The best time to build expertise in any area of digital marketing isn’t necessarily at the very beginning.
For example, sites like MySpace were heralding the birth of social media back in the early 2000s.
But it wasn’t until 2006 or so that the big players like Twitter and Facebook took hold.
And many of the big names in social media marketing didn’t get established until about 2009 or 2010.
But after that… well, everyone else who wanted a slice of that market had the play catch-up.
And like I say, playing catch-up sucks. It’s sucks because you’ll always be trying to make yourself heard in a market where the voices of the earlier adopters dominate.
It’s the same story with conversational copywriting right now.
And this is something that has taken a long time coming to the boil.
It was way back in 2001 that the authors of the book, Cluetrain Manifesto, wrote, “Markets are Conversations”.
Author Joseph Jaffe wrote his book, Join the Conversation, back in 2007.
Both books were spot on in identifying that the web is a social and conversational space. But they were too early in the game to truly influence marketers.
So why now? Why has conversational copywriting suddenly come of age?
Why is 2018 the year to raise your hand as a conversational copywriter? Why this year, rather than a few years ago?
As with all change, it has taken time.
But a whole bunch of factors has been slowly moving us towards this point.
Here are some influences that have been in play for several years…
- The web is and always has been a conversational place.
- Social media, by definition, is both social and conversational.
- The mobile phone, now the dominant platform for consuming digital media, is a device designed with conversation in mind.
And here are some influences that have been making their mark more recently…
- Traditional sales trainers are now teaching “conversational selling”.
- Psychologists are publishing work on the power of “conversational intelligence”.
- Conversational Chatbots are becoming the hot new thing in ecommerce.
- And… go to any digital marketing conference this year and count the number of times each speaker uses the word “conversational”. It’s a lot.
In short, after years of incubation, the time to hang out your shingle as a conversational copywriter is NOW.
I first started using the phrase conversation copywriting two or three years ago. But honestly, it was still too early.
But when I talk about it now, I get a lot of eager listeners.
Marketers love the conversational approach because it’s such a perfect fit for social media, mobile marketing, chatbot development… and pretty much everything else that digital marketers are working on right now.
All this mean YOU, as a copywriter or small business owner, have an opportunity to jump in and profit from this demand for conversational copywriting.
Do that and you can establish yourself as an early adopter and true expert. You can become one of the few who will dominate this space.
As for everyone else, those who sit back and watch from the sidelines, they’ll have to play catch-up later.
And yes, playing catch-up really does suck.
Conversational Copywriting is the future of selling online. You can build your expertise now, or try catching up later. Find out about the course here…
