Taglines are often the most important piece of copy most companies write. They’re often the most difficult, as well. Taglines have to be both short and sweet, clearly and succinctly communicating your brand statement. Just because taglines are only a few words long, doesn’t mean they don’t require lots of work.
If you want to make the work worth the time, and want to get the most out of your tagline, here are some of my tips.
1. Do your prep work. To me, taglines are a shortened version of your about page. To write one effectively I start with the page, narrow it down to a paragraph, then to a sentence, and eventually to a carefully-crafted tagline. Trying to go right to the last step, without doing the work to uncover the ideas your tagline has to convey, will only get you right back to where you started.
2. Write out your options. Sometimes, you can catch lightning in a bottle, and come up with the right tagline on the first try. More times than not, however, it will take many options and much revising. I advise you start with 5-10 different ideas, picking out pieces you like of each, and working your way toward a final version over 2-3 edits. Plus, you never know what will happen when you start jotting ideas down onto paper… sometimes lightning strikes when you least expect.
3. Speak your options out loud. To me, the effectiveness of a tagline is as much a matter of sound, flow and feel as it is of meaning. I’m not suggesting you abandon ideas, here, or slack in picking the words that work best for your brand. I’m just saying that you also have to pay attention to how those words sound. Read your tagline options out loud, selecting parts you like by how they resonate with you.
4. Find a fun voice. I think there are a lot of bad taglines out there. Almost all of them are single sentences, blandly rehashing a value statement. Like: “Example Dentistry: Let us help you find your best smile.” Instead of this approach, I recommend finding some more exciting way to make the same point. My favorite is adding a period into the middle of a tagline (”Your Smile. Improved”), but each situation and company calls for a slightly different tool.
And lastly, be prepared to let your tagline go. As I’ve hoped I communicated here, taglines are serious business. They take effort to get right, and can help determine the success of a company in their own way. However, I’d also like to caution you against trying too hard creating your tagline. Do your best, put in the effort, strive for perfection, then stop with a final product before you’ve gone too far (and broken the flow that’s so necessary). Easy enough.
YOUR INPUT: Anything you think I’ve gotten wrong here, or that you discovered just by reading this post? Does anyone think I’m overstating the importance of taglines?
Also — I’ve just added tagline writing to my services page, with a set process and set price. I’m not yet sure how it’ll work… but I’m curious what your thoughts are. Click here to check it out.
Social Media offers many benefits to many different businesses. It can help you build your reputation, attract potential customers, and communicate with your clients. Smart businesspeople everywhere are piling onto networks like Facebook and Twitter, trying to get their piece of the pie, and realize these benefits; in an increasingly-crowded and noisy market, there are a lot of people trying to find their way. Guiding them to do it — the art of social media consulting — is fast becoming a growth market.
Like any growth market though, social media consulting is attracting its share of idiots. They’re easy to spot, if you look at the title. Many are self-proclaimed experts, gurus, or mavens. However, in their ignorance, by self-proclaiming such a title, these “consultants” are giving themselves away. The fact is that proper social media marketing, if you can call it that, hinges on interaction. The biggest benefit businesses will get is from participating in two-way conversations with their customers. It’s the gradual back-and-forth that will grow your brand over time, as well as improve its visibility. Andrew Hyde wrote a decent post about this the other day.
This being the case, any expert or guru title is oxymoronic. It’s like talking about how great you are at listening. It’s like going to a party, climbing up on the couch, and announcing that you’re the best qualified person in the room to have a conversation. And also that everyone else is inferior at the act, because they don’t hold the right credentials or skills. Pretty ridiculous. But more times than even I expect, this very approach is used.
Consultants using this approach may have short term success, but their lack of focus on interaction will stunt any real benefits from their efforts. Over time, their clients will become wise to the trickery, and seek out someone taking a more sustainable approach. Consultants who get it, and who avoid the social media guru complex, will enjoy better long-term success, better serve their clients, and better contribute to the growing social media landscape many of us treasure.
If you’re looking to get into social media consulting, please avoid the guru complex. If you’re looking for someone to help with social media, do your due diligence, ask around, and select someone who does it right. It’s worth it.
This is part of the #getcreative series of blog posts… a collection of thoughts by different professionals (on different blogs), centered around the topic of creativity. You can see a list of other #getcreative posts at the end of this one, or see the whole conversation here. If you’d like to join in, just write a post, tag it with #getcreative, and let people know about it on twitter.
I’m a fulltime professional copywriter. By trade, I help companies clearly communicate who they are, and what they do. I help companies build their brand, better reach their customers, and ultimately build a community around their products/services. I help them write better stuff, and be better companies.
Sitting down to write about creativity as it relates to my job, I had a lot of opportunities. I could have written about nearly any aspect of writing, from ideas to composition, even to grammar and revision. However, I’ve chosen to write about the creative process. It seems important because that’s where everything starts. Done well, the creative process lays the foundation for compelling and effective copy. Done poorly, it merely sets the writer up for frustration and disappointment.
I start each copywriting project with a planning/strategy session; this is where my creative process takes place. I ask questions to myself out loud, as well as parce ideas out longfrom with pen and paper. The message and tone of each piece reveals itself as I think about: What’s the idea here? Why is this cool, and Why does this make sense? How is this going to be read and How can I write it better? I don’t stop the process until I’m hit with such clarity, and infused with such excitement, that I can’t help rush to the computer to jot down ideas.
As you can imagine, once I do start writing I have a clear vision of where I’m going. All I have to do then is fit the right words into the right place, and make them occur at the right time. That’s as simple as figuring out a puzzle, and the end product not only reflects a tidy finish, but the power that only clarity of ideas can convey. I know what I want to say, and because I’ve already run it through my internal filters, I don’t mind saying it. Directly. And simply.
It’s like building your own house. As you put the layers on top of each other — foundation to frame, frame to finish — you have knowledge of what each one is designed to do in the context of the whole. You get how it’s constructed, you understand what’s required as you add to it, and you can easily fix any errors or leaks you encounter on the way. Once you’re done, you feel ownership over the final product, and appreciation for the exterior look as it represents the total effort. It’s the best you can possibly do, and reflects your power in its simplicity.
Writing is no different. If you take the time and effort to go through a proper creative process, you’ll end up with the most powerful, most clear, and best final product. It’s not magic, and there’s no fairy to grant you creative wisdom. Just work, effort, and dedication to seek depth and harmony in each sentence.
That’s how I #getcreative. You?
Other posts in the #getcreative series:
