We could talk all day about the importance of blogging. Fresh content! Ranking for keywords! Brand-building! Cool, add that to the list.
But how do you say something that resonates? High school English didn’t teach you to write about your business.
At Perfect Pitch Concepts, describing our services simply remains one of our toughest challenges. Minimize, we say. Condense, we say. Pare it down.
Measuring your words may be as easy as asking yourself, “What does that actually mean?”
Lose the Fluff
Besides fame and discord, Ernest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger had something critical in common. Concision. Their writing is direct and accessible to the general public, and their popularity endures. So take a tip: your sentences can be choppy or incomplete, but keep them brief. Why?
- It’s easy to see what’s essential when you remove what’s expendable.
- Readers process words during the full stop at the end of a sentence. Shorter sentences allow more time to think.
- By lightening the load, your busy, busy audience is emboldened to actually read your words. And if you don’t overstuff your sentences, readers can digest the meaning, too.
Break Down the Jargon
The best way to lose an audience is to intimidate or confuse. There’s no MBA on my résumé, so when I see a blog post saturated with DKI CPL PPP SEP TBPR, I run. My immediate response is nope, not for me. Not today.
It doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re trying to broaden your audience, take the time to spell out what you do. How do you explain your work to someone with no grasp on the terms you’re using?
Introduce the words used in your industry, but clarify them in lay terms. That way you demonstrate your authority on the topic while reaching out to those of us trying to learn something new. And giving us the gift of knowledge! Aw!
Informing potential clients gives them comfort in your humanness, trust in your business, and confidence in your brand.
EDIT
Many writers like to say that writing is rewriting. It’s true. If your initial draft is anything like mine, it’s a wreck. My first move is to lean on the delete button. It’s hard to begin again, but addressing your weak spots gets you that much closer to the music in your head.
Read your post aloud. It’s a little scary to animate what you’ve written—especially if it’s beastly—but speaking your words is so necessary. Hearing your writing teaches you what sounds natural.
At PPC, each of our posts is a team effort. With one writer and an editor or two, we more easily correct the errors and meanderings that a single writer often misses. Our posts probably improve just by anticipating our colleagues reading over our shoulders.
Finally, a mistake I make again and again. Writing into the night is a lot more effective if you wake up and glance at the thing in the morning. Before hitting publish, review your post one last time, even if you’d rather bag it up and chuck it out on its way.
For more tips on accessible business writing, check out our first installment of the series, and check out the next one:
Cartoon: David Fletcher of CloudTweaks