Sources of Inspiration for Business Writing

Sources for Business Writing

If you write sales pages, send out promotional emails, or do social media marketing, you probably struggle at times with inspiration. You may feel stuck coming up with an original approach for your campaign. Writer's block sets in. Fortunately, the internet is full of resources that can provide you with ideas. Most of these are free.

Here are great places to go when you need to inspire you for your business and content writing needs.

TV Commercials

 It's sometimes helpful to draw inspiration from other types of advertising. Take notice of the words, imagery, and messages of TV commercials and think of ways to translate these into a form that's right for emails, social media, sales pages, or other types of content websites. Better yet, attend a poetry reading. This helps you think of ways to use language in creative and Lunexpected ways.

TED Talks

 There are thousands of fascinating topics on TED, many of which are related to business. Pay attention especially to the speakers' opening statements. How do they engage the audience right from the start? You need to do this with content and copywriting in a similar way. Podcasts - If you listen to business and marketing podcasts, you'll find that much of the advice is relevant to creating content and copywriting. You may even find some podcasts on business writing.

Movie Trailers

 A movie trailer only has a few seconds to get viewers fascinated about the movie. You have a similar challenge when it comes to creating brief content such as tweets, Facebook posts, headlines, and email subject lines.

Fake News and Satire Websites

 While fake news is Currently controversial, sometimes it's funny and clever. Satire sites such as The Onion have some talented writers. Check out fake news and satire sites such as The Onion, The Oatmeal and others for ideas on using humor in your emails. Vocabulary Builder - The more words you know, the more creative your emails you can write. You can consult a website or thesaurus or install a vocabulary builder app to your phone.

Great Copywriting Books

 You can learn a lot from top copywriters, even ones who were famous before email existed. Today's copywriters are brilliant as well. Check out some classic and modern books on copywriting for ideas and inspiration.  Read books or take a class in NLP for insights on human behavior.

Image Sites

 Pay attention to creative images and memes making the rounds on sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, and elsewhere. In particular, look for clever phrases that accompany images.

Writing Courses

 Email marketing is, after all, a form of writing. Today, there are many free and low-cost online writing courses to help you improve your skills. You can also find courses at your local community college. Improve Your Storytelling Skills - Writing great email copy is all about telling stories. Right now, the Khan Academy has a free course on this topic called The Art of Storytelling.

Content Marketing Institute

 One of the best resources for all-around advice on content marketing, which includes email marketing, is the Content Marketing Institute. There are trends, articles, podcasts, courses, and more. Stand-up Comics, humor is an effective technique to engage your email subscribers. Stand-up comedy is often witty, original, and spontaneous. Watch live stand-up comedy or check out some videos on YouTube or Netflix.