The Conversational Blog

In these posts we explore conversational writing as
a powerful way to communicate and sell online.

Tell people your product is “not that good”. And sell more.

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Feigang Fei is the owner of a Chinese restaurant called Aunt Dai
Photo from the restaurant’s blog and credited to Global News TV.

This is a great story, from my hometown of Montreal.

Feigang Fei is the owner of a Chinese restaurant called Aunt Dai. It has all the usual dishes you’d expect… from Imperial Rolls, to Orange Beef, and General Tao Chicken.

Going by the choices on the menu, there’s nothing particularly special about either the restaurant or its menu.

What is different is that when you open the menu, you’ll find not only the names, pictures and prices of the dishes, but also some thoughts from Feigang Fei.

Here is what he says about their Orange Beef…

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Being conversational is an easy way to get started as a copywriter.

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Women ain conversation

People have different takes on what it means to be a “copywriter”.

Back when I started, long before the web came along, the definition was pretty simple.

We were the writers who wrote print ads, TV commercials, radio spots, billboards, and point-of-sale materials.

That was pretty much it.

In the online world, things are a little more complicated.

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Respect for your readers lies at the heart of conversational writing.

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Two people having a respectful conversation.

I hate reading articles and posts written by experts.

Well… maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

But I do hate reading articles where it feels like the writer is looking down his nose at me.

Writers like that remind me of the kind of teacher who barely even acknowledges students in his classroom. He just talks and instructs… expecting his students to remain quiet, and soak up his infinite wisdom.

We’re exposed to this kind of writing all the time.

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In times of crisis, being conversational is more important than ever.

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A group of business people in conversation

I don’t imagine there’s a company on the planet that had a contingency plan for the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nobody was fully prepared. No government. No business.

We were all caught by surprise.

This is uncharted territory.

I’ve been trying to figure this out for my own business.

And one of the tasks I set myself was to watch what’s going on in the world of marketing and promotion.

In particular, I’ve been watching the kind of messaging companies have been putting out.

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How writing for chatbots has made me a better conversational copywriter.

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Row of people on their smartphones

Over the last two or three weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time working on chatbots.

I’ve co-founded a chatbot agency, and I’ve written a number of chatbot scripts.

The more time I spend writing these scripts, the more I see shifts in how I write conversational copy for longer-form channels, like email and web pages.

It’s like the lessons I learn from writing for bots are flowing into everything else I do.

Here are three of the ways chatbot copywriting is shifting the way I write.

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