Copywriting

DIY Branding ⑤

  • ✧ 7 min read ✦

    People who ☯︎ “do the work” ☯︎ when it comes to their branding reap the benefits (read: sales, traffic, generally being inspiring). Worst case? You don’t do it yourself, but you at least understand wtf your hired design help is talking about.

    Ok ⏤ Let’s do this ✓

  • So: who even are you?

    Help people understand who tf you are with great copy, no writer skills necessary ✓ Yep, branding goes beyond aesthetics. Let’s sort the basics.

  • Onward! ↓

① Get inspired: read and listen closer

It’s pretty simple ⏤ take notice of copy you actually read. We’re inundated with it all day, so when something lights up your brain or goodness, even makes you visibly emote (!) then you know you’re onto something.

Be sure to take a screenshot or copy and paste it to a note. Then after a few weeks, see if you can find any common threads.

Two of my faves: Seed.com → & Gotoskincare.com →

② Finding your tone of voice

Look, it can take a little bit. Especially if you’re like I was a few years ago, and had never even considered that I might be able to write. It was always something I wrote off and said I wasn’t good at.

Like most things 〰 you can cultivate the skills and use a few handy tricks. For me, it was recording voice memos to explain something I was about to write a product description for.

Literally hearing my own voice and frankly, how much goddamn ❤︎ slang ❤︎ I used was a dead giveaway. I was sounding too authoritative and there no swears or any classic Australian lingo in sight.

With 60% of my clients being in the USA and knowing full well my Aussie-ness is why they warm to me, why was I hiding it?

So I started making changes and over time with practice, I feel like I’m where I wanted to get to ☻

③ Simple tools to learn the art

Some of my favourite tools to use so far have been these:

🅰 Holisticism’s IWA Course → Intake may only be twice a year, but it’s worth the wait. It’s actually geared towards intuitive business owners, however I’ve found the tools to understand my clients and my own ‘who, what, why, how, what’ invaluable. If you’re not opposed to woo-woo speak, Michelle is an incredible teacher.

🅱 Sophia Amouruso’s Business Class → Another awesome teacher who I know my fellow millennials will dig. It covers so much and you’ll set your business up for success if you follow it through. Also, who can resist the aesthetic and airline puns? (not me)


🅲 Hemingway App → is so simple ⏤ I just throw my text in there and use the visual guide to keep tweaking to get a better score. As someone whose never been that confident with their writing and grammar skills, this one got me good.

④ Templates I love

I’m going to keep this short and sweet ☻ I have a major ❤︎ crush on Smack Bang Designs → and basically think the sun shines out of their behind. If you’re gonna spend $200 on this part, then do yourself a favour and use their Brand Plan bundle →. It’s been personally wonderful for my biz and all my clients who I’ve sent to buy it.

If you invest the time in working through it all, you’re going to seriously set your business up for success, but also be more 〰 confident 〰 and sure of your brand.

A decent, free ✧ version I found recently that would help to get the wheels turning is also Sophia Amoruso’s ‘Crafting the Perfect Bio’ workbook →.

  • ⑤ Translating it into web copy:

    It’s a little bit of a chicken-egg situation.

    Some people like to see the website layout and imagine where the copy will go, so they can write words that will fit.

    However, I feel that your best path is to have a document somewhere with ✹ all your best sentences ✹ collated, then you can drop them into the spots where it’ll work best.

  • Don’t let design get in the way of your copy.

    From there, on any Shopify or Squarespace site, you can move sections up and down so the most 〰 important 〰 messages appear first.

    This feels like a good point to remind you that both websites and your copy tend to be a living, breathing, constantly evolving thing.

  • Perfect is the enemy of done, so start writing and you can keep improving it as you get brainwaves. That’s totally fine!

    Worst case? ☞ You start on all this stuff and you have some ✧ killer ✧ references for your copywriter. They’ll be over the moon and you’ll end up with a far better end result, I guarantee it.

You did it!

That's the end of the mini course. The last thing I'd like to do is highkey BEG you to ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* send me what you come up with *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ Don't be shy, make my day!

S.O.S: Help me, Katie

If you’re feeling out of your depth when it comes to branding, your website, or bringing it all together, my 1:1 options may help:

See 1:1 Options →