One of my e-newsletter subscribers, BL, wrote me the other day with a question:

“I was wondering, in today’s Web 2.0 world, what I can do to write great copy? I feel like today’s world of podcasts diminishes my copy. How can one succeed in today’s landscape? I’m an aspiring copywriter and could use any advice I can get.”

What would be your advice to BL?

A. Continue to write great copy using the proven principles of persuasive direct marketing and you will be successful and in demand.

B. Combine a mastery of traditional marketing with web 2.0, social networking, and other new media techniques to rise to the top of the game.

C. Become a blogger, podcaster, viral video expert, SEO copywriter, or web 2.0 guru. Forget traditional freelance copywriting. Copywriting as we know it is dead as the dinosaurs.

D. Other.

Be careful in your answer. BL is genuinely confused and uncertain. He is a real person and really needs our guidance at this early stage of his career.

And thanks in advance for helping him!

If writers are not unimportant, they are certainly LESS important than they used to be, argues author Michael Malice in an interview with the New York Post (8/20/08, p. 57).

“Being a writer is less of an accomplishment today than it used to be,” says Malice.

He mostly blames the Internet, noting that “there is so much more media that it’s easier to become a writer.”

Malice also warns writers that there are more writers competing with one another for projects today.

“There is this tenacity to try to do everything right,” says Malice, “because you know there are so many people waiting to replace you if you mess up.”

Is it true? Are writers less important than they used to be? Will the writing profession continue to diminish in status?

And lastly, is the floodtide of new writers — professional and amateur — making it tougher to earn a good living as a writer?

It has been observed many times that blogging, Web 2.0, and social media are effective because today’s consumers are more intersted in the opinions and recommendations of their peers than those of professional reviewers, critics, and experts.

Certainly the success of the reader reviews on Amazon.com is a great example of this.

But the dominance of Citizen Journalism over professional journalists is not universal. A case in point: the restaurant industry.

Even in this era of social networking, professional restaurante reviewers remain a powerful force in the business.

Restaurants keep extensive files on food critics. So when a food critics enters a restaurant, the staff is alerted to his presence — and can pull out all stops to ensure a good review.

Restaurant reviews carry so much weight with the dining public that “a bad write-up can land a restaurant on life support, crippling its business,” writes Adam Goldman in The Record (8/15/08, p. 30).

Successful NJ restaurant entrepreneur Drew Nierporent says seeing a bad review of your restaurant in the morning paper is “to wake up and read your own obituary.”

We are living in an era where consumers, not marketers, have the power.

And where readers, not the media, are increasingly communicating the voice of public opinion.

But not totally.

Not yet, anyway.

My colleague Dean Rieck, a veteran copywriter, thinks today’s new copywriters use too much hype in their writing (example: www.thecopygod.com).

“These days, more writers seek freelance work, spurred on by promises of big paychecks in myriad get-rich-quick e-books sold online,” writes Dean in DM News (8/11/08, p. 10).

“The result is a flood of inexperienced, poorly qualified writers. I’ve seen increasingly club-fisted writing showing up in sales letters online and offline. Are copywriters today so tone-deaf, so mired in over-the-top hard sell patter that they can’t hear how ridiculous they sound?”

My questions to you for today:

>> Do you agree there’s too much hype in copy in general — and online in particular?

>> Does hard-sell long copy turn you off, repulse you, or do you enjoy writing and reading it?

>> Does the hype-filled style of copy work in your experience or opinion? Or are today’s readers too sophisticated to be persuaded by it?

According to an article in B-to-B, the average Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) earned $1.5 million last year.

Let’s say you are a copywriter or marketing consultant, and you earn $100,000 a year.

The average CMO earns 15X more than you do.

What do they know about marketing that you and I don’t?

What makes the average CMO worth 15X more in the marketplace than the average copywriter or marketing consultant?

Any thoughts?

When you are imprecise with language in copywriting, it conveys an impression of sloppy thinking and can also undermine your credibility.

A case in point: the new commercial from Subway for their hot beef sandwich that says: “everybody wants to try Subway’s hot beef sandwich.”

The problem is that word “everybody” — which is so transparently an exaggeration that it defies believability.

Do people on low carb diets who are avoiding bread want this sandwich — which comes, of course, on bread?

What about vegetarians? Do they really want to try this new beef sub?

How about people that don’t like subs … people who don’t eat fast food … people who prefer ham or chicken to beef?

A better approach: “Beef lovers nationwide can’t wait to sink their teeth into Subway’s new Hot Beef Special Sandwich.”

This identifies the audience (meat eaters) and conveys the image of desirability and popularity while avoiding the obvious lie of “everybody.”

Is this guy, as he claims, the greatest living copywriter?

www.thecopygod.com

Read his web site and decide for yourself:

www.thecopygod.com

He certainly is good looking!

Is there a copywriting lesson we can learn from his site?

Is he truly a step above all other copywriters and marketing gurus out there today? Are we mere dust motes beneath the shining light of his copywriting genius?

My colleague Denny Hatch is one of the most respected of the “old school” direct marketing copywriters and publishers operating today.

He says the reason so many Internet marketers get it wrong is that they fail to apply DM selling techniques online.

“One reason for the dot.com bust was inexperience,” Denny writes. “Quite simply, many of the hotshot twenty-something marketers did not have a solid grounding in the basics of direct marketing. They did not know how to make an offer, how to ask for an order, and make it easy to order.”

Yet I increasingly hear new media gurus saying that old-school direct marketing copy is the WRONG way to go on the Internet — that it’s all about conversation, free content, social networking, and making a connection.

Many new media marketers have posted comments on this blog saying direct marketing copy is irrelevant and will soon disappear.

So what do you think?

Are Denny and I dinosaurs, writing our direct response copy, doomed to extinction? (The money we both make from our copy would seem to indicate not.)

Or is he right, and is knowing how to sell the missing ingredient that stops so many Internet marketers from converting their brilliant content and concepts into cash?

What say you, Dear Reader?