A couple of weeks back I attended a communications workshop run by John Bates. He’s very American. It was probably the best 5 hours I’ve spent in my entire professional career as a writer. I really wasn’t expecting it to be quite so revelatory, packed full of valid advice for both work and home life.
The downside is that I had to then rewrite everything I’d been working on, as it became apparent that it simply wasn’t good enough. The first fruits of that training can be seen in today’s HitFilm 3 Pro announcement, which I wrote over on the HitFilm.com blog.
In its published state the article does a far better job of explaining and selling the product than the pre-Bates draft. All the same information was there in that earlier version but the copy didn’t bring it to life in the way I wanted.
The blog post itself is just a taster of what’s to come. Once the new HitFilm 3 Pro website hits at the end of November I’ll be particularly excited as it contains copy of which I’m really, genuinely quite proud. I’ve been writing this stuff for many years and I feel like I’ve injected some real freshness into it this time around.
The real test will be in how the readers and customers respond, of course – and there’s always improvements to be made. But I now have much more strategy and purpose in my communications and copywriting. If you get a chance to attend a John Bates training session, don’t hesitate. It’s time and money very, very well spent.
0 Comments
Ben Norris (@Norro21) · October 28, 2014 at 12:32 am
I literally didn’t read it this morning because the massive fontsize made it such hard work recently. I don’t know if you guys fixed that or if its just because I am using a different monitor now but its better.
I’m intrigued at what trickery you’ve learnt to employ. If I had to guess maybe it is more feely? Hard to tell what is new although it is pretty good, I’ll give you that.
Henry Gill · December 17, 2014 at 11:53 pm
I must say Simon I did immediately notice a difference in how that blog post was written in comparison to others over the last few years – It really was brill at selling the new software!