If’n you’re familiar with one Jerry Seinfeld, then mesuspects you read today’s subject line in his voice.
Not only does Jerry have a distinct voice and cadence, but he was a megastar in the 90s, and so his voice is instantly identifiable. In fact, I’m not a huge fan of the show Seinfeld (never got into it) nor have I ever listened to Seinfeld’s stand-up—and yet, I still know his voice so well that he’s been repeating “what’s the deal with airline food?” in my head as I type away.
Plenty of copy lessons you can learn from comedians and anyone else with the gift of the “voice.”
Jordan Peterson also benefits from such a voice: Whenever I read copy that he wrote, his literal voice warps into my head to become the narrator.
Having a distinct voice that is intimately related to your brand, à la Seinfeld and Peterson, then, well, it puts persuasion on easy mode.
And this may be even more true in the world of copywriting.
Developing a unique voice, where your readers instantly know it’s “you” just from the text alone, is powerful, cully. When your readers actively look forward to reading you, it’s just a natural progression that they’ll also look forward to buying from you.
And I’d argue this is even more important now—in a world filled with half-baked ChatGPT “writing,” where market awareness and sophistication levels mature at breakneck speed, and where there are hundreds of thousands if not mill-yuns of potential distractions just a click away from tugging your reader’s interest for it to never return—than it’s ever been.
Which leads us to the question:
How do you develop a writing voice?
And this, cully, leads us to the bad news, if’n you’re allergic to hard work…
Because the secret is there ain’t no secret.
It takes time.
Intentional effort.
And practice.
Every. Damn. Day.
Story time:
When I first learned that email marketing was even a thing, which was before I dropped out of college, I became enamored with the idea.
And like any young wannabe writer, I found my guru (Ben Settle) and I started reading everything I could by him. I also started hand-writing his ads and hand-typing his emails too.
Big mistake.
Y’see, and this is clear as day if’n I find a piece of “copy” I wrote at the time, my style was so similar to Ben’s, I’d call it a carbon copy but that’d be an insult to Ben. He was, obviously, much better. Not just at copy but also at his unique style.
Since this realization, I stopped writing like I thought Ben would write and started writing like I wanted to write.
And it’s far less obvious now as I’ve developed my own style, cadence, and rhythm.
But it took a long time to “unlearn” Ben’s mannerisms and quirks and stumble upon my own.
Which brings me to the point:
If’n you want to develop a unique voice that’s persuasion before you even write a word, then, well, you need to spend more time writing.
There’s no secret to this. Again, it takes time, intentional effort, and practice.
And you can only do that by writing more often and writing better.
But if’n you do?
Then you won’t have to worry about ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or the other flavor-of-the-day machine learning faux masquerading as artificial intelligence terkin’ er jerbs.
John
PS - Oh wait - I alllllmost forgot about one shortcut you can use to develop a unique voice without spending years doing nothing but writing?
Hitting reply, hopping on a call with me, and then, if’n we both deem each other a good fit, you can get the benefit of a distinct voice for your business (without doing much, if any, work).
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