The Importance of Defining Your Intention & Audience
Lesson 3 from: From Structure to Style: Master Your CopywritingShani Raja
The Importance of Defining Your Intention & Audience
Lesson 3 from: From Structure to Style: Master Your CopywritingShani Raja
Lesson Info
3. The Importance of Defining Your Intention & Audience
Lessons
Chapter 1: Copywriting Fundamentals
1Class Introduction - Overview of the Course Content
03:50 2The Five Aspirations of a Superior Copywriter
05:28 3The Importance of Defining Your Intention & Audience
06:02 4The “Secret Sauce” of Good Copywriting
04:29 5Quiz - Chapter 1
Chapter 2: Simplicity
6Introduction - The Power of Simplicity
02:06Tight Writing - How to Make Your Writing Snappy
05:43 8Tell it Straight - How to Write Plainly & Straightforwardly
03:36 9Don’t Overcomplicate - How to Avoid Unnecessary Complexity
04:59 10Quiz - Chapter 2
Chapter 3: Clarity
11Introduction - The Power of Clarity
01:33 12Nailing Down Your Ideas - How to Fix Fuzzy Ideas In Your Copy
04:07 13Place Words With Care - How to Avoid Misplacing Words
03:49 14Be Specific - How to Avoid Ambiguity, Jargon & Abstract Writing
09:09 15Quiz - Chapter 3
Chapter 4: Elegance
16Introduction - The Power of Elegance
01:57 17Present Elegantly - How to Make Your Writing Look Good
04:10 18Narrative Flow - How to Structure Your Copy Beautifully
04:09 19Musical Writing - How to Give Your Writing Rhythm
05:31 20Quiz - Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Evocativeness
21Introduction - The Power of Evocativeness
02:28 22Add Variety - How to Reduce Monotony in Your Writing
03:10 23Be Bold - How to Steer Clear of Weak Words
03:34 24Create Pictures - How to Make Your Writing Jump Out
06:23 25Quiz - Chapter 5
Chapter 6: Editing With Style
26Introduction - Get Ready to Edit
01:31 27The Quick-Smart Editing System
16:11 28Quiz - Chapter 6
Chapter 7: The Road Ahead: What’s Next?
29How to Nurture Your New Skills
03:06Final Quiz
30Final Quiz
Lesson Info
The Importance of Defining Your Intention & Audience
in the previous lesson, we saw how it helps to aspire to make your writing comprehensible, beautiful, effective, engaging, and authentic. Now you can go ahead and apply this simple formula immediately to improve the copy, for instance, on your various fiber offerings. And in this lesson, I will share with you another piece of golden mindset advice which is to always write with a clear awareness of your purpose. Understanding this principle will enable you to shape your copyrighting so that it pretty much always hits the mark and does the job, you'll find that whether you're composing website, copy a piece of content marketing or anything else being totally clear on your purpose, will give you many insights into how to design and shape the writing. Now there are essentially two components of purpose that you should distinguish. The first is your intention and the second is your audience. So let's start with your intention. There are many different types of intention you might have, but ...
here are six of the most common ones that I've come across. Your main intention may be to inform readers as in a news article. Second, your intention maybe to persuade your readers as in sales copy, in which you're basically trying to convince people to buy your product third. Your main intention maybe to entertain your readers as in a funny blog post. 4th. Your intention maybe chiefly to inspire or motivate readers as in a fitness blog. 5th, your intention maybe primarily to educate your readers, like in a school textbook perhaps, and finally your intention maybe to transform your readers in some way, as in, for example, a self help book. Now, some of those intentions overlap and there are a few others you might be able to think of, but this framework seems to fit the majority of the writing, at least that I've personally encountered now to be sure you may and often will have more than one intention when writing something, for instance, consider this made up political poster Sally Smith has been fighting for you since 2010 if you want lower taxes and a better life vote sally smith. Now, this short text is aimed at informing, persuading and motivating, but even in such cases there's usually one primary intention at work and here the most likely intention is to motivate people to vote for sally smith, which is what the informing and the persuading ultimately geared towards. Now, why is being clear on your primary intention so important, Most importantly, it helps you shape your content. Say you're writing a blog post whose intention is both to inform and to entertain? Well, it helps to know which is your primary intention to inform or to entertain. If it's to inform, you can make sure that the entertainment aspect of it never overshadows or outweighs the informing aspect. And even that the entertaining part of your content actually supports the informing part, in other words, you won't be able to balance the two intentions appropriately in your text unless you're really clear on what your primary intention is. So in this particular example, to help shape your content, you might ask yourself the following question. Am I seeking to inform in an entertaining way, or am I seeking to entertain in an informative way? And the results in the end may be fairly similar, but there will also be subtle and often crucial differences in the way you frame and communicate your message as a result of making that fine distinction about your purpose. Now, the second component of your purpose, as I said, is your audience. After all, we're always writing for someone. Right? So you'll find that by being very specific about who that someone is, you will greatly improve your communication. Your audience could be any of the following, for example, the general public conservatives or liberals, business people, young professionals, Cryptocurrency traders and so on. You'll find that the more precise and specific you can be about both your intention and your audience, the more deeply you're gonna be able to connect with the people who you're writing for. Plus it will give you a whole lot of clarity in terms of what to say, what not to say, how much of it to say, what to emphasize, what to elaborate on what to illustrate your points with and so on precisely defining your intention and audience will also help you choose the right tone, pace and rhythm for the writing. Now it can be really helpful to actually write down your intention and audience explicitly to guide you as you're writing, kind of like this. My intention in this cover letter is to persuade the boss of widget, inc to invite me for a job interview. My intention in this article is to inform the general public of the dangers of eating red meat. My intention in this Fiverr gig description is to get more X type of buyers or whatever else it is that you're trying to achieve notice how both the intention and the audience are explicitly stated. In each case, you'll find that doing this will ensure your content takes on exactly the shape and form needed to fulfill your purpose. And now that we've understood the importance of clarifying and defining your purpose, we're ready to look at the four basic ingredients of exceptional writing that I mentioned at the beginning, I'll reveal all on the other side.