Does it work for any blog? The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers
Sarah asked me to review the Problogger eBook, “The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers: Score your posts out of 100″ 
by Darren Rowse and Glenn Murray.
The background:
I’ve been blogging on and off since 2006 and now have nearly 1500 subscribers to my main blog, so I’m not a total newbie and seem to be having some success so far. Still, as a business blogger, I was really excited at the prospect of learning some new tricks and improve my blogging and writing skills.
First impressions:
The book is lengthy – 59 pages in all and takes time to read through. It can be a little overwhelming with so many things to think about at once.
Wading through the many scorecard items mostly of 1-3pts a time was also more time consuming and tricky than I imagined.
What I didn’t like:
The big downside was that rather than be a top line easy to scan concept it runs the risk of inducing paralysis by analysis because I found myself constantly thinking about the details I need to think about rather than just writing normally and freely.
Personally, I find the tendency of many American blogs to write short choppy posts with bold headlines and short sentences or mere lists rather boring. They may score very highly using a system, but it often leaves me wondering if the writer lacks detailed knowledge to impart more information on the topic if every blog is like that. You’re often left wondering, “And… ?”
What I did like:
On the upside, there are a few tips and ideas that if you pick say 2-3 a time to work on and incorporate over time, then pick another couple to focus on, it would probably be quite effective over time, rather than trying to do everything at once.
The point at the very beginning of the ebook about about knowing your audience was very valid. What if your audience is a little different? Then you need to adapt the style according to the readership, whether they be laypeople, lawyers or whoever.
In my case, I’m writing for scientists and researchers or new product commercialisation experts, so reducing complex science and biology to short posts or mere lists will be neither very effective or interesting.
What I learned from doing the Scorecard:
Copywriting headlines that attract attention is something I need to work on! I suck at it, partly I suspect because of my dislike for the kind of salacious or attention seeking headlines that you see associated with health and medical topics. Intuitively, my instinct is not to repeat that kind of screaming 
Overall:
If you follow the advice in the ebook and want to become a professional blogger generating a lot of hits and subscribers with posts involving things like “Top five….” or various lists etc, this kind of approach can be very effective. This is particularly true for a lay audience because it attracts people looking for quick posts to scan and skim. It’s not for my style or audience, but through the process outlined, I learned my own area of weakness and will be working on that instead. Your areas to work on may be different from mine and that’s the beauty of a rational method such as Problogger describes.
If you are interested in learning more, then the scorecard can be purchased online through ProBlogger (see here for details), but hurry because the price is going up tomorrow!
Edited to add - Current price $10 around £6.57 from the 2nd of September it will be $29.99
About Sally ChurchSally Church runs a Pharma and Biotech consulting company, Icarus Consultants, for companies looking for a fast track to market. You can find her on Twitter @maverickNY
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6 Responses to Does it work for any blog? The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers
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thanks for reviewing this for us Sally. I liked the book, especially where it ‘educated’ people regarding the spellings of certain words ie British English and American English – showed an eye for detail.
I think the next step is to develop it into an electronic product like Scribe and then it can help people as they write rather than having then stopping to compare against a chart or a check sheet.
Maybe I’m being very colonial but the idea of writing in Americanese as opposed to British English (despite being over here for 10 years) irritated me a little. I’m English through and through and still write in my native tongue
. I think my only concessions have been ‘leukemia’ without the a and ‘specialty’ without the i.
The two things I really grasped as something to work on were better headlines (you’re much better than me on that!) and breaking down a longer post into bolded subheadings, as I tried to for this one.
I think it’s a potentially a great tool for beginners – understand your audience and pitch your writing at the right level are certainly very important points to get off on the right foot.
Twitter: maverickny
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I trained as a journalist and we were taught to keep sentences and paragraphs short. People are resistant to large blocks of text. I do a lot of reading in my job, so scanning posts is helpful to me, and I often skip very wordy posts. It’s just all too much!! LOL.
Another thing I learnt in my training was to put the most important bits in the first paragraph. A lot of people don’t read further than that. Depends a bit of course on what you are writing. A narrative tale of an experience may have a great punch line in which case it goes at the end, but sometimes you should put your jewels at the beginning where they will get the greatest audience.
Sheesh not an other blogging book the wife will make me read! I am sure it’s worthwhile but theres surely a time to stop reading and start doing?
Well said that man. Blogging is like raising children – don’t just threaten… do it!