Infuse creativity into your written message. Write in a clever and/or amusing way, and make your ad stand out from crowd. Use a tone that’s appropriate to your audience. Choose words that belong to that particular genre.

At any point during conception of your written material, you can brainstorm words or phrases that your audience uses and will likely respond to. I call this “learning their language.” What this is, essentially, is imitation. Remember when you were a little kid playing make-believe? (okay, maybe you don’t--but I do!) Play make-believe now. To warm up, read some existing material that relates to your target group. Next, sit in a quiet spot and pretend you ARE your key customer. Write out a list of their expressions. I wrote web copy for a high-end caterer last month. To get my thoughts flowing, I made a list of words. “Sophistication, delectable, tasteful, elegant” so on and so forth. When I was done thinking of as many different words as possible, I was ready to inject them into my copy. Replace lackluster words with more zippy ones. But use your adjectives and adverbs sparingly! There’s such a thing as copy overkill, and it will make you look like an amateur.

No matter how you approach creation process, most powerful ads require that each of these key elements are in place. Again: you can implement them in any order. When you’re ready to bring it all together, take a good, hard look at your finished draft. Go through it with a fine-tooth comb. Get a couple of outside opinions. Step away, for a little while, and then go back to it when you’ve cleared your mind. Make your changes, then give it a final once-over. Your final presentation should be error-free and perfect in every way!

To those that think advertising is an easy or slap-dash process: not true at all! The greatest ads are a perfect fusion of three very different modes of thought, expertly combined and presented in a powerfully compelling and persuasive package. Realize this, and you’re on way to creating magical ad copy; kind that sells!

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

Note: Global Color and Font changes don’t affect existing text. If you type your first article in Verdana and then make Arial your Global Font, guess what, your first article is still in Verdana. To save yourself a huge headache, set colors and fonts BEFORE you enter your content.

When entering article text, Control-A, Control-C and Control-V are your best friends.

God willing, you already know that these keys stand for Highlight All, Copy and Paste. This is quickest way to transfer an entire body of text from one file or program to another. Open original file containing your article, hit Control-A and Control-C keys in succession. Your text will be highlighted, and then stored in your computer’s memory. Now go to Paragraph 1 of your Contant Contact Article template, and do a Control-V. The entire article will flow into box. Use your down-arrow key to move down article body and insert html paragraph breaks between each paragraph. Use your Preview screen to make sure everything’s lining up.

"But wait!" you say. "Constant Contact’s article format shows one box per paragraph. That means they want me to copy each paragraph at a time into each box." Pah! Constant Contact doesn't care how you create your newsletter. They just want you to sign up for their software. If you really want to, you can copy in each paragraph at a time, but I wouldn't recommend it. Just fill in those paragraph breaks, and pain of creating a newsletter will be over before you know it.

Add images by uploading photos to your website and then pasting URL into Constant Contact format.

This is an arduous process, and you may not care enough to include pictures, but I like my newsletter to look jazzy, so I use them. You can search for royalty-free images on www.picturequest.com, or you can get photos from another source if you have one. Select images that pertain to your content. For example, I found a picture of a turtle to use with an article about Slow Days at Work. It’s up to you how much time you spend on aesthetics of your emailed newsletter, but I for one appreciate a quality presention so I would say, go all out!

Use Quicklinks as an opportunity for free advertising.

Once again, I recommend deviating from newsletter template. You can link to anything you want here; a selection of product you sell, writing or design samples of your website, or even website of a friend or business partner.

Don’t create a brand new newsletter campaign from scratch each time you want to mail your subscribers.

The “Copy Campaign” button is an incredibly handy tool that duplicates a newsletter you’ve already completed and sent. All you have to do is change name of campaign, and replace former articles, headlines and photos with new ones. So if you had some trouble getting your first newsletter in order, breathe easy. You’ll never have to worry about it again. Just take care to update all of information so you don’t accidently send dupes of articles you ran last month!

Constant Contact is a bit tricky at first, but with a little patience, you, too can have your own email newsletter up and running in no time.

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.