How to Show Personality in Your Website Copy as an Introvert with Krista Walsh

When it comes to any form of copy you put out online, you want it to sound like things you would typically say. When you think of personality-packed copy as an introvert, it tends to lean more towards how an extrovert would speak. Suppose you know that you don’t sound this way in person. In that case, it’s a good idea to focus on natural ways to bring your personality across online for any of your copy purposes, especially your website copy. Let’s dive into how to get personality into your copy as an introvert and some other helpful website copy tips.

Our guest on the podcast today is Krista Walsh. She is a website copywriter and a strategist helping client-based businesses turn their websites into lead-generating machines. She’s the person you call when you want your website done right from the ground up. 

Krista’s clients have gone on to book 4-figure services straight from their website without sales calls and rank in the top 5 of Google search results for competitive search terms.

Outside of her work as a copywriter, Krista enjoys watching TV shows about suburban moms who get in over their heads and end up living lives of crime.

In this episode, Krista and I dive into:

• Her 9-5 job in the book publishing industry that led her to become a website copywriter and strategist
• How to pack in your personality for your copy as an introvert
• What to look for when hiring a copywriter for your business
• Using the voice of customer research method to shift the focus onto your audience
• …and much more

From a Job in Book Publishing to Website Copywriter and Strategist

How Krista got started on her entrepreneurial journey is really interesting. After graduating college, she got a job in the book publishing industry. Not only did the traditional 9-5 path make her parents happy, but Krista thought it would be her long-term path because it was in the creative field. She loved books, but it turns out her job sucked. It didn’t have anything to do with the company per se, but just doing menial tasks and not having ownership of her work didn’t speak to her. As an introvert, especially, it was exhausting to feel like you had to be on all of the time in the office setting. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, but she quit her job to teach English part-time in Spain instead to buy herself some time.

While in Spain, she had lots of extra time and wanted extra money for traveling, so she began freelancing on Upwork. If you aren’t familiar with Upwork, it is a freelancing platform similar to Fiverr. She started getting all kinds of work, like writing and editing jobs, through that platform. Over one year, her skillset morphed into copywriting predominantly. After a few more years, she realized that she wanted to focus solely on websites, so she invested in learning about UX and SEO to hone in on her processes. She is now a website copywriter and strategist who helps you understand how people land on your website, what kinds of things they need to hear, and what journey through your web pages they need to take to become a client eventually.

Personality Packed Website Copy That Feels Natural for Introverts

One of Krista’s frustrations about the copywriting world is the prominently displayed copywriting examples where the idea of personality itself is related to leadership and being charismatic as the default personality we all need to have. These personalities tend to be stronger, more prominent, and extroverted in nature. They tend to be the ones reflected in the copywriting world when it comes to personality-packed copy. 

For some, this means being jokey, super bold, and dishing tough love out to their audience. Sometimes this comes off as the super enthusiastic boss babe style or with tons of emojis and exclamation points. This exemplifies what it means to write personality-packed copy right now, but it’s leaving out the other half of the world who would never write like that or certainly don’t talk like that. It is tough to try to force that sort of personality into your writing, but if you did write like that and somebody meets you in real life, and you’re not like that, it will be really jarring for the other person, too. Even for introverts and those that tend to be on the quieter side, the personality-packed copy will not resonate with them. If you are forcing yourself to pretend to be this way in your copy, you are turning away people who probably would be a personality match for you.

As an introvert, you can bring in more of your natural speech to your copy and quit looking to jam-pack your copy in a fake way. A great resource that Krista has is a blog post she wrote about how the quieter and more sensitive introvert type can put some personality into their copy. It has some great tips for showing your personality more naturally.

What to Look for When Hiring a Copywriter for Your Business

Before we dive into finding a copywriter for your business, it is important to mention that you know who you are serving and what types of services or offer you provide. For example, if you say you help all female entrepreneurs, that is an enormous group of people. You have to step back, get clarity, and ensure your services are working and getting results before hiring someone in any type of high-ticket done-for-you service. 

If you have reached the point where you want to pass the task of copywriting off to an expert and you have it in your budget to hire a copywriter, the first thing Krista says to ask yourself is what type of project you need help with. There are generally two types of people when it comes to needing help. 

1. Someone who needs ongoing support – blogging help, social media captions, email newsletters that typically recur every month
2. Someone who needs a one-off project or piece of content – usually more sales-focused, like needing a sales page for a course you are launching

If you’re in that first camp where you’re looking for an ongoing person, look for somebody who is pretty plugged into your industry because you will be relying on them for like ongoing content. If you are looking for project-based copy help, like a sales page writer or website copywriter, you should find someone specializing in that platform.

It’s so important that they will come in with the knowledge of how to do copywriting for that element versus just understanding the best principles and trying to apply them to this different project they haven’t ever worked on. You don’t want to risk someone learning as they go on your project. 

Using Voice of Customer Research to Take the Focus Off of You and Onto Your Audience

One of the most significant pieces of Krista’s process as a copywriter is interviewing her client’s clients. For instance, if you begin to work with Krista, she will interview your clients or students. It’s beneficial when someone is very clear about who they want to attract more of so that she can interview the people who match that client avatar and bring in a perspective of future people they also want to connect with.

It may feel intimidating as an introvert to do the voice of customer research, but when you have this data, it can be instrumental for you to help take the focus off of you and onto your customer or clients. Instead of focusing on your brand personality, how you talk and sound, and if people will like you by your brand voice, you now focus on talking to your clients and getting that voice of customer research. It can give you a ton of confidence that the messages you’re writing will resonate because they’re based on research and allow you to forget about the pressure to have a strong brand voice. 

The Four Effective Website Strategies For Client-Based Businesses

The idea of website strategy can feel a little abstract or theoretical, so Krista decided to break it down using her real-life examples and real client work. She only works with client-based businesses like people who offer services or programs. People have different business models, so they also have other preferences and ways that make the most sense based on their types of services and how people flow through their website.

When talking about this website user journey, it essentially means that somebody has landed on your homepage, but where do you want them to go, and what’s the final action? You have to think carefully about that journey through your website before you think about design and copy because everything is in line with the sales mindset instead of throwing everything up on your website to get the information out there. Krista made these four website strategies up based on client work from the past several years.

The first user journey is called Let’s Just Talk.

Someone lands on your homepage, and you want them to go right for the call to action. They have read through your content, and you want them to book a call or inquire. Krista recommends this strategy for people who have non-simple services like interior design, mindset coaching, or other complex services.

The second user journey is called Two Plus Services.

This website strategy is pretty straightforward for anybody with two or more different services or two or more different audiences. When you do this, you want people to be directed to a page that speaks to them precisely as quickly as possible because it is hard to write your entire website speaking to two different groups of people. A great example would be an accounting firm that offers bookkeeping services and tax return filing. The deliverables will be distinct, the way you work with people will be different, and how you talk to those other groups of people will be different. Instead of speaking to everybody, you want them to go from your homepage quickly to a services page, then help them choose the specific service for them to go to, and then take action. Sometimes, instead of having standalone services pages, it’s just a section on their homepage, and then they click into the specific service. 

The third user journey is called the Signature Experience.

This is for people with one primary service or offer that makes up most of their revenue, like 80% or more. They’ve dialed in their experience, and they don’t have a ton of different offers. Some examples of this might be a business coach with a 12-month group program as their main offer or a website designer who only does custom websites for super high-end clients. The client is experiencing something, and the service is high-ticket. Krista recommends making your whole website a sales pitch for this one offer because that’s what’s making you the most money, and you should double down on it. From the homepage, it essentially goes to an experience page, then a pricing or investment page, and then the final call to action. 

The final user journey is called the Down Sell Options.

This is for somebody who offers a high ticket main service and has a much lower cost secondary option. This isn’t like the Two Plus Services, where you have brand design and brand strategy similar in cost. This is for somebody with a main high ticket offer and a smaller secondary option. Krista’s website uses this strategy because she has the done-for-you copywriting service and then website audits, which are thousands of dollars less. The process here would be to have your homepage show two options; the more prominent button would be pushing people towards your main services page, but then you have a smaller secondary call to action that is going to a down sell option page. Each of those has its distinct action steps. To better visualize what real-life examples look like for these strategies, go to Krista’s blog post sharing about the four different strategies.

Krista gave some amazing insights and strategies on writing personality-packed copy as an introvert. She shared how she went from her book publishing 9-5 job to becoming a website copywriter, how to put personality in your website copy as an introvert, tips for hiring a copywriter for your business, using voice of customer research to take the focus off of you and onto your audience, and the four effective website strategies for client-based businesses.

Have you ever fallen for the extroverted personality-packed copy strategy before in your business as an introvert? It’s okay if you have because I have been there, too, but now you want to make sure that you use copy that portrays who you are naturally.

A Breakdown of This Episode

[1:31] How Krista started in the book publishing industry and left it to become a website copywriter and strategist

[8:03] Putting your natural personality into your website copy as an introvert

[18:27] What you should know when you decide to hire a copywriter for your business

[23:51] Using the voice of customer research to take the focus off of you and onto your audience

[29:29] The four effective website strategies for client-based businesses and the user’s journey through your website

If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to drop a five-star rating + review with your biggest takeaway, so that other introverts can find this podcast for guidance and support through their introvert entrepreneur journey!

Download the Episode Transcript

 Resources Mentioned in the Show

• TheTaraReid.com
• Join the Introvertpreneur Club
• Apply for a VIP Creativity Day
• Content Kits for Service Providers
• Course: Content to Clients
• Facebook  
• Instagram
• Krista’s Instagram
• Krista’s Website
• Krista’s Services
• Krista’s Blog Post on 4 Website Strategies for User Journey
• Blog Post: Specific Ways for Introverts to Put Personality in Their Copy
• Freebie: DIY Website Checklist