Dying is easy. Copy is hard.

(With sincere apologies to all you comedians out there.)

There is something strange that happens when you go to write about yourself: you can't.

Few people can write about themselves or their own business in a way that their customers want. First of all, it's hard to talk about yourself (with several exceptions, and we all know them.) Second, it's not really about you. It's about your customer. So you have to write in such a way that you aren't really talking about yourself at all.

It happens more often than not that our clients write their own copy and then hand it over to Lauren with the plea to make it better. And she does. Needless to say, writing this site was the hardest thing she's done yet. Well, maybe not the actual hardest thing she's ever done, considering she does have a daughter.

There are entire marketing degress for writing copy and a whole shelf at the bookstore to write copy for the web. But here are a couple of Lauren's evergreen copywriting rules:

1. No one reads.
It's true. And the fact that you're reading this simply proves the next point.

2. Instead, they scan.
Eyeballs jump over web copy and look for things to grab onto. Big chunky paragraphs offer no eyeholds, as it were. So break it up. Use short sentences and subheads.

3. Attention. Interest. Desire. Action.
It's the only "tried and true" AIDA rule of copywriting.

4. Don't give away the store.
Your web site is not a library of all your wisdom. Use it as a marketing tool to achieve the four steps above.

Copy samples are not easy to display, but one project Lauren has been involved with for some time is writing for the ibm.com homepage. This entails coming up with engaging, accurate and sometimes entertaining headlines to entice users to click and read further content on the site.

Here are some examples.

 Audio Clips 

 Internet