An About page that pops, trailblazing women in media & copy resource of the week

Hey, hi, howdy, and welcome to Issue #15 of The Subhead, a bi-weekly newsletter about copywriting, marketing & media, and a look at some of the women who make it great.

Here’s what’s on deck in today’s edition:

✨ This week in freelancing

✨ Show some personality: An About page that pops

✨ Trailblazing Women in Media: Sally Jenkins

✨ Copy Resource of the Week: Great Landing Page Copy

✨ Just for Fun

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This week in freelancing …

After a hiatus of several weeks, I recently started doing consistent marketing & outreach again.

It feels good to be back in the regular marketing habit. Though to be perfectly honest, I’d love to go back to those halcyon days a few years ago, when all my clients were coming from inbound, and I didn’t have to do any outbound outreach – at all.

But … I was also publishing a lot more content, a lot more consistently back then … writing for my own blog on the regular, posting to at least two social media channels several times a week, writing guest articles for other sites, writing weekly emails for my list, and so on.

It was a lot of content production, yes, but it worked incredibly well to attract clients already pre-disposed to working with me because they’d read something I’d written somewhere.

Anyhoodles, my plan is to get back to more of that kind of long-tail marketing.

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Show some personality: An About page that pops

A few months ago, I posted on LinkedIn about … About pages.

I pointed out that brands don’t have to go the boring route in their About copy (though so many do, for whatever reason), and shared an example of a brand that gets it really, really right.

(This applies to both the About page on your website, and the About section of your LinkedIn profile too, by the way, if you happen to be active there.)

Chubbies Shorts does something really cool with their LinkedIn About copy – they share a “what we believe” list.

It’s an uber-effective way to message what the brand is about and who their ideal customers are, in a short amount of copy, all with their signature wit and sense of humor.

Check out the LinkedIn post here to learn more, and see if it’s something you can apply to your own About page copy to make it more memorable.

Because as we know by now, boring copy doesn’t convert. 😊

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Trailblazing Women in Media: Sally Jenkins

I remember first stumbling on an article by sportswriter Sally Jenkins 6 or 7 years ago, and being instantly hooked. The article was so funny, and so good, and though I don’t really follow sports, and didn’t care about the topic/game/match or whatever sporting event she was writing about that day, I thought, this person is a phenomenal writer, and I want to read her work on the regular.  

An incredibly gifted sportswriter, Jenkins is also a New York Times bestselling author, and the first woman to be inducted into the National Sportcasters and Sportwriters Hall of Fame.

A Washington Post columnist and feature writer for over 20 years, Jenkins is the author of 12 books, including Sum It Up, a No. 1 bestseller, which she co-authored with legendary basketball coach, Pat Summitt, winner of eight national championships, and her latest, The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life.

She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2019, and has also written for Sports Illustrated, GQ, Smithsonian Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Vanity Fair, Golf Digest, and others.

Talk about an illustrious career! The writer in me is very envious that she has bylines in all those stellar publications.

One of the things I admire most about her writing?

She knows how to write an absolutely killer lede, and believe me, that is no small thing. In fact, it’s one thing I struggle with, and so do lots of other writers I know – even the skilled ones with years of experience.

Here are a handful of Jenkins’ ledes; just take a gander at these skills:

Perspective l Decades in the making, South Carolina-Iowa final was a perfect finish

If the hair did not raise up on your neck, if something in your chest did not swell, you were insensate. This was a game that, for all the divided loyalties and warring ambitions between South Carolina and Iowa, offered something that binds.

Perspective l The NCAA’s incompetence is an unfair stain on women’s basketball

Even now, the women’s NCAA basketball tournament, that ceiling-rupturing Roman candle of an event, is still being treated with a combination of incompetence and indifference by its stagers. Somebody, multiple people actually, didn’t care enough to make sure the Sweet 16 court in Portland had the right proportions. What else did they misdraw with such insulting lack of care? The world wonders. Don’t think for a second that small discrepancy in three-point lines didn’t matter.

The NFL won’t accept responsibility for damaged players with dementia

It’s difficult to say just how much embarrassment and exposure it will take to force those rotters in NFL ownership to accept responsibility for the hazards of the game they reap billions from, and stop treating players like disposable napkins at their profit banquet. Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is beloved now, but if he develops concussion-related cognitive problems later and tries to seek medical recompense from the league, here is what he can expect: a slow walk to a swindle.

Perspective l Tara VanDerveer is nearing a milestone, but numbers don’t tell her story

As her former player Jennifer Azzi has said of VanDerveer, “She doesn’t live life very loudly.” You won’t find her on social media, amid the foam-mouthed creatures and varmints-for-pay picking through the turned-over dumpster of online culture. “I don’t know how to do Instagram. I don’t have a Facebook account. I don’t do Twitter. I read books,” VanDerveer says. She is, to use an old-fashioned term, lettered.

Perspective l NFL owners have their own conduct policy: Almost anything goes

You know the guy who throws the drink. He’s the guy who screams so loud bits of hot dog fly out of his mouth. The one who terrorizes his seat section like a soft Napoleon, with his outthrust Bonaparte chin, and a chest that’s started to landslide into a belly. When an NFL owner acts like the worst lout in an arena of 70,000, when he throws a drink on a ticket buyer like a feudal lord dousing a serf with a bucket of refuse from his castle, what should the penalty be?

Ok, ok, I’ll stop now. But you get the idea. I am going to STUDY these ledes like I’m preparing for finals, to get better at writing my own. Alas, I will never be as good as Sally Jenkins.

Check out some of Jenkins’ other, Pulitzer Prize nominated work, here.

Read Jenkins’ colorful backstory in her own words here.

If video is more your style, watch / listen to Jenkins discuss her book, The Right Call, the Women’s World Cup, gender equity in sports and her piece about the friendship between tennis greats Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, here.

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Copy Resource of the Week: Great Landing Page Copy

I recently discovered this super-handy resource all about landing pages, full of top-notch examples you can use for inspiration if you’re writing your own landing page copy.

Now, what this person’s definition of a landing page is may differ from yours. In fact, when I think “landing page,” I think of a page with zero navigation to distract, and a single focus or goal, the way Unbounce defines it here.

When you click on the link below, though, you’ll notice lots of website Home page examples, which I don’t consider a landing page, in the true sense of the word.

But not everyone is a copywriting nerd like me (PTL!), and you’ll still discover some great copy tips & TO DOs.

There are plenty of excellent copy examples here to get the ol’ creative juices flowing, no matter what kind of page you’re writing.

Discover great landing page copywriting examples here.

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Just for Fun

I’m late to the party, but I finally started reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, and wowsa, it’s as good as everyone says it is. I don’t want it to end. Highly recommend.

Mmm, yes please. But I don’t want to have to go to the Masters Tournament for it, and the recipe sounds WAY too labor-intensive. 😊

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Alrighty then.

That’s all for this week, my friend.

Be well. Stay curious. See you again in two weeks, on May 5.

Warmly,

Kimberly