Hey Reader,

"I'm confused about what messaging actually is. Copy is words. Messaging is words. So how are these words different?"

If you've ever wondered this, you're asking exactly the right question.

And nobody in our industry answers it well. We say "you need clear messaging," hand you a worksheet or a custom GPT, and hope something clicks.

Of course it's confusing. Both show up as words on a page. Your website copy is words. Your "messaging" is apparently also... words?

It sounds like marketing people invented two names for the same thing so they could sell it to you twice.

But there is a difference:

Messaging is the set of decisions you're making about the words. Copy is what those decisions sound like once someone writes them down.

Think of it this way: Copy is the construction crew. Messaging is the architect with the blueprint.

When you’re building a house, the architect doesn't show up with lumber. She shows up with a plan. How many rooms. Where the load-bearing walls go. Which direction the kitchen faces.

The construction crew builds what the plan says. They're skilled. They're fast. But hand them a pile of materials and tell them to build a house, and you get an expensive mess. Or you get nothing at all, because they're standing around waiting for somebody to decide something.

Here's the blueprint. Eight decisions, in this order:

1. Who your work is for (and not for)
2. What you want to be known for
3. What your clients believe now about their situation
4. The problem, named their way — in their language, not yours
5. The shift you're asking them to make
6. Why choose you, over the competition
7. The proof and results that give people a reason to trust you
8. The words you own

Now look at what happens when those decisions haven't been made.

You sit down to write a LinkedIn post. Or an email. Or the "about" section of a proposal. And four hours later you have three sentences you don't like.

You’re not a slow writer. You're making eight decisions and writing a sentence at the same time.

And because you make them fresh in the moment, they come out differently every time.

Which is why your website says one thing, your LinkedIn bio says another, and the way you described your work at that dinner party was something else completely.

Make the decisions once, and writing turns into something closer to assembly. You're pulling from something you already decided.

Copy is downstream. Messaging comes first.

If you want the deeper version of this — including where messaging fits in the 3 Doors Method and how to tell if yours is actually working — I updated a whole post about it: What Is a Messaging Strategy?​

If you read that list and thought "I have never once decided number 3," you're in good company.

Most of the experts I talk to have made two or three of these, by accident, sometime around 2019.

Hit reply and tell me which one you've never made. I might have an idea or two for you.

Yours in rebellion,
Michelle

P.S. Making these eight decisions is what your first months in the Expert Up Club are for. You walk out with an Expert Messaging Guide — the blueprint, written down — so you stop rebuilding it every time you open a doc. Learn more about the club and book a private tour →​

Dr. Michelle Mazur Message Strategist & Founder of The Expert Up Club ​YouTube / 3 Word Rebellion Book​

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