The Brief

Write to Persuade

Learn the psychological levers and fundamental principles of persuasive copywriting.

For the last 15 years or so, marketers have become very good at getting attention. We've engineered hooks, headlines, thumbnails, keywords and subject lines—all designed to earn the click, stop the scroll or convince an algorithm that our content deserves to be pushed.

Writing became a production task: fill the page, tick the boxes, ship ship ship.

And before you know it, you've sunk $30k into SEO, and all you've got to show for it is a few page 1 rankings... and no sales.

You can stop someone mid-scroll and lose them three seconds later. You can rank first on Google and say absolutely nothing worth reading (trust me, I've won industry awards for exactly this).

You can create content that pops off for the algorithm... but still does sweet fuck all for your business.

That's why this inaugural issue of The Brief is about writing to PERSUADE.

Not just getting attention for a second. Not just sales copy. I'm sharing the principles I follow when writing ANY copy—from LinkedIn posts to emails to my homepage.

Because persuasive writing works best when you...

Well, you'll just have to keep reading to find out. 😋

GET MY EMAILS.

Warning: Contains strong opinions and stronger language. Side effects may include better copy, fewer random acts of marketing, and the occasional snort-laughter.

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Free to read. Easy to leave. Actually worth opening.

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