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.
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.
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.
I’m not saying those are the only choices.
But these are the choices I face. Pretty much.
An event like the spread of Covid-19 has the capacity to beat me into a major depression.
Which is why, when bad things happen, I look for ways to step up and get creative.
Preferably at speed.
Think of yourself as a performer.
You’re performing your craft… writing for yourself or for a client.
You’re a virtuoso with words.
And in common with every other performer, you need to rehearse your work.
Think about it…
“Oh my goodness, the web changed everything!”
“Oh wow, social media changed everything!”
“Yikes, text messaging changed everything!”
All true.
But it’s not just new services that change everything. It’s not just about the software.
It’s also about the devices we use.