Hello and welcome to this special festive episode of the Hot Copy Podcast. Belinda and I have come back together to roast some chestnuts, neck some egg nog and talk all things copy. So if you’re ready to put up your stockings with us and wait for Father Christmas to slip down your copy chimney, this is the episode for you.…

Did you know we've been creating this podcast since 2015 -- never missing an episode? Well, not until 2020. 2020 has been the year of "the surge" for us both. In this special episode, we go through how we've handled working through the pandemic and what's happening with the Hot Copy podcast. Spoiler alert: we're mixing things up in 2021!…

Have you ever felt cooped up in a corporate office, staring outside at the trees, wishing you could leave the hustle and bustle of city life behind? Waking up mid-morning, taking a coffee onto the veranda, and staring out at wide-open pastures with birds chirping? While it’s a nice daydream to have, many of us stick it out and stay put. Others, lik…

Figuring out what makes you unique is a tough but essential part of marketing your copywriting services. What if you’ve written for every type of business? What if you’ve seen it all and written the copy? Can oodles of experience be your USP? The answer is yes and we’re excited to talk to a copywriter who celebrates not only her age and experience …

SaaS copy, is it a super sexy sassy form of copywriting? No! It’s Software as a Service copy. Huh? Well you know big brands like Stripe, ConvertKit, Slack - well yes they need copy. And a particular type of copy. When we write for SaaS companies we’re writing easy to understand words for potentially highly technical products. We need to write copy …

Being a guest on a podcast is a fantastic way to increase your reach and boost your visibility and skyrocket that authority. Right? You're a really important person who knows what they're talking about when you're been on a pod. But getting on a podcast is not quite as easy as just asking the podcast host. Today's guest is a podcast guesting specia…

Do you want to know a secret? Kate never actually wanted to be a copywriter. Her dream was to be a magazine writer. In fact, she was voted “Girl Most Likely To Write For Smash Hits” when she was at school. But there's more. She was also a feature editor for her uni newspaper interviewing Blur and Bob Monkhouse. She interned at several sexy music ma…

As copywriters, we get to hide behind our keyboards – writing the words that put our clients in the spotlight. And for many of us, it’s just where we want to be. But are we doing ourselves a disservice? Today we’re going to be talking to Mike Kim about building a personal brand and what it can mean for us as copywriters and business owners. His own…

Human-centered design is an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors and usability knowledge and techniques. The point? To create a better experienced for real-life people. On today’s podcast, we have a veritable whiz…

We are surrounded by art every day. And artists struggle with many of the challenges that us copywriters do… How to create a sense of perceived value around their work. How to market their work to audiences who will not only appreciate it but pay for it too. How to create a successful business without disrupting their creative process. That’s where…

Did you notice we missed an episode? You’ve probably got bigger things to worry about right now. Like the C-word. We’re talking about COVID19, of course. The truth is, we’ve been a bit scrambled too. Belinda is surviving on wine and 80s music. Lockdown with memberships, communities, courses, launches AND managing the kid’s online learning. It’s a b…

Some industries have a very straight-forward process to buy. I have a problem. I research alternatives. I choose one. I give them some money and I get something in return. All very simple. Other industries have a much more complex process. Very big (and expensive) projects often begin with a tendering process. Writing tenders for civil engineering …

How many times have you Googled a symptom? Hands up. We all have. The need to make complex medical information accessible and readable has flourished with the advent of Google and the prevalence of internet access. WHO NEEDS DOCTORS? We do. Of course. But as patients we’re more informed than ever and who writes the content we use to research the la…

The truth is most copywriters write solo, alone, with no one around but perhaps a farting dog, or keyboard obsessed cat. We need silence and solitude to rouse the creative muse. But can working with another creative brain be a good thing? In agency life we’re often paired with designers (shudders) to work on concepts as a team, but how about being …

Does cold emailing get you in a cold sweat? Is it something you’ve put off because you don’t want to be accused of being a spammer… Or face rejection, over and over again? Many of us will find anything to do aside from sending a cold pitch email. We create and share content. We go to networking events. We participate in forums and FB groups where o…

SEO is a topic we've often see discussed in copywriting Facebook groups and across the web. And most copywriters either seem scared of it, confused by it or just overwhelmed by how to package it and sell it to clients. The question most often asked? What does an SEO copywriter actually do? And can you even call yourself an online writer if you don’…

Christmas is a great time of the year to take a break from your business as your clients are on holidays. It’s also a great time to knuckle down and get some strategic work done… because your clients are all on holidays! In this episode, Kate and Belinda share their own plans for Christmas 2019 and how they’re setting themselves up for success in 2…

Today, Kate is talking to Glenn Fisher, from All Good Copy. He’s an Author, Copywriter, Podcast and Speaker. His book ‘The Art of The Click’ was shortlisted as the business book of the year in 2019. And his podcast - The All Good Copy Podcast - has had a string of awesome guests on it, including me. He has a dog called Pablo, a Crime podcast loving…

Ghostwriting is pretty much what we do as copywriters. We write the words that others get to claim as their own. But have you ever been asked to write something more substantial than a blog, web copy or brochure? Have you ever been asked to write to someone else’s BOOK? That’s the kind of ghostwriting we’re talking about today. What you need to kno…

Steve Follard is the host of the ‘Being Freelance’ Podcast and the ‘Doing it for the Kids’ Podcast. He’s also a video and audio freelancer. He’s talked to countless freelancers about the challenges of our strange rollercoaster life and he wanted to share the biggest lessons with the Hot Copy listeners. Just a note this episode was recorded as a Mas…

Have you missed us? If you’re a regular listener to the Hot Copy podcast, you may have noticed that we’ve been AWOL for a few weeks. In this episode, we explain what we’ve been up to, how it derailed our podding schedule and the lessons we’ve taken from the work we’ve been doing. We’re also announcing a VERY exciting new project in 2020. If you’re …

Lead magnets have been part of our marketing vernacular for years now. You offer a thing of value and people give you their email address (and permission to email them). But is there any money to be made from writing these? Absolutely! To share HOW copywriters to land some high paying ebook projects, we’re talking to Steve Slaunwhite. Tune in to le…

How do you get copywriting clients? It’s a question we get asked all the time. We even did an episode on it covering some of the most common lead gen tactics. But there are some platforms and techniques that might surprise you. Like Instagram. It’s a HUGE platform but many people dismiss it because it’s (gasp) images. And we deal with words In this…

When we start out as copywriters, obviously the aim is to be successful. But what does that even mean? In this episode, Belinda and Kate are honest about the upsides and downsides of being successful. Is it all it’s cracked up to be? Is the grass really greener or are there just different prickles? Oh, and this is our 100th episode! Tune in to lear…

As copywriters and business owners, we seek the warmth and security of financial consistency. Many of us believe if you can wriggle in with agency clients, we’ll have just that. But what are agencies all about? Are they something you should consider working harder to build relationships with? Are there any downfalls for working with agencies? And h…

Are you struggling to run your copywriting business around your family? Do you worry about too much screen time… or (gasp) future therapy bills because you’re meeting deadlines rather than taking your kids to the park? It’s easy to trowel guilt on ourselves when we see copywriters running 6 or 7 figure businesses. Or landing 5 figure projects. What…

We went to a copywriting conference in New York City in March 2019. It was Brooklyn but let’s not facts spoil the glamour. It was TCC IRL (The Copywriter Club In Real Life) and while we had a BLAST hanging out together – you would be surprised how many years it’s been since we hung out in real life – we also took the chance to pick the brains of th…

To swear (in copy) or not to swear (in copy) that is the question. As copywriters, we’re always having to change the way we write to adapt to the times. And these days everyone seems to love to eff and blind like a mofo, right? What once packed a punch, is now old school. And some things that seem edgy are not as great as they’re cracked up to be -…

Rob Marsh has been a little name and then a big name. He mastered the copywriting world, working with some of the biggest names and wearing many hats, founding communities, conferences, courses and more. He co hosts the second best copywriting podcast too!The golden question is of course “How did he do it? And how does he fit it all in?”Today, we’l…

Are you ready for a journey into the past? We're going back in time for a special flashback. In this episode, we're sharing 16 types of copywriting clients almost every copywriter will get to work with. Some are awesome and some… are not. Plus our tips on spotting them and how to work with them (so your copywriting project is smooth sailing). Tune …

Cold calls. Telemarketing. Infomercials. These words send a chilling shiver down my spine. In a world where folk are over the abundance of “buy my thing” being shouted at them, how do you avoid being lumped in with the salesy slime? How can we tailor our copy to make our users feel comfortable? Today, Cath Fowler joins me to uncover how you can use…

We’ve all read those long-form Facebook ads and wondered if they really work. Would you be surprised to learn that some of the highest converting Facebook ads are the length of some long-form landing pages? Upwards of two thousand words! And they work. Why do they work and how can you write them is the topic of today’s episode. Justin Blackman shar…

Time. It’s the most elusive asset you have and yet few copywriters seem to be able to control it. What do you do when you’ve run out of time? You can’t buy more, I’ve tried and now I think I’ve scared the assistant at the grocery store. How do we choose what’s worthy of investing our time in and what’s not? How do we avoid the time traps that are l…

Imagine peeking into the office of other copywriters… copywriters doing their thing day in, day out. And making a success of it. Comparisonitis can be our undoing but it can incredibly useful to hear how and why other copywriters make the choices they do. That’s when comparisonitis turns into inspiration. Today I’m talking to Chris Cooper. Copywrit…

It’s nearly Christmas and that statement either makes you CHEER or BOO. Christmas is a time when our clients usually shut up shop. We can start getting anxious as we don’t have work lined up… We can enjoy some much needed time off ourselves… Or we can use the time to work on our business. In this special Christmas episode of the Hot Copy, we’re dig…

Did you know that our brain responds differently to different messages? If you don’t want to write copy that puts readers on high alert, conversational copywriting is for you. In this episode, Belinda talks to Nick Usborne (copywriter with 40 years experience) about the shifts in copywriting and why conversational copywriting is actually right for …

In our last episode, we talked about your copywriting business being a sock in a box. If you missed it, we talked about the risk of charging a premium level price tag without delivering a premium level service. We shared some helpful tips but we’re going in deeper today. Namely, how do you offer a service that you can confidently charge more for? W…

We’ve all been there. We were taken in by the schmick advertising, the snazzy designer, the bells and whistles. We buy the thing. Then it’s delivery and we unwrap the layers of shiny wrapping, dig through a giant box of those puffy polystyrene doo dars and what do we find? A sock in a box? All that puff and prettiness for something so absolutely or…

Email is dead! No it isn’t! Email is the most powerful marketing tool on the planet! Which is it and how can copywriters use email marketing to boost their business? In this episode, Belinda chats to email marketing strategist Sarah Anderson. Sarah generously shares her tips on email marketing techniques (to write welcome, nurturing and conversion …

Language localisation can be a bit of a minefield. Between the US, the UK and good old Aussie-land we all technically speak the same language, right? So how hard could it be? Quite hard actually. Today, we’re covering the differences you need to know to take your copywriting global. Well, at least between Australia, the United Kingdom and the good …

If you’re a copywriter, you’ve probably heard of the term Copy deck before, but you might not be 100% sure what it is. In this episode, we answer ALL your copy deck questions and explain how this one document could transform your copywriting business. Tune in to learn: What is a copy deck Why you should use a copy deck What Kate and Belinda include…

Now we’re all copywriters here, right? So we should be able to write, right? But the truth is, even after years of slaving at the typewriter, we all could still learn a thing or two. If you’re feeling lost with your writing... Or your ransom notes are going unanswered... Or people are ignoring your emails... In this episode, you’re going to get som…

It’s been a long time coming but we’re finally tackling the topic of proofreading. This is right up the alley of many copywriters and editors, who offer proofreading as a value-adding service to their clients. Neither of us does this ... in fact, we don’t even do our own proofreading. Are you shocked? You needn’t be. Proofreading is a specific skil…

We all know as working copywriters that while we put our love, our heart, our soul, our everything into our clients' marketing, we sometimes neglect our own. So today we’re focusing in on exactly what you need to do as a copywriter to build your business. To boost it, to make people more aware of who you are, to build your authority, to build trust…

With D.P. Knudten Today Kate talks to D.P. Knudten, a copywriter from Wisconsin, about social media and how it can be a powerful booster for copywriters. Tune in to learn: What is ROTOMA (Return on Top of Mind Awareness), and why should copywriters care? What is Shoemaker's Children Syndrome? In our increasingly visual world, how can copywriters co…

We’ve talked a little about finding your niche as a copywriter. Medical, government, health, finance. Finding the right niche for your skills can help you earn more moolah as you become a go-to writer who gets the ins and outs of a particular industry. Today, we’re digging into writing for SaaS - software as a service - and eCommerce companies. Our…

Tactics to deal with newbie fears and oldbie exhaustion In this solo interview, Kate talks to Robert Gerrish, a well-known name in the Australian solopreneuer world. Robert, a friend and mentor to Kate for many years, was one of the guest speakers at her recent CopyCon18 event in Sydney. He was a huge hit, even more so because he left the audience …

Our last episode focused on beating the blank page and getting your first draft ready. You’ve hit send… but now what? How do you manage the revisions process (especially when it seems to derail everything) and get the client through to approval? If you weren’t nervous enough staring at a blank page, this stage of a copywriting project can have you …

Does the blank page ever mock you? That blinking cursor, flashing at your lack of ability to start this copywriting project… to write a killer headline or craft a first sentence that wows each and every reader…? You’re not alone. Once you land a job, starting the actual writing can feel like the biggest hurdle you’ll face but we’ve got your back. W…

As copywriters with our very own podcast, we’re often asked questions. Questions about copywriting. Questions about being a copywriter. Questions about managing our businesses and our family life. Questions about our dogs. So, every now and then we like to pull some out and answer them. That’s what today is all about. We’re answering YOUR questions…