Write well always. One day you’ll need to know how.
First, enjoy this hilariously good customer email from Woot.com:
Dear Bigyahu, esteemed Woot veteran -
You’ve been here from the beginning, or almost the beginning. You saw Woot grow from a weird little deal-a-day site into a whole bunch of weird little deal-a-day sites. You saw us change our colors from eggplant to broccoli & carrots to pea soup. None of the two million new members who have come along since then can say they have your Woot cred. Without your early support, none of those two-million-plus would even know Woot existed.
So we’re hoping you don’t think our newest idea sucks. It’s called Deals.Woot, and it lives at http://deals.woot.com and start clicking. Check everything out. Ask questions. Try to break stuff. Apply the same ruthless diligence to Deals.Woot as you have to the mothership. Our oldest friends are our best BS detectors, and we’re counting you on you to start detecting and let us know what you find.
And thanks a million – or two million – for helping create the big, unwieldy ball of discount energy that is Woot today. Long may it roll…
the Deals.Woot dev team
Sure, there are some little things I’d correct, but in the face of writing something functional and specific, whoever writes the site copy at Woot.com has written something funny, intelligent and genuine. It is also guaranteed to make a Woot customer feel special. Not like those clowns at VirginBlue.
Now, to my point: just because you work for a big, stuffy corporation and not a startup, even though you’re tasked with writing something functional and specific for customers to read, take a moment to do it better. Find a way to add some spice — a trace of humour, confidence, real concern, plain English — whatever you’d love to use to make it stand out in a crowded Inbox.
I know. Your manager will most likely surgically excise it and customers will never see it. But that won’t change the fact that you wrote it, that you’re proving yourself capable of writing it, and that one day you’ll get the chance to write for an organisation that will be ready for it. By then you will have years of practice at doing it and will be as good as Woot’s copywriter, whoever they may be.
In the meantime, stick it to the man by watching Woot.com’s ‘Learn More’ video, which is even funnier, and while not functional at all, worth every moment of viewing time.
Mortimer & Monte: In the Break Room, episode 3 from Woot Video on Vimeo.
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New blog post: Write well always. One day you’ll need to know how. http://bit.ly/CuxO7
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Write well always. One day you’ll need to know how. http://bit.ly/cNpvT
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RT @bigyahu –> Write well always. One day you’ll need to know how. http://bit.ly/CuxO7 [Good advice from the finest wordsmith I know]
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