Keynote presentation for Procopywriter network conference, Oct 2017. Includes user journeys, reading psychology and the law in making websites unreadable.

1. contentdesign.london

2. Publishing model 1
1. CEO has fabulous idea
2. hire copywriter
3. someone practically rewrites it
4. no-one is massively happy

3. Publishing model 2
1. someone writes
2. legal ‘signs it off’ (aka destroys it)
3. no-one is happy

4. Government publishing model
1. permission (denied)
2. learnt helplessness
3. stop asking

5. How to make friends
and influence people

6. Set the main:
• problem
• task
• goal

9. Rule 1
Be more specific than you
are comfortable with

10. The copywriter’s
most useful tactic:

11. The copywriter’s
most useful tactic:
HIDE

13. www.google.com/
trends/explore

16. Find your audience’s
mental models

17. Selfies

19. Take your client on a journey

21. Rule 2:
Get your audience
to fight for you

22. Conversations
with data

23. @escmum

24. Reading
psychology

26. Your memory works on:
• motivation
• length of time in
working memory
• meaning

27. Context is important
Coat vs cove
Cat > dog
Cat > soap

28. It was a really sunny Saturday.
Sam was having a great time on
the beach. It took ages to find the
pump and her friends were
already on their inflatables in the
water. Sam couldn’t believe how
long it was taking to inflate the
large carrot. She needed an ice
cream badly.

29. Words are easily skipped if they
are easy to process. This
happens when they are:
• short
• high frequency
• and/or predictable

30. “Eye movements are affected by
the need to make a grammatical
and legitimate metrical
structure.”

31. Rule 3
Humans are not special

32. .www.alltrials.net/news/judgment-in-richmond-v-
hra-judicial-review/

33. www.alltrials.net/news/judgment-in-richmond-v-
hra-judicial-review/

34. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1000&context=christopher_trudeau

35. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1000&context=christopher_trudeau

36. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1000&context=christopher_trudeau

37. Rule 4
Do you want people to
read or understand?

38. Measure what
too much content
is costing you

39. The quality needle
gets lost in
the haystack of noise

41. Rule 5
What you don’t publish
is as important
as what you do publish

42. Job and user stories: contentdesign.london/content-
design/user-stories-and-job-stories/
Everything: www.contentdesign.london/book
Legal study: http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1000&context=christopher_trudeau
Problem statments: https://medium.com/leading-service-
design/how-to-write-a-problem-statement-50e2c87810fe
Legal judgement: www.alltrials.net/news/judgment-in-
richmond-v-hra-judicial-review/

43. Questions?
10% discount on 2-day content course:
contentdesign.london/content-design-2-day-course/
Code: PCN