To those who missed the first lesson, how nice of you to join us…

Isn’t this stuff easier now that the Web’s getting smarter? With a subject like copywriting, there are so many smart people out there, sharing so much information, faster than ever, that it’s important to study all the different ways writers can harness and leverage that power.

That’s what these online writing techniques can do. They’ll help you persuade; to share your ideas and promote your agenda in a way that other people want to hear; to speak without speaking, to customers, would-be clients, or anyone else who should hear what you have to say.

So, pens and pencils down. Let’s get started…

Recap

51.) “Grok’s Copywriting Cheat Sheet Explained” — E-Marketing Performance

Copy Length

52.) “Long Copy vs. Short Copy Tested” — Marketing Experiments Journal

53.) “Gr8t Web 2.0 Copy” — GrokDotCom

54.) “Is Less More in Copywriting?” — Attversumption.com

Word Choice, Formatting & Usability

55.) Perception of Fonts: Perceived Personality Traits and Uses — University of Wichita psych department study

56.) “Revenge of the Pixels: The Battle for Screen Real Estate” — GrokDotCom

57.) “How to Write Persuasive Links” — GrokDotCom

58.) “Oldest Remaining… A Copywriting Tip” — Seth’s Blog

59.) “6 Common Punctuation Errors That Bedevil Bloggers” — Copyblogger

60.) “10 Flagrant Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid” — ZDnet.co.uk

61.) “30+ Tools for the Amateur Writer” — Mashable

62.) “When Developers Write Copy” — GrokDotCom

63.) Before & After — It’s not only the words that count but how they look as well. Fonts
communicate meaning. What’s the right typeface for your text?

64.) Readability.info — Test your website’s reading level by a variety of standards.

65.) “The Blog Readability Test” — What level of education is required to understand your blog? (Sometimes writing at an elementary school level is a good thing.)

66.) Dafont.com — All the fonts you don’t but kinda want to have anyway.

67.) ConfusingWords.com — A collection of 3210 words that are troublesome for readers.

68.) NoSlang.com — List of commonly misused words

69.) iTools — An assortment of language tools in one place

70.) ConvertCase.net — Accidentally write something lengthy with the Caps Lock on? No problem. This tool converts it for you.

71.) TypeTester — Compare fonts side-by-side

Active vs. Passive Voice

72.) “Activate Your Verbs” — GrokDotCom

73.) “Two Pieces of Bad Writing Advice — And What to Do Instead” — GrokDotCom (Actionable advice on when, where and how to let the passive voice take control in order to protect the subject.)

Writing for Personas

74.) “Persuasive Copywriting for Beginners (And Dummies!)” — GrokDotCom (Engaging different personality types.)

75.) “Eyetracking, Heatmaps & Gaze Plots! Oh my…” — GrokDotCom (Learn how to structure content to write for different personas on the same page.)

76.) “The New Targeting” — Monday Morning Memo by Roy Williams

77.) “Dishing Out What the Customer Really Wants” — GrokDotCom (Engaging different personality types.)

78.) “You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned” — Web Ink Now (Sage advice.)

79.) “If Your Personas Don’t Talk, Fire Them!” — GrokDotCom

Branding + Advertising Brain Food

“Advertising doesn’t create a product advantage. It can only convey it . . . No matter how skillful you are, you can’t invent a product advantage that doesn’t exist.” — Bill Bernbach

80.) “The Secret of Saying Too Little” — Monday Morning Memo

81.) “Accentuate The Negative” — GrokDotCom

82.) “Why Problem Based Positioning is a Psychological Magnet” — PsychoTactics

83.) “Are You Normal?” — Monday Morning Memo

84.) “Targeting Through Ad Copy” — Monday Morning Memo

85.) “The Intrigue Continuum” — GrokDotCom

86.) “How to Make Your Ads Sparkle” — Monday Morning Memo

87.) “Magic Words” — Monday Morning Memo (Yes, there are magic words. Do you know them?)

88.) “The Future of Ad Writing” — Monday Morning Memo

89.) “Ready. Angle. Fire.” — Monday Morning Memo

90.) “Not Everyone Can Withstand Transparency” — GrokDotCom

91.) “Stronger Ads = More Complaints” — Monday Morning Memo

92.) “Refer to an Unseen Action” — Monday Morning Memo

Monetizing Content

93.) “Free Report: Teaching Sells” — Copyblogger’s Brian Clark shows you how to leverage your content into paid offerings. A must-read, must-listen (there’s a free audio ebook as well) tutorial that shows why the Teaching Sells program is a bargain at any price for independent publishers, authors and copywriters, freelancers. It’s not a bunch of hype to sell the full program, though. Even if you just listen to the ebook, you’ll get quite a lot out of it. Clark discusses how to avoid the pitfalls and mind-traps that limit writers in the online space, and how to turn that knowledge into a career that’s real. You don’t have to be a bestseller, but you do have to know how to build an audience. If you’re looking for get-rich-quick schemes, look elsewhere. If you want to know how to get rich as quickly as you can, listen to this free report, then buy Teaching Sells.

Inspiration + Fun

94.) WordCount.org — English words dynamically ranked according to popularity. Very cool.

95.) WordAssociation.org — An ink blot test for words.

96.) Etymologic — “The Toughest Word Game on the Web”

97.) Free Rice — For each word you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice to help end world hunger

98.) “Words and Phrases That Should Exist (But Probably Don’t)” — Squidoo

99.) “The Ad Graveyard” — Daily Report

100.) Lost in Translation — “Babelize” any sentence or paragraph to see how silly you sound after being translated five times over. It’s the “telephone game” gone awry.

101.) Web Economy Bullshit Generator — A proactive keyword initiative spearheaded by Dack.com to help facilitate global ROI for the long tail in a Web 2.0 environment, or something like that.

Stay Tuned…

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