TOOL-torial Tuesday: Analyze My Writing
Useful copywriting tools to make your copy better.
Interested in the tools I use to better my craft as a copywriter and marketer? Once a month, I share a specific tool I use (online or otherwise) that helps me write better copy for my clients.
Today’s Tool: Analyze My Writing
URL: Analyze My Writing
While it’s quite basic in its look and functionality, Analyze My Writing has been a useful tool for me when familiarizing myself with a new client’s brand voice.
In particular, it helps me identify:
Basic text statistics (sentence length, word length, punctuation usage, etc.)
Common words or phrases
Readability (in terms of grade level)
Lexical density (i.e. uses of adverbs, prepositions, etc.)
Occurrences of passive voice
The best part? It’s FREE.
Video Overview
Here’s a two-minute overview of how you can use this tool:
Suggested uses for Analyze My Writing:
TL;DR version:
Identifying sentence cadence and structure
Identifying the reading level of specific copy
Identifying repeated key words and phrases
Long version:
Whenever I begin working with a new client, I resource copy from previous email and SMS campaigns, landing pages, their website, social media, etc. — essentially creating a collection of copy examples to work from.
The idea is to familiarize myself with their brand voice and to get an idea of the words, tone, and overall cadence.
Your client’s brand voice may have a few strategic differences depending on the marketing channel and that’s okay! In that case, it might be useful to resource copy from the specific marketing channels you’ll be writing copy for.
Example Use: Email Copywriting
Let’s assume I’m writing email campaigns for a new client and need to familiarize myself with the voice they use over email.
I’ll find 10 of their top-performing email campaigns and plug the copy into Analyze My Writing.
Pro tip: It might be helpful to separate subject lines, headlines, and body copy when doing this.
Once I’ve analyzed all of their copy, I’ll take note of the following:
Recurring words
Recurring phrases
Average word length
Average sentence length
Reading level
Specific use of punctuation
But I use this to guide me as I’m writing email copy for the client.
Pro tip: I keep a Google doc on each client with notes specific to writing for that brand and store the above information there. I recommend you do something similar! If you want my template — leave a comment below.
Once I’ve completed my copy for the client, I’ll copy and paste it into the Analyze My Writing tool. Again, I taking note of the same things as above. Then I’ll compare and contrast.
I want to ensure I’m matching my client’s cadence, reading level, and overall structure. If I can nail those nuances, then I’m well on my way to mimicking their brand voice well!
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