I bet you've come across a lot of word-shaped air without even knowing what it was.
You probably didn't pay attention to it. Your eyes glossed over it as you were scanning a website or an email, looking for something interesting to latch onto.
That's exactly what word-shaped air is. The meaningless buzzwords. The overused cliches.
I'm talking about words like passion, innovation, leadership, execution, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art. And quotes like "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you've fed him for a lifetime." You've seen them a thousand times!
Every entrepreneur is, by default, kinda innovative when they’ve created a new solution to a problem. And nobody doubts that you’re passionate about (or at least interested in) what you do.
Using these words doesn't differentiate you one bit from the competition.
But I get why it feels safe to use these words. Everyone does, which is exactly the problem.
So what should you write instead?
If you're passionate about your work, how does this look like in practice? What do you do that demonstrates your passion? And how does this benefit your customers? Write that down!
Yes, this is going to be a way longer paragraph than simply saying, "I'm passionate." But it has the specificity to keep your readers attention and get your message across.
(Btw, the OG of conversion copywriting, Joanna Wiebe, coined the term word-shaped air, and I highly recommend checking out her resources on Copyhackers.com.)
