One of the differences between copywriters and creative writers is that creative writers use fiction skills in their writing. Using the five senses in their writing is one of those fiction skills.

Don’t panic with the thought of using “fiction” skills. Using the five senses isn’t hard to do. Let’s try it.

For example, it’s fairly easy for a real estate agent to describe a home for sale by stating that it has hardwood floors, a winding staircase, and an impressive entry way.

But let’s add in the five senses:

Before you ever step foot in this turn-of-the-century home, you’ll realize you’ve found a true work of art.

Inside the entry way, the crystal chandelier lights up the newly refinished hardwood floors. You can almost envision Clark Gable crookedly grinning at Scarlett O’Hara as she glides up the winding staircase, the sounds of her girlish laughter and the swish of her green velvet gown echoing behind her.

The smells of the home are a mixture of old and new. Fresh paint and hardwood floor stain mix with the smells of antique furniture and old rooms.

As you walk up the winding staircase yourself, feeling the solid banister under your fingertips, you almost feel as if you’re taking a step back in time. Better yet, you’re going on an adventure.

* * *

We were able to add in sight, sound, smells, and touch, but not taste. We could have had Clark smoking a cigar.

You don’t have to add characters to your content to add in the five senses. They just  seemed to fit in this scenario.

Try using the five senses in your Web copy and you just might discover that your content is much more vivid and alive, bringing your potential customers into the content with you.

And that, my friends, is your goal.

Robin

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We’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about the types of content we can create and working with different industries on content that would work in those industries.

Obviously, if you provide content that your visitors are interested in (a hook), if you keep your site up to date with new, fresh, and valuable content on a regular basis, and if your site isn’t a train wreck from an optimization standpoint so that your pages will appear in the rankings, visitors are going to come back to your site again and again and again. They’ll bookmark your site and tell their associates. Link popularity will be built to your site and individual pages the natural way, without your working on an actual linking campaign.

The more content you create, the more opportunities you have for your content to show up in the search engine results under keyword phrases that are important to you.

Listen to me carefully. I’m not talking about junk content here. I’m talking about content that your visitors are interested in. I’m not talking about content for the search engines. The search engines will never be your customers. They don’t buy from you. Your customers buy from you. This content should be written for THEM.

Now, let’s talk about a different type of content: user-generated content.

User-generated content means just what it says: content generated or created by users to the site. This is content that YOU, as the Web site owner, don’t have to create. Think about it for a minute. If the users generate the content and get more involved with your site, don’t you imagine they’d want to link to your site?

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