For anyone who wants to improve anything, the best way to do that is to get feedback from other people who do the same thing. This is how graduate school works. You write papers, your teacher tears them apart, your fellow students tear them apart, and the entire department of experts tears them apart.
Sounds lovely, I’m sure, but one thing it does is create professionals who can view their own content objectively so that they can improve and make it better. If you want to become a better copywriter, the best way to do that is to get feedback from other copywriters. This may frighten you just a little, but that’s okay. Jump on through the fear. You won’t be sorry.
First, find some groups that offer critique by members of the group to copywriters. You can locate groups on Facebook, but you can also find groups that aren’t through Facebook by looking for forums and message boards made for copywriters. Some other terms you may want to look up are “copywriting masterminds” so that you can locate people who are willing to give you feedback.
Before you ask anyone to give you feedback on your work, it’s important to prepare yourself for it. Not everyone is going to be as tactful as you might desire. However, getting negative feedback is better for you than getting only positive comments without any help included. You can disagree with negative feedback, but you really can’t get much for the positive feedback.
When you submit your content for someone to give feedback, make sure you’ve observed them before and feel safe. You don’t have to post your work for all to see if there are people who may steal it. It’s sad you must concern yourself with that but use your best judgment and do your due diligence when sharing your work with others.
Even in critique groups, some people might not end up sending a critique so try to ask more than one person. Shoot for five to ten people when you send it out because only a couple will probably come through. Some of the feedback you get will be the same, but when you pick more than one person, you will get a variety of different comments – some that may even disagree.
When you get the feedback, you’ll want to use your judgment about what feedback is helpful and what feedback is not helpful. Getting feedback is scary and can make you feel bad about yourself but remember that most of it is an opinion unless they back up their feedback with facts. The important part of the exercise is to get ideas about ways to improve your copywriting so focus only on that.
As you read the feedback, think about the ways in which you wanted the copy to affect the person consuming it. Did you want them to buy something, read more, sign up, or do something else? Did the reviewers believe that you accomplished that? Did they give you some advice on how to do that if it was mentioned? Make note when the advice is related to your goals.
Always give the feedback time to marinate before you let it take you off the rails. You don’t want feedback to stop you in your tracks; don’t allow that to happen. You can learn. Fix your errors, or change your direction, if you believe you should, and then do it all again. Also, ensure that you get feedback from writers who are willing to truly help.
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