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2 Ways to Really Connect With Your Customer in Your Copywriting
Copyright © 2005 by Bruce Carlson One of the least talked-about areas in copywriting education is voice. This is probably because it’s tough to set general rules for something that’s so personal to each of us. After all, the same things go into...
Blast Your Writing Blocks
*Article Use Guidelines* This copyrighted article is free for you to use as content in opt-in publications, or on your Web site. When you use it in opt- in publications, or on a Web site, please include the resource box. However, please do not...
Creative Writing Tips - Have You Established Your Main Character At The Start?
In the beginning of your story you have to grab your readers’ interest and sustain it till the end. Our hook is our character. Readers keep on reading to find out more about the character. To see what he’ll do in the story; how he’ll solve his...
Starting a Freelance Writing Career (or How I Sifted Through the Muck and Found My Way)
So, the decision is final. I am a writer. Actually, I have always been a person who writes, but I have never applied the term to myself in a professional sense. Having pushed aside my financial fears and gained the requisite self-confidence, I...
The Secret to Good Writing
Skilful business writing involves getting your message across simply and quickly. This often means writing in a style that is easily read and understood by a broad audience. Yet, writing simply is often difficult for most of us. Why? The answer...
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The Secret to Good Writing
Skilful business writing involves getting your message across simply and quickly. This often means writing in a style that is easily read and understood by a broad audience.
Yet, writing simply is often difficult for most of us.
Why? The answer lies in our school education. We learnt that if we used big words and complex sentences, we were more likely to get an ‘A’ by our English teacher or University lecturer. The education system taught us that people who use a broad range of vocabulary are more intelligent that the rest of us.
There is nothing wrong with writing beautifully pieces of prose that feature a stunning range of vocabulary knowledge. However, such writing is unsuitable for a business market.
No business manager has the time to wade through material that meanders and weaves before a point is made. They are even less likely to have time to grab a dictionary to work out what the writer is trying to say.
When I used to work as a market research consultant, I had the impossible task of trying to write market research reports that seemed interesting. My immediate response was to write a report that would make my University lecturer’s proud. Sadly, my colleagues all felt the same way.
It wasn’t until we had a business writing consultant come in to train us about how to write at the level of a Year 8 student that we realised the folly of our ways.
Using my newly found skills of writing a report using simple English, I proudly produced my ‘easy on the brain’ report to my manager (who missed the writing class). He told me ‘You write like you talk’. To this day, I still don’t know if he was criticising my talking or writing ability, but I gathered either way he wasn’t happy.
However, from a communication point of view, this style of writing is perfect for getting your message across quickly.
Later on in my career, I worked at a company that prided itself on its easy to read reports. While this was true (to some degree), one of the directors loved
to throw in a difficult word in every report he wrote to make the marketing manager reach for his dictionary. He thought this was really clever and that his clients would be in awe of his knowledge. I’m guessing his clients thought he was a tosser (interestingly, I met an ex-client years later who told me that when their company received one of his reports they would quickly scan it to find the unusual word and then erupt into hysterical laughter).
Articles that are written to impress your audience about how clever you are, do nothing more than distance them. No matter how learned your market is, they still prefer to read information that is easy to digest.
A great way to test whether your writing is easy to comprehend is to read it out loud. If someone spoke to you, using those words, could you instantly understand what they were getting at or would you have to really concentrate?
Scripts for marketing videos are no different. In fact, they need to be extremely simple in order to quickly grab the attention of people walking past at a trade show, for example.
Writing that is heavy on technical terms and jargon can be a real turn off. The beauty of a marketing video is that it uses both pictures and words. The saying “A picture tells a thousand words” is a powerful concept with corporate movies. It means you can actually get away with saying less, but easily get your message across, because the pictures do all of the talking.
Surprisingly, clear writing can be quite a difficult writing style to master, but the effort is well rewarded. And look at the bright side, at least people won’t burst into fits of laughter when they read your masterpiece.
About the Author
Marie-Claire Ross is one of the partners of Digicast. Digicast works with organisations who are not satisfied that their marketing and training materials are helping their business grow. She can be contacted on 0500 800 234 (Australia wide) or at mc@digicast.com.au. The website is at www.digicast.com.au.
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