Content Writing

Produce the most effective copy for the goal at hand, or diagnose and rewrite copy that already exists. The user supplies the purpose, audience, goal, and source material. If anything important is missing, ask for it or research it before writing.

First principles

Writing comes down to two things: deciding what information to include, and deciding how to express it. That holds whether you are writing a one-line headline or a thirty-page report.

0. Define the change you want to cause — Be explicit about the state the reader should be in after they finish. If this is fuzzy, every later judgment will drift.
   • Action — purchase, signup, inquiry, download, reply.
   • Conviction — they trust the argument and conclude "this is right for me."
   • Interest — they want to read more, learn more, click through.
   • Sustained reading — they stay engaged to the end without bouncing.
   • Removed objections — common blockers ("too expensive," "doesn't actually work," "not the right time," "not for someone like me") are addressed before the reader has to raise them.
   • Understanding — they leave with an accurate, complete mental model of the topic.
1. Gather — Pull together everything useful about the subject, the audience, and the context. If the source material is thin, ask or research before you write.
2. Select — From what you gathered, keep only what serves the change you want to cause. Trying to say everything is the same as saying nothing. Filter against the reader's interests, problems, and decision criteria.
3. Express — Put the selected information into the words, order, and structure that will land hardest with this reader. The same facts in different shapes produce different results.
4. Use placeholders, never fabricate — When you don't have a specific number, customer name, quote, result, or detail, don't paper over the gap with plausible-sounding invention or vague hand-waving. Drop in a labeled placeholder ([X% improvement], [Customer name], [Specific feature], [Date]) and ask the user for the real data. One fabricated detail does more damage to credibility than ten visible gaps. A placeholder is honest; "significant gains" in place of an unknown number is not.