One way to make writing your own marketing materials easier to start creating a “swipe” file of things you like as you see them.
Often people talk about using a swipe file to save examples of copy they can “borrow” ideas or words from later. (Of course, there’s is an art to swiping copy effectively–especially for sales letters–you can’t just willy nilly cut and paste sentences and paragraphs you like together.)
But as a marketing savvy small business owner, you should include other items in your swipe file as well, such as…
- Layouts and graphics you like
- Clever promotions and marketing ideas
- Sales pages for competing products and services
- Ideas for new products and services
- Even research and stats related to what you sell
Sure, you can put these web pages in your browser’s bookmarks, but I’ve found using the Delicious social bookmarking site works even better because you can make notes, tag items and access them wherever you have an Internet connection.
Here’s how:
- If you don’t already, get a free account and install the Delicious button or toolbar in your browser. (Which usually involves just clicking a link and possibly restarting your browser afterward.)
- Then, just click on the icon to bookmark a site when you find something you want to save
- It’ll bring up a small page with where it’s already filled in the URL address and page title. Use the Notes text box to jot down information such as what you particularly liked about it, any performance information you may know, or what project you want to use it for later. (If you’ve ever tried to remember why you bookmarked a site later, you’ll realize just how handy this is!)
- In the Tags box, add keywords like “swipe,” “productidea,” “ebookproject” or whatever you might want to search for later. Company or product names may be helpful too. (Note, these should be space separated–no commas–so two or more words in a single phrase will be typed as all one word.)
- If you don’t want others to see what you’re saving for your swipe file (I usually don’t) then click to check the box next to “Mark as Private.” You’ll be the only one who will see it listed in your account.
- You can also email the page to, say, your web designer by clicking in the Send box and entering the appropriate information. Twitter’s available there too if you should want to tweet it.
And there you have it–an annotated swipe file full of marketing and copy ideas you can access anytime, any place!
One note: if you don’t expect the page you’re saving to stay up long (perhaps it’s a limited time offer) you may want to take a screenshot and save that on your computer as well. I use the free version of FireShot to do that.
