of the retweet with a shout out to her). Since it was Pamela’s material I wrote about, I figure it did its job.

The key elements are simple
There’s no big secret to writing good headlines. It’s just one aspect of smart marketing, and the same principles apply: study what works, know your audience well, adapt that knowledge and research to suit your needs, and pay attention to how your audience responds.

Over to you: Do you think headlines are important? Do you have trouble writing them? What kinds of headlines work best to catch your eye?

Related posts:

1. How to write your bio and About page without driving yourself crazy
2. How to find the right audience online
3. If you’re a creative, you can craft great marketing materials

There were a couple of responses to my call for your most burning questions that point to an important part of marketing and personal branding: you.

The questions were about name recognition, writing a bio, and how to write an About page for your website. Each requires talking about yourself in a way that engages your audience.

Unless you’ve gone through the process a few times, writing a bio or About page for your website can be stupidly intimidating. You’re not sure exactly what you should write. You want to impress people. You want to sound smart and talented and likeable, or smart and talented and edgy, or smart and talented and sophisticated.

Which might be exactly the wrong approach.

Stop trying to impress people and tell it like it is
You know what happens when you try too hard. You trip yourself up almost instantly, wanting to prove yourself worthy. But it’s not about being worthy—it’s about being real.

Your audience wants to know you, the artist. They want to make a connection with the person who makes the work they want to buy.

Start with the facts
You probably have a resume kicking around somewhere with some important dates on it. The training that gives you professional credibility, years of experience, awards and shows. Take the best pieces and put them into a few paragraphs, along with pertinent facts about your work, and possibly where you were born and where you live now. Make it into a story to engage your reader.

You have probably also read countless bios of other artists, as well as prominent people. Go look at a few, both of people you know, and famous artists. For the sake of quick reference, here’s one on master portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh. Yours won’t read exactly like his (because you’re still here, and probably not world famous), but you get the idea.

There’s no perfect formula
Don’t feel like you have to follow a formula, and don’t feel like there’s only one correct way to write your bio. You don’t have to say where you were born or where you grew up. If you do a little research, you will realize there’s no one style or format. Make sure you have the important information in there, then write what feels most authentic to you. If your audience loves hearing about how many kids and pets you have, write about it, as long as you feel comfortable. If not, leave it out.

Who should you be—I, he, she or we?
Some people like to write about themselves in the third person, and sometimes it’s appropriate. That usually happens in a formal document, when a convention has already been established about writing about yourself as “she,” and it usually involves far too much paperwork and a snooty jury of some kind. Normally you will be you (that is, “I”), unless there are more than one of you, in which case you’ll be a “we,” not an “I.” Don’t use the royal “we,” which is a bit pretentious.

(I was trying to make you laugh, not confuse you. Writing about yourself can be stressful. It shouldn’t be, because you’ve been you all your life, but it is. Not taking yourself too seriously can help keep you grounded.)

The point I’m trying to make is you don’t want to get too complicated or too uptight. Talking about yourself in the first person isn’t narcissistic, it’s factual. If you really want to go with third person, and it fits your personal style, do it.

If you want to write in first person and want a bio that can be used for press coverage, write one in third person and put a link to it on your website for just that purpose (tip: reporters love it when you make their jobs easier).

Your About page—should it really be about you?
If your About page is your bio page, then obviously the answer is yes. But if you offer a service, your About page might focus on your audience, and what you can do for them, with a short bio at the end.

How you organize that information depends on how you set up your website. You can have a Services (or Gallery or Portfolio) page, and an About page that contains your bio. Make it as easy and clear for your website visitors as you can. Some creatives who offer services take a “Who We Are” and “What We Do” approach. Dead easy for anyone visiting the site to figure out exactly what’s on the site.

(Writing tip: technically, none of the above capitalized words are proper nouns, so they shouldn’t be capitalized. I’m just pretending they’re officially named pages so you don’t get confused.)

What to do when you’re stuck
This is an exercise I like to suggest when you can’t get out of your own head: write a letter. An old friend, who you haven’t seen in years, asks what you’ve been up to lately. What would you tell her? Write it down, without editing, until you run out of words. Then leave it for a while, even a day or two, then come back and clean it up—without losing your own voice.

If you’re still stuck, do a W5: who, where, when, what, and why. Adapt as needed. That will give you a basic structure and solid starting point. When you flesh it out, remember that your audience, no matter who they are, connect with your work and you, so you don’t want to back away so much that you disappear.

Be present
The work doesn’t sell itself. If it did, you wouldn’t be thinking about writing a bio, or an About page, or working on marketing. You make the work, and directly or indirectly, you—your reputation, your brand—are a critical part of selling it.

Over to you: what trips you up when talking about yourself? How do you approach writing your bio?

Related posts:

1. How to write headlines that grab your audience
2. Online selling – how to figure out your prospects without going crazy
3. Put four Ps in your creative marketing

Recently I saw some catalogue copy written by an artist. The work in question was described as “distinctively unique.”

If that didn’t make you do a double take, go look up “distinctive” in a thesaurus.

You got it. “Distinctively distinctive.” Or if you prefer, “Uniquely unique.”

Not good.

The rest of the copy was effusive. At first glance, it seemed to describe the most extraordinary objects you’d ever see. Unfortunately, it also contained spelling errors, and some words were capitalized that weren’t proper nouns.

Those kinds of mistakes can hurt your credibility, particularly if you say you pay close attention to detail.

Be clear and accurate
When you write promotional copy, make sure you fully understand the words you’re using. Otherwise, you can end up with an embarrassing redundancy, or worse, completely misuse a word or phrase. Fluffing your copy is dangerous.

If you’re not sure of the meaning of a word, use a dictionary, preferably with a thesaurus included. If you don’t have one somewhere on your computer, they’re available online for free.

Better yet, quit fluffing.

The work in our example didn’t live up to its promises. Imagine how a prospective buyer reacts when that happens.

Stick to the facts
Stressing over marketing copy is a common affliction among artists. You feel self-conscious. Catalogue copy is the worst—there’s usually a word limit, so you want to make a big impact with those few words. You panic and try to pretty it up.

Not only does that waste your valuable catalogue space, but you tell your prospective buyer what to think. Be careful. One person’s “cute” is another’s curled lip.

You can talk about your earthy palette. Or that your work is deeply textured. Or minimalist. But do you really need to say it’s beautiful? Will people assume your work is ugly if you don’t?

And why say you’re unique? You’re an artist, not a copy machine.

You don’t have to have a Pulitzer Prize to write eloquently about your work. Pretend you’re explaining it to someone wearing a blindfold. If you can’t let go of “unique,” look it up in the dictionary. See if your perception of the word matches its meaning. Switch to a thesaurus to help you find a word that’s not so overused.

A dictionary is one of the most valuable resources in your marketing toolbox. It can save you a lot of time and writing headaches.

Do you have trouble writing about what you do? What are some of the best—or worst—examples of catalogue descriptions you’ve seen?

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned in art school
2. Find your Unique Selling Proposition without really trying
3. Be evocative

Do you ever have those days? You know, the kind where you feel like your head will implode if you utter another word about business?

Okay, maybe it’s just me.

We’re not talking much about marketing today. There’s a moral to the story that follows, so if you only have time for that, skip to the end. But you’ll miss the entertainment, which mostly involves laughing at the misadventures of yours truly.

This is how it goes:

I’m a pretty good driver, but sometimes circumstances conspire to put the best of us in situations that make us wish we’d stayed in bed that day.

Long story short: I was in a parkade notorious for tight corners and difficult navigation, and I managed to clip the passenger side mirror when I got too close to a concrete pillar.

I calculated the repair cost as I made my mortified way to the service department of our local car dealer. Then I had an idea. Instead of going to the service desk, I strolled up to the parts counter and asked for a mirror. The guy looked skeptical, but came back with a box.

I gave the assembly a quick once-over and shrugged. “It’s a mirror. It’s not a big deal.”

He took my money with a “Yeah, sure, lady, good luck with that,” expression.

Which meant that not only did I have something to fix, I had something to prove. Jerk.

One of the joys of the internet is the abundance of DIY information. Google the make of your car and the required repair job, and voilà—you have your instructions.

It really wasn’t that difficult, and I was feeling mighty relieved at how quickly I was able to put a side mirror on my car and corresponding bandage on my badly bruised ego.

Inordinately pleased with myself, I commenced an early celebration. Out loud, I declared, ”I rock.”

You know that scene in Lord of the Rings where they’re in the Mines of Moria and Pippin knocks the dead orc down the mine shaft, and the sound echoes for what seems like an eternity? It’s remarkably similar to the sound of a bolt as it falls inside the door assembly of your nearly-repaired vehicle.

I’ll spare you the words that followed.

Doubly offended, I considered my options: automotive fasteners are not available at the local hardware store. There was no way in hell I was going back to our car dealer, just in case the same guy was at the parts desk. There was another dealer, but I’d either have to explain what happened, or cook up a really good story that they probably wouldn’t believe anyway.

Not going to happen.

Back to Google, to figure out how to take the door apart. The only trouble I had was with the window crank, because the instructions I found weren’t doing the job. Fortunately, my father’s good with cars, and he gave me a tip on how to take the crank apart.

It took a while to find the bolt, and a while longer to extract it from the tiny crevice where it had become lodged. But I got it, and decided to feel grateful rather than triumphant. I reassembled the door (turns out brute force rather than finesse got the damnable window crank back together), and very carefully installed the new side mirror.

You’d never know it wasn’t the original.

And so, dear friends, here are the lessons learned: never get cocky about a DIY repair job. At least, not until it’s done, you’re certain you don’t have any mysterious parts left over, and you’re absolutely sure it won’t fall apart if you look at the thing sideways.

As far as business and marketing go, don’t be afraid to be a real person with your customers. And don’t get cocky with your marketing, either.

Over to you: any instant karma stories to share? What do you do when you get tired of talking about business?

Related posts:

1. Sith Lords and a cautionary tale about branding
2. A cautionary tale about online selling
3. Two important lessons learned in a car showroom

I read two blog posts today that got me thinking about dresses and shoes. That got me thinking about how easy it can be to find your unique selling proposition: do it by accident.

If you’re not familiar with the jargon, a unique selling proposition (USP) is what makes you different from other people in your field, and preferably what makes you more valuable than the other guy in the eyes of your ideal buyer.

I once attended a marketing workshop where the mere mention of finding your USP made everyone look like they were about to undergo root canal. It can be a tough thing to come up with, especially if you overthink it.

So how do you come up with your USP without trying?

When I decided to launch this site, I tried to do it all myself, without spending a dime. WordPress is a free add-on with the web hosting package I already have, and I can do a little graphic design.

Except I lost my graphic design chops somewhere, probably in the midst of designing jewellery and putting siding on my house. Everything I came up with was awful. So I decided to spend some money and hire a real graphic designer.

We negotiated a shoestring agreement that involved me cooling my jets while the designers fit my job in with their other work. I had a meeting with the lead designer, who I knew from working in the same office years ago, but the people who would be creating my logo and header didn’t know me. All they would have was the photograph I sent, and a short description about what I wanted to do with the site. Part of the deal was I had to trust them to get it right in one shot, rather than provide me with a couple of options.

I wrote a pretty good design brief. But while giving it a final once-over, I started to get nervous. Would they get my personal style from the material I sent? Best not leave it to chance (I’m also a detail fanatic with control freak tendencies and a slight neurosis about money). At the beginning of the email I wrote this:

“Style note—in case anyone’s wondering—the colour pink triggers my gag reflex. I am not a girly-girl. I last donned a dress in 1998. When a friend referred to it as drag, I gave up and now I use pantyhose to strain old paint.”

If I’d been asked to include my USP as part of the design brief, I would have agonized over it. I already had a strong sense of my USP, but to put it into a short statement would have been much harder than what I did by accident—describe my style using my style. I inadvertently told them and showed them at the same time.

I was a little surprised when my designer remarked on my sense of humor. I wasn’t trying to be funny when I wrote the style note; the simple truth is I was freaking out about getting something that was totally wrong for me, and freaking out about trying to break into a crowded niche. I was just being myself.

Everybody and their dog is a marketing expert these days, and everybody and their dog is starting their own business. For a solo gig like this, personality and writing style are important. They’re part of my USP (the other part is I don’t hold a business degree or come from an administration background. I’m a real live artist with a business brain).

So my advice, if you don’t have your USP sorted out, is to send someone—either a willing volunteer or yourself—an email. Say what you do, how you do it, who you do it for, where you do it, if it’s someplace interesting. Don’t edit or overthink, just write a note as if you were telling someone, “Hey, guess what I’m doing these days?” Then see what jumps out at you.

And if that exercise gave you a headache, let me know. I have a drawing board just waiting for new challenges. If you have a strategy of your own, feel free to leave a comment.

Related posts:

1. If you’re a creative, you can craft great marketing materials
2. Seven ways to shape your brand
3. 15 tips for an effective website

How do you tell a good story? Here’s a great creative writing tip: don’t tell me—show me.

If that sounds like vague instruction, here’s an example. We’ll revisit our friend James Dyson, the über-cool vacuum cleaner guy. I talked about his story in my last post.

Now let’s put you on TV. You have your own series as a superstar trial lawyer. You’re giving your final argument to the jury, and you need to impress the hell out of them. Your client is Mr. Dyson, and you’re task is to convince a dozen of his peers he’s the real deal.

How would the TV lawyer do it?

“James Dyson is an inventor who believes in doing things right. He threw out 5127 prototypes before he introduced his first bagless vacuum cleaner to the marketplace.”

As far as marketing goes, the first statement is a throwaway. That’s the tell-me statement. Everybody says they do it right; it’s not going to impress the jury.

The powerful statement is the proof: 5127 prototypes. You just showed them his dedication to his business.

You have 20 years experience in your field. You’ve won awards. You have critical acclaim (check your resume or CV for ideas). If you’re a new kid on the block, you can play up your specialties. You’re a detail fanatic. You guarantee turnaround times on certain services. (But remember: this is for writing purposes; you have to live up to your claims or your good storytelling turns into a big fat fairy tale.)

If you’re still not sure if you’re telling or showing, write your ideas down. If your reaction is, “Pfft, whatver,” it’s a tell-me. A show-me doesn’t have to be spectacular, but it will get your attention.

Inspired? Still confused? Leave a comment below, or get in touch.

Related posts:

1. Acting, vacuum cleaners and a good story
2. How to write your bio and About page without driving yourself crazy
3. Send your audience a message