Ben Pearce (00:01.72)
Hey folks and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. It's another cracking topic today and we have a cracking guest to help us through it. We are talking about how to write well, disgustingly well. We all have to write mails, posts, papers, guides. So how do we make it jump off the page and really engage our readers? Well.
To help us, our guest today has been an actress, a screenwriter and is now a copywriter and copy consultant. So please welcome to the podcast Emma Loveday. Emma, it is wonderful to have you with us.
Emma Loveday (00:47.434)
Hi Ben, it's my pleasure, I'm so excited to be here.
Ben Pearce (00:51.374)
Well, thank you for joining us. It's been a busy time for you. You've just moved house. So you're literally fresh from the removal van and it's so kind of you to have joined us and given us your time.
Emma Loveday (01:06.25)
If I never see another removal van, it'll be too soon or a box. my gosh. Do you want to come round and help me unpack? It might take a few months.
Ben Pearce (01:12.398)
You
Yeah.
Well, as I said, it's lovely to have you with us. Now, for all of those that don't know you, could you tell us a bit about yourself, a bit about your background?
Emma Loveday (01:26.994)
Yeah, sure. So, like, you just said, I'm a story led sales copywriter. So for solopreneurs, service providers, founder led brands where I say that.
voice is intimately tied to their bottom line, I help them sell their wonderful services with disgustingly good copy. So as I said, my background is actually in acting. I'm a trained actress, so I didn't go to business school or marketing school or anything snazzy like that. My whole sort of storytelling.
moving people to action and getting the response that you want and bringing our words to life. It's really mostly from that active background. But beyond that, you know, I used to sell jewellery. I was really good at selling diamonds. I can sell a diamond like no one's business. I tell you that for nothing. And it's sort of evolved and developed from there. you know, the pandemic struck and all of that jazz.
and I kind of came into... I didn't... isn't that mad? I didn't even know copywriting was a thing. Isn't that mental? You know? And I thought, my gosh! I have all of these transferable skills that everyone told me would be useless and why are you going... doing acting degree? Like you're... you're, you know, destined for a life on benefit.
Ben Pearce (02:38.743)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (02:54.892)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Emma Loveday (02:55.752)
and all of that lovely stuff. And it turns out there's just so much transfer, so many transferable skills. So apply that now to everything I do. A big part of it is bringing personality and life into the words, especially when you're on social media and you're trying to get the attention that you want. But for me, it does go further than that. It's, you'll get noticed, you know, loved, remembered.
you know, not noticed and then quickly forgotten, they're quite two quite different things and then get chosen, get chosen for the service that you sell.
Ben Pearce (03:30.09)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (03:33.388)
Yeah. Yeah. And it's really interesting because you started off saying, you know, this is about driving action and how you get the response.
from people that you want to get. And that is so important, and I talk about that a lot, you know, in our tech world, that's so important because so often we think just about the logic, the logical argument, the rational argument, but it's not just that that drives action, it's that combined with a response from people, from an emotional connection from people, and that can come through with writing so powerfully.
Emma Loveday (04:06.546)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think we get, we get very caught up, know, you know, if you, if you do any sort of, quote unquote basic training in, in sales and marketing and you know, they'll ha they'll go hard on what's the tangible result. What's the logical, you know, which is important. I'm not saying to forget about that, but they, but there's less focus on how, well, how do they feel? How do they feel now in that situation? How do they want to feel like, how can you create that?
Ben Pearce (04:25.558)
Yep. Yep.
Emma Loveday (04:36.532)
feeling. How do you connect so that you're that relatable person that they believe and trust in to lead them to that result? You know it's I mean it's been said time and time again you know we we it's it's it's emotion then logic yeah you know so logic seals the deal okay I feel like this is good for me I feel like they're talking to me I feel like they get it and I've got all this proof and justification that they'll get me there.
Ben Pearce (04:43.128)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (04:54.316)
Yeah, yeah.
Emma Loveday (05:06.437)
how it works.
Ben Pearce (05:06.486)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just that justification's not enough. Well. Yeah.
Emma Loveday (05:12.336)
it's just empty, yeah, it's quite empty. Yeah, it really is. It's just stats and figures on a page, isn't it?
Ben Pearce (05:18.43)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I know you're going to give us some tips, some really practical things, because I know people listening to this podcast love to get something that they can take away and do differently after they've listened to an episode. But before we get that, think...
Should we just double down a little bit on, you know, why is this writing, you know, why is it important? And maybe we'll contrast that, because AI is starting to become a real writing tool as well. We can maybe talk about that later as well. But why is the ability to write well, why is that important?
Emma Loveday (05:54.92)
I mean it's communication at the end of the day. mean you can look at it, know, whichever way you cut it, it's communicating and connecting with another person.
again from my standpoint as a sales copywriter to evoke the response that you want right but it's like you said in the intro especially if i'm thinking of my clients who are running online businesses there's almost nothing that doesn't require some form of copy some form of writing you're talking posts emails a video script a speech script if you're given a pitch you're probably going to write that first website sales pages blog
white paper it goes on and on and on there's not really an element of business there's so much writing in business it's actually unreal when people stop and think about it right so from that standpoint it's just a necessary skill especially if you can't hire someone
and outsource that work, then it's a necessary skill you need to have because ultimately, how are you going to spread your message? How are you going to make it land so people notice and care and pay attention and again, buy in to you and what you have to say? It's still bizarrely very...
underappreciated funny enough as a skill string. So then people will sit there and no judgment because we've all been there, myself included, we might sit there and think like why am I not getting the traction that I feel like I deserve? Which you do deserve, you undoubtedly deserve it. I'm sure you've got all of the experience and results behind you to prove that you deserve it. But it's because the writing, the message isn't landing and it's because there's a gap in
Emma Loveday (07:46.78)
and knowledge and life and personality and persuasion and all of that good stuff in the written word that you're trying to use to get people to care as much as you do about what you have to say.
Ben Pearce (07:59.043)
Yeah, okay, okay. And not only that, but just from my experience, so often, so if I move this a little bit maybe to the corporate world as well, landing a message with clarity, landing a message that helps drive action, that is so important. And sometimes things can be really...
meandering, difficult to consume, hard to work out what the action is at the end of it and so there was something about that if you can write with clarity as well that that just really drives action from people.
Emma Loveday (08:34.533)
Mmm.
Emma Loveday (08:38.154)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's that muddied message.
right? It's that muddied message and it's that whole thing that you'll see online about having one idea, one thought, one action, the rule of one with any piece that goes out there and you know I am I am a big fan of like the story led sale so I am a big fan of making it feel like a scene from a movie or a scene from a play you know that you can really easily plop yourself into and imagine yourself in it but ultimately I will always
start and this is super helpful actually I'll always start knowing what that one idea is what that one message is what that one lesson might be and what the one thing is that I want them to do at the end of it you know there's never multiple ideas even if I surround it within this lovely story because otherwise they don't know what they're supposed to take from it your message is weakened because you've got multiple messages
going on so you weaken the message by muddying it with multiple messages. So sometimes it can be really helpful to start with what I would call like a skeleton script and it's literally your bullet point of like the through line from start to finish and it might be just like five bullet points that just take you from this step to this to the final point so that once you beef it up and build it out you know you have stuck to that one idea.
Ben Pearce (10:13.42)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you're starting to give us some tips there already. So should we start to dig into it? So what tips would you have for everybody out in listener land on how to really write well?
Emma Loveday (10:28.886)
I mean it's a big question isn't it? You know it's a massive question. How much time you got Ben? I do like to start from the standpoint because personality...
Ben Pearce (10:35.918)
Yeah, four and a half days.
Emma Loveday (10:45.85)
is a big part of what I help clients do. I do like to start from that and it's interesting we had a little convo before the call about this so I think we could probably expand on it about a second but especially if you're in corporate and maybe you're writing on social media. The self-censorship is real. Like people find it so hard to break out of corporate speech, professional lingo, heavy jar.
very much like that that school English school you know English class in school of how to write a lovely articulate sentence that's grammatically correct and all of those things and it just loses
the essence of the person for a start and just generally tends to just lack punch it's just it's generally not interesting to read so but it doesn't mean the idea is bad it's sort of like the it's the approach right so i like to say it's a mixture of these two things write it rude write it honest right we were talking about this before the call i don't mean rude as in effing and jeffing
Ben Pearce (11:54.318)
Okay, yeah.
Ben Pearce (12:01.174)
Okay? Okay? Okay?
Emma Loveday (12:03.654)
Evan and Jeff in, you know, unless that's how you'd like to write it. But what I'm just trying to get to is starting off by writing the most...
Ben Pearce (12:09.04)
You
Emma Loveday (12:15.25)
honest version of what you have to say the way you want to say it. It's not in the mindset that it's not going to go out to the world, you know, it's for you, almost like a Dear Diary entry. And if you re if how would you really want to express this message or say what you have to share? What would it look like if you were texting it to a mate on WhatsApp or something? What might that look like that?
so that you can then look at it and be like, okay, I can't send it like this because I have a certain clientele it's going to, right?
So now I can edit it to a point where it will land and fit with that clientele. They'll receive it well, but I haven't taken out the essence of me and what makes me like an individual with thoughts and opinions and a voice. So that's kind of, that's one of my favourite things to say to people. What if you just wrote it rude? What if it was just...
Ben Pearce (13:07.392)
Yeah, yeah,
Emma Loveday (13:20.69)
painstakingly honest and it came genuinely from the heart what you wanted to say how you wanted to say it it's not going to go out that way but what would that look like because i bet it would be closer to how you'd actually want to convey that message than those
Ben Pearce (13:29.068)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (13:36.504)
Yeah.
Emma Loveday (13:38.48)
awful sort of I am pleased to announce that we as you know just kind of corporate non-standard just just totally ignorable copy let's be honest
Ben Pearce (13:50.976)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's really interesting. Of course, do that not actually in the tool you're going to post it on or in the email with the person already typed out in the address bar. I can imagine. But so that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just write it, write it rude, write it honest, write, write there.
Emma Loveday (14:03.686)
Yeah! my god, did I just press send? Recall, recall! Yeah, do it in a Google doc!
Ben Pearce (14:18.818)
And I think I've sort of sometimes done that, particularly if I think about, and I've got mails in my mind at the moment, as opposed to posts, which I spend a lot of time writing stuff that goes out on the web. But mails, I just write what I want. I'm talking to somebody, I need this, this, this. And then I have to go through my softening phase. Because if I just sent that mail, they're just gonna be like, he's a bit direct. Whereas if I go in and then soften it around the edges,
Emma Loveday (14:36.778)
Mmm.
Emma Loveday (14:42.057)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (14:45.858)
then it feels like a more engaging male. It's going back to that part that you were talking about. How do you want them to feel? Do you want them to feel like you are shouting at them or do you want them to feel like you're being a collaborative person? Ultimately, it's the same thing. You still want them to do this thing. But do you want to do that with a collaborative feel or a shouted at feel?
Emma Loveday (14:47.529)
Yeah.
Emma Loveday (15:00.988)
Yeah.
Emma Loveday (15:05.532)
Yeah, and you say, you you...
have to soften it, someone else needs to make it more direct. Someone else has it super soft and fluffy and sometimes, I don't know, poetic and all of these flowery loveliness and they need to roughen it up. They need to sharpen the edges and they're probably the type of person who needs to go in and look at it and be like, actually, half of this is disguising the core message.
Ben Pearce (15:19.31)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Emma Loveday (15:39.274)
put too much in there and you can't actually see what that message is, which is typically the result of fluffy flouncy language and sharpen the edges.
Ben Pearce (15:47.522)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, brilliant. So start off writing rude, start off writing honest, and that gives you a great place to start. Any other tips that you got for us?
Emma Loveday (16:01.224)
Yes, yes. So make it easy to imagine. is especially if you're storytelling but also if you're trying to sell a service. We can accidentally, we all do it, it's fine, get into the habit of making statements.
just statements about what is that doesn't create some sort of emotional feeling around the offer or the story. For example, I'll give you an example.
Earlier in the year, I'll use one of my offers as an example. Earlier in the year, I was selling a course, a program called Win Clients with Email. And I use it as an example to show like how you change a statement into something that's easy to imagine and has a more emotive feel to it, right?
so something you'll see quite a lot when people are selling their services is they might say something like it's remarkable it's going to be amazing and when someone says that to you ben do you genuinely feel like yes it is remarkable no you don't yeah yeah yeah and you're
Ben Pearce (17:20.396)
Well, everybody says it's going to be remarkable, doesn't it? So you're just like, well, it's going to be probably pretty average.
Emma Loveday (17:28.138)
I think that's a different conversation to be honest. But we can talk about that but that's a different conversation. but it doesn't actually create the emotion. You don't read it and go, yes, I understand now that it's going to be remarkable. I can see that it's going to be remarkable or this is remarkable about it. So it's sort of asking yourself like.
Ben Pearce (17:30.4)
This isn't about your service of course.
Emma Loveday (17:52.51)
really go... if you want to say it's game changing you better be able to show what makes it game changing. You can't just make that statement because no one's going to believe you. No one's going to believe you. So if we take for example it's remarkable and I said that about win clients with email which is all about sending emails and getting clients obviously win clients with email does what it says on the tin.
Ben Pearce (18:02.787)
No.
Emma Loveday (18:17.98)
I could say it's remarkable or I could say something like or you'll wake up you'll wake up your inbox and get responses and clicks for the first time in months.
Right. And that's then outcome focused and action focused and easy to imagine. Well, what makes it remarkable? my gosh, my inbox, my dead inbox that does nothing for my business is going to wake up. They're going to start replying. They're going to open my emails. They're going to start replying to my emails and they're going to start clicking the buy now buttons in my emails. Right. That's something you, and you could be like, that's remarkable. That's more remarkable than saying,
it's gonna be remarkable, right? Right?
Ben Pearce (19:01.91)
Yeah, so it's creating that emotion and creating that state that they want to be in and making them think about that as they're reading your email rather than you just telling them it's going to be remarkable.
Emma Loveday (19:14.428)
Is that show not tell thing, right? I can tell you it's going to be remarkable, or I can show you what's remarkable about it.
Ben Pearce (19:17.176)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (19:22.55)
Yeah, okay, okay. Right, so we've got, start off writing rude and that'll help you get to the nub of the message, what it is that you really wanna say. Make it easy to imagine. So I like that, you know, the show, not tell. Any other tips?
Emma Loveday (19:36.082)
so important.
yeah i think this last one i mean we might we might go on for more but this goes back to storytelling because i think that is huge online especially when you want to stand out you want to get noticed i for me it's actually the remembered piece that makes storytelling
kind of so powerful, right? Because again, like I said, you can get noticed, you can wipe out your baps and get noticed, right? Actually, people might, people might remember that, actually, I take it back, people might remember that. But you can get noticed, but you can also be easily forgotten. It's very different when, and, and.
Ben Pearce (20:07.674)
I haven't tried that one.
Emma Loveday (20:20.626)
It always like melts my heart a little bit when you know someone online or one of my email lists or even my clients will be like, I remember that story you told a year ago. And it'll be like one post or one email, but they'll remember it. And that's, that's the part that I think is important with storytelling. I think the big struggle people have when they're telling a great story is they want to share the entire macro
Ben Pearce (20:29.868)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (20:38.699)
Yeah. Yeah.
Emma Loveday (20:50.562)
experience like the whole shebang like from day dot to day zero to the end and that's when you'll get into muddied messaging and you'll go around the houses and you people won't know where they're at with it they're not they're not going to be sure what point they're taking from it and you just weaken every kind of punchline moment so instead you want to find the micro moments and I have an example just so that it's clear you want to share the
the micro moments within those stories that help you share whatever message it is you want to land or whatever lesson you want to teach. So can I give you an example of that? Right. So for example,
Ben Pearce (21:33.41)
Pleas, please, yeah.
Emma Loveday (21:40.77)
I was with a partner for five or six years and it ended. Right? So, so the story you could ask, so what some people would struggle with is they would try and tell the entire story of this relationship breakdown. Like from start to finish, when we got together, how it was, things that happened, la la la la la. And you've got like this entire relationship breakdown story. But instead,
you can pinpoint poignant moments, right? For example, like this one when I was sharing this story, okay? So when we were in Corfu, he said to me, this is true. He said to me, I think that you love me this much, but I only love you this much, right?
Ben Pearce (22:35.022)
And for everybody in Audio Land, you went this much at the top of the head and then this much down at the waist of the chest. my goodness.
Emma Loveday (22:38.512)
Sorry, yes.
Yeah, yeah, I love you. You love me all the way up here at the top of your head, but I only love you all the way down here at my chest or whatever. So, right.
Ben Pearce (22:49.518)
Right.
Emma Loveday (22:52.732)
And I started the post with that sentence and not even describing it, just like in quotation marks, speech marks, right? I think I love you this much, but you only... And it started there. And that's the snapshot moment that I decided to share within that entire break-up story. The message being, you know, if you ignore all the warning signs, don't be surprised when it blows up in your face. And it's that simple. The message was...
Ben Pearce (23:08.96)
Yeah. Yeah.
Emma Loveday (23:22.628)
that simple but if I had tried to share the entire story...
Breakup story and share that message. It would not have been as powerful as just Pinpointing that micro moment in time that one thought that one conversation that one fact that one Feeling you know that that one moment of disruption You know again rule of one it works to storytell it applies a story telling as well search for the micro moments within the big macro story and it will actually be a
way to share the message.
Ben Pearce (24:00.374)
Yeah, it's fascinating you're saying that. So I run the technical storytelling programme and a lot of what I say when I'm talking to people in tech is we're great at talking about logic and rationale and we're terrible at making an emotional connection with people and you've got to do both. And I talk to them about storytelling and I talk to them and lots of people go, look, Ben, if I'm speaking to my boss, right, I can't do a two minute story.
on when I went base jumping in Kazakhstan, you know, to introduce a change we need to make to some software code, you know, or something like that. And but what you demonstrated there was it doesn't have to be a two minute story. It's a line. You you love me this much and I love you that much or whatever, whatever it was. That then creates an emotional connection. That took about 20 seconds, 15 seconds to say. There's then a clear relevant pointer.
Emma Loveday (24:47.561)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (24:57.42)
to don't ignore the warning signs right because it's and so if i was now going to take that to a to a tech mod bit you know it be logging and monitoring and all this stuff that we do in tech you know don't ignore but it's not a massive story it's literally a sentence that you've prefaced something of value of rationale of logic you've fused the two together and what you've got is something that is memorable impactful and has some substance behind it and and it's all from that one sentence that that
Emma Loveday (25:07.22)
Exactly.
Emma Loveday (25:24.266)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (25:26.7)
that was it you're saying start with the one the rule of one or something
Emma Loveday (25:30.46)
Yeah and yeah that one sentence it doesn't require setup, explanation, it gives you all of the context you need. I could not explain anything else if I just put those quotas, that speech mark and that sentence in and then you know he said literally.
Ben Pearce (25:34.05)
Yeah. No.
Ben Pearce (25:39.619)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Emma Loveday (25:49.31)
then you'd probably be like, ooooh. Like straight away, you know, even if you don't fully get the whole ins and outs, you're like, my gosh, someone said that to her. And it's really like, god, that's, ugh, stabbed to the heart, I can't believe it. So it's ju- it's juicy as well, it's super juicy. But it's exactly what you say, you don't need to spend...
Ben Pearce (25:53.731)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (25:59.938)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Emma Loveday (26:13.896)
you know, three quarters of your email or your pitch or anything like that, setting up a story, like go for the jugular, get to the point, and then move on to the logical argument.
Ben Pearce (26:27.884)
Yeah, yeah, fascinating. Now, we're racing through time and there's a few things we wouldn't need to talk about. So next thing I'd love to get your thoughts on. And that is structure. let me explain. So I remember a guy I used to manage another team with. We co-managed a team, very different people, had the same name, but very different people. So I love, right up front,
tell me what it is I need to know so that I need to know what it is and then he and I don't care about the detail he was very much
I need to know in order for me to make a decision, I want to understand the detail of thought it through, think whether I like the way that we, you know, I needed all of that detail. So if you've got, let's say, diversity of readership, some people that love a punch, punch, right, I just want to get the big picture and go versus people that I want the detail, I need to consider it, I need to make an informed decision, for example, how do you write and structure things to get both of those groups on board?
Board.
Emma Loveday (27:37.514)
Yeah, it's an interesting one that because that's more about the nurturing journey more than sort of that one post or that one email that you put out there. You know, if we're launching a high ticket offer, coaching program or something like that, you have to be aware that those different types of people are in the audience, you know, and there'll be some that actually need nothing.
Ben Pearce (27:49.837)
Okay.
Emma Loveday (28:07.458)
I need nothing but like carts open and they're ready to buy. There's there'll always be people who are ready to just jump straight on it and then like you said there'll be other people who just need like the big picture, the big promise, like the outcome, don't need so much of the the nitty-gritty detail and then there'll be the people who they kind of need that hardcore persuasion right? I need to like reduce the risk as much as possible, I need to reduce uncertainty.
Ben Pearce (28:35.382)
Yeah. Yeah.
Emma Loveday (28:37.342)
I need to get rid of the uncertainty, tell them the details, tell them the information. And so that I would say is more actually about the full journey that they go on with you and about sprinkling a bit of each in through your launch sequences, through your launch emails. I think, I always think as well to a degree,
Ben Pearce (28:51.032)
Okay.
Emma Loveday (29:05.734)
like I I'll say for myself for example I I don't I will always give the details needed for someone to make an informed decision but I what I think people can get wrong is like over explaining and almost giving too much to the point where there's no
like mystery left about the offer or excitement left about joining the offer. For example, you know, you might have a process, a seven-step process and you could feel the need to like explain each of the seven steps or you could say
and there's the proven seven step, you know, name of process guaranteed to get you magical outcome and it doesn't tell you what the seven steps are because maybe you don't want to give that away actually but you're telling them that they're in there and you know so it's an interesting one because the details matter
Ben Pearce (30:11.81)
Mm. Mm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Emma Loveday (30:22.13)
And you kind of need to be aware at every stage you're going to have people who are nowhere near close to buying, people who are ready to jump on board with no information, don't even need to see the sales page and you're going to have everything in between as well. And that's why when we're looking at say launching or launching an offer, for example, you need to cover the the whole sort of spectrum of content that speaks to everyone at the different level.
Ben Pearce (30:47.394)
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. It's tough, isn't it? Yeah, no, interesting. Now, time is escaping us. And before we wrap up, you know, what year are we in? We're in 2024 still. Just, we need to talk about AI. What's your perspective as a copywriter, as somebody who...
putting words together for a living, that's how you pay the bills, the mortgage. What's your perspective on using AI to help with writing?
Emma Loveday (31:23.658)
Right, I'm gonna be completely honest here with you, Ben, right? When it first came around, I was definitely team hate AI with all my being. I was like, you know, I won't swear on the podcast, but you know, I was like, no, like it's terrible. my gosh, it's ruining everything. It's killing creativity. You know, and I was definitely in that camp. I'm not there now.
Ben Pearce (31:26.893)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (31:34.843)
Okay.
Ben Pearce (31:49.804)
Yeah. Okay.
Emma Loveday (31:52.764)
I think it's not about like hating AI and it's taking over. You know, I have no fear that it's going to take my job. It can't do what I do. It's just being, I think it's just being aware of what it can be used as, as a tool and what it can't do. What it can do, what it can't do. It cannot have...
original thought you'll never convince me that it can match my creativity because it can't have an original thought currently it doesn't currently have an original thought might get there I don't know and
Ben Pearce (32:27.853)
Yeah.
Emma Loveday (32:30.044)
you know so what i i i do use it but i use it for for example collating research scanning themes in documents or transcriptions if i'm having a proper brain fart day and i literally can't think to to start some copywriting work i'll i will use it for some brainstorming and ideation you know and most of what it produces is shit sorry rubbish most of what it produces is
Ben Pearce (32:57.976)
Yeah, yeah. It's all right, we'll put the explicit filter on. Don't worry at all. You do what you want. You say what you want to say.
Emma Loveday (32:59.948)
rubbish but... be b- most of what it produces is not good but sometimes actually what it gives you does spark an idea that you need and that's really helpful so now I'm absolutely not against it I definitely was I'm you know that when it came around I was like
Ben Pearce (33:14.318)
Yeah. Yeah.
Emma Loveday (33:25.66)
I think I got swept up actually in all of almost like the fear especially in the copyright and and now I'm just like you can take that fear I know it can't do what I do I think it I think it could write adequate copy
But if adequate is good enough for you, I wouldn't be the copywriter for you anyway, so that's fine. You know, that's all good. And I think it's really, it is really helpful to people who do actually find it really hard to write. You know, we're not all natural writers. We don't all have the skill set. Everyone's at different levels. And for people who find it really hard, crack on, use it. You know, why struggle if you need help? It's there. It's, you know, it is helpful.
Ben Pearce (33:48.43)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (34:13.634)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found it, so quite often, for example, like with titles and that kind of stuff, and I'll be like, right, need, right, I've got a 50 character limit, right, I need a title, and I think, right, maybe these words, and you end up with one that's a bit long, and then what I love to do is to say, right, take that, write that in less than 50 characters.
And then what I love to say is, give me 100 iterations, 100 variations. And then you literally get a list and none of them, and this is what to your point on it being adequate, none of them are ever quite right. They don't ever quite get it. But they might throw in, that word I hadn't thought of. And I like that structure. And if I take that word out of that variation and that structure from that variation and pop that together.
Emma Loveday (34:40.265)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (35:02.132)
that nails it, you know, that's what I was after. And so it's that, like you say, it's a tool, isn't it? I've done some stuff with some people where they've done the entire stuff right, you know, come up with, I wanna talk about this, come up with the key points, now generate a script, and that, and I think adequate is the word I would use, and is it really, but like you say, it doesn't set apart, and at the moment, that's where it feels like it is with me.
Emma Loveday (35:04.127)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (35:30.87)
It's good enough, it's adequate, but is it gonna be that voice, that character, or is it gonna give you that detail or that fidelity or that whatever it is that you bring, it doesn't quite bring that, I don't think yet, does it?
Emma Loveday (35:44.038)
No and it is a bit it is I think with writing it is a bit a bit of that really which is use it I mean I don't I don't write blogs anymore but if if I did not for myself I I wouldn't I wouldn't use AI to write for myself that would be ridiculous wouldn't it but you know
Ben Pearce (35:58.816)
Hahaha!
Emma Loveday (36:03.568)
it like you know if you were an agency and you read and you needed to bang out blogs like bang them out you know just churn then absolutely I would use them with strong prompts you know and the information it needs to to get the structure right and the core idea and x y and z and just just use it that way knowing that actually and I will need to edit it to make it
Ben Pearce (36:16.536)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (36:30.371)
Yeah.
Emma Loveday (36:32.614)
human, feel human and you know a bit more than adequate and using it in that way instead but I mean it's not the devil, it's not evil.
Ben Pearce (36:37.613)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (36:42.328)
But is is, no, it's not the, isn't that a sad thing that you said, I thought that was a sad thing that you said there. If I was an agency and I just needed to bang out blogs, you know, because I just needed to bang something out, does the world need another article, you know, just to get the likes, just to get the clicks, just to fool the algorithm? What about if we just got rid of all of the chuff and we just add good stuff? Like, like.
Emma Loveday (37:08.124)
I know, I know, quality of... but I say that knowing that that is the way it is, unfortunately, like, you know, but yeah, absolutely, it's sort of, okay, great, you've got, you've got, you, you created, you know, whatever, 200 articles this month, they're all crap.
Ben Pearce (37:13.454)
I know.
Ben Pearce (37:24.333)
Yeah.
Emma Loveday (37:24.362)
and you might get SEO or whatever, traffic going to your website, but then they're reading a crap blog. So do you want that? Like wouldn't four really quality blog articles be better than that? But it's just not the way that it's seen, it?
Ben Pearce (37:27.949)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (37:31.585)
Yeah.
Ben Pearce (37:38.516)
Yeah, it's not the way, yeah, it works. There you go. Well, on that uplifting note, I think it's, so let's do exactly that. So key takeaways. What would be the key takeaways for people that have been listening to this?
Emma Loveday (37:45.354)
Yes, I love to end on the positive, you know.
Emma Loveday (37:58.576)
okay for for me the sort of winning i'm gonna say sales writing combination but writing
really, but I'm going to say sales, copyright, especially if you're on socials, online business, it would be a mixture of having freedom of self-expression. So removing to a degree, the self-censorship. We know we have to make it appropriate for our audiences, but freedom of self-expression, the use of creative writing tools that turn those statements into emotive experiences and obviously sales psychology, understanding how you then
combine those with the logic for a strong sales argument that's really hard to refuse, quite frankly.
Ben Pearce (38:43.126)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I love all of those things that you've said there. And I think what's beautiful is they do work in a sales context. They absolutely do. But if you change that word sales and you just say influence, right, I need to influence my stakeholders, my corporate boss, my customer, my partner, as in corporate partner that I work with, all of these other things that we come across in tech, not my wife, I'm not using this for my wife. All of those sorts of things. You think, actually, that just works.
Emma Loveday (38:59.05)
Exactly. Yeah.
Ben Pearce (39:13.334)
just works and it's brilliant. So if people have loved what you've been saying and want to find out more about what you do and take more tips and that kind of stuff, where can people get hold of you?
Emma Loveday (39:25.866)
Okay cool, I mean you can find me Love Day on LinkedIn. EmmaLoveDay.com is my website. But I think the best place to be in is my favourite place as well, is my Copychops newsletter. So you can go to EmmaLoveDay.com forward slash copy dash chops. And it's all about...
writing really yummy scrumptious personality-fueled story-led sales copy. It's a fun place to be. I sell quite frequently. I do that intentionally. Obviously I need- I have a business as well but also from my- in my opinion-
the best way to improve anyone's sales copy or even just storytelling skills or persuasive skills is to read more of it. So even from that perspective, there's a benefit, but I've been told it's a fun place to be, so...
Ben Pearce (40:21.71)
brilliant, brilliant. So emma loveday.com slash copy dash chops. And I'll put that in the show notes so that everybody can click on the link if they want to to take you there. So final thing for me to say is it's been brilliant. Thank you so much. I know you've been busy moving house. You're in your bed. You're in your boudoir. So anybody that wants to see it on YouTube can see what your new house looks like. But yeah, thank you so much for taking the time out of your really busy time at the moment and sharing all these tips for us.
Emma Loveday (40:50.128)
My pleasure, it's been such fun, Ben. Thank you so much for having me on.
