Design vs content. (6) How I wrote the most upvoted answer on Quora (a... - Quorabot - Quora. Almost a week ago I wrote the most upvoted answer on Quora, which went from zero to over 5,100 upvotes in 3½ days. The scary thing was, I designed that answer to get 1,000 upvotes. And I've done it before too (see here, here and here) with increasing frequency. It doesn't always work - and it's not the only way - but if you're curious, I'll let you into my secret sauce here. It's a seduction, not a shag I used to follow the old cliche: always answer the question in the first line, then elaborate. With newspapers, they call this the Inverted pyramid - summary first, detail later. Well, screw that. I've found the best answers open with a hook - something that promises untold wonders yet to come, but that annoyingly doesn't resolve by itself.
Here are some intros to my more popular answers: None of those lines answer the question, but they sure catch your attention. A writer must entertain Your reader does not care about your text. Do not be afraid. On uncommon insights Difficulty matters. ConciseWriting. How to Write Magnetic Headlines. Quick Course On Effective Website Copywriting. Advertisement Many dismiss copywriting as something that ad agency people do. Truthfully, all of us need to pay close attention to copywriting if we want to achieve our business objectives. The goal of a “regular” text is to inform or entertain.
The goal of Web copy (and ideally your website in general) is to get people to do something—to sign up, make a purchase, or something similar. Hiring a professional copywriter can be very expensive, which is one of the reasons why this is a valuable skill to have yourself. “I don’t need to learn copywriting, I write based on how it sounds to me.”
Think you don’t need to learn copywriting? David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising, addressed this in his book Ogilvy on Advertising. Ogilvy asked him: “Suppose your gallbladder has to be removed this evening. What distinguishes top experts from mediocre players is that the best know more. The Process Of Writing Great Copy Everything is easier with the right process. And now let’s get to the details: