How to Maximize Your Copywriting Skills

I recently finished reading a book titled, "Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else." I gleaned a few lessons for copywriters.

The point of it was that it's not innate talent or experience that determine greatness. Most people would say it's hard work that makes people good at things but that's not it either.

The author says the big difference is something he calls "deliberate practice." It's more than regular practice. A good way to explain that is in considering how most adult city league soccer teams practice. A few practice deliberately and most either just practice or do nothing.

Most soccer teams don't have a coach. If they actually practice as a team they simply divide up into 2 groups, set up two small goals and then play until people get tired. Do we get better doing that? Not really. Is it fun? Usually so. That's why we keep doing it.

I was on a team once where a friend and I were able to convince the other players we needed to do some skill specific drills. We practiced playing keep away where the goal is to maintain possession of the ball. We put goals in the middle that had to be dribbled through. We put a limit on the number of times we could touch the ball before passing. We played offense against defense with each playing in our game formations.

These drills challenged us in game specific ways. While I played with that team, we moved up from 5th division to 2nd on the strength of our practicing. I've seen other teams do that as well. It's really pretty easy to be better than everyone else. Deliberate practice can make it happen.

What can you do as a copywriter? Most people have heard you ought to copy other good letters so you get the language into your system. The author suggested 3 models for practicing: the music model, the chess model and the sports model.

Music Model

When you perform music, you know exactly what it's supposed to sound like and you rehearse it. If you get hung up at a part, you step back and rehearse that part until it's perfect. In copywriting, that's what we're doing when we copy other good letters. But we have two other ways to improve as well.

Chess Model

This is the "what would you do in this situation" model. This is also how Harvard Business School teaches… through case studies. You look at specific scenarios and try to figure out what you would do. Then you compare that to what happened in real life.

For copywriting, you can re-write letters. That's testing what you would have done under similar circumstances. You could also pick a product, write a letter for it and then see how it compares to the real one. You could also critique letters.

You can work on smaller elements too. How would you rewrite a headline, bullets or an offer? There are plenty of smaller opportunities if you want to test yourself against pay per click or catalog copy. Take something you already own and write some catalog copy to compare to the actual.

Sports Model

This is where you condition yourself with specific skills. In copywriting, you can build your swipe file and then analyze each letter. You can take courses. You can read books on the topic. You can cross train in other applicable fields like sales, story telling, NLP and hypnosis, logic and debate or getting mentoring.

If you've only been reading books and copying good letters get excited. If you apply what you've learned in this article, you'll guarantee yourself a place among the best.