Write as if you are talking to the reader.
Content rules. Whether you’re tweeting, writing blog posts, or contributing to a LinkedIn group discussion, it is content that drives relevant social media conversations and connects your company to your social network. But creating content that your audience will want to read can be challenging.
Imagine you’re reading this paragraph in a consulting firm’s blog:
An organization’s business architecture revolves around five broad areas viz. the customer segment, scope of products or services, geographic coverage, strategic differentiation, and profit pools. During the course of an M&A, organizations tend to alter one or more parameters of their business architecture which will impact their IT strategy needed to enhance customer reach, add efficiencies, reduce cost, add competitive advantage or enable business processes that could bolster any of the aforementioned.
Challenging to read*, isn’t it? Too often, businesses create content just like this and put it out on their social media channels. Then they wonder why they get so little engagement.
How can you write simply and well, so that others will want to connect with your company?
These 15 tips will help you create engaging content:
- Before you start writing, decide the three main messages you want to get across to your reader. Stick to discussing these points in your piece, even if you find others equally compelling. Digress too often, and you risk losing the reader’s interest.
- Write for the reader, not yourself. Be respectful of your reader’s intelligence and time by getting to the point quickly. Be sure to relate your topic to the reader’s needs.
- Write as if you were having a conversation with the reader. Avoid using too much technical jargon that may not be familiar to your reader. Plain English is always best.
- Avoid overused business words and phrases that can make your writing appear dated as often as possible.
- The title of your work is essential. It should compel the reader to know more and include the most important messages you want to get across. If you were writing about a new information technology solution, your title might be “New Info Tech Solution Reduces Risk, Increases Return on Investment.”
- Hook your reader in the first paragraph. You can do this by asking questions or sketching a scenario in a few sentences.
- Most readers will skim and dive into read-only if something catches their eye. Try using a WordPress quiz plugin to create engaging quizzes for your website.. Use a mix of short and long sentences and lots of white space to make your writing more appealing.
- Use bullets, checklists, and subheads to guide your reader through your writing and keep them interested. You can also bold your main points to be more evident as the reader skims.
- Avoid using the passive voice. For example, say, “Joe saw him.” rather than “He was seen by Joe.” The first is short and precise. The second is longer and therefore harder to read. Too much passive voice puts the reader to sleep.
- When you use technical terms or acronyms, define them on first use, even if you think your reader may be familiar with them.
- Make your points as simple as possible without dumbing down your topic. Please don’t make your reader work too hard to understand what it is you’re trying to say; when the reading gets too complex, readers bailout.
- Support your points with relevant examples, analogies, or short stories. This brings your content to life and lets readers relate to it.
- Declutter your writing. When you’ve completed your first draft, go back and read it to use shorter sentences and fewer words. For example, use “our books” instead of “the books that belong to us.”
- Proof and edit your work before publishing it. It’s easy to overlook this step if you’re on deadline. But rereading your work will allow you to spot things that need fixing – poor word choice, passive voice, typos, etc. These often aren’t obvious in the drafting stage.
- Close with a call to action. What is it that you want readers to do? Contact your company for help? Offer comments on your blog post?
* If you like statistics, this passage has a Flesch-Kincaid reading level of 21.7 – well beyond college level – and a Flesch reading ease of 4 out of 100 points.
Loraine Kasprzak
Loraine Kasprzak, Advantage Marketing’s Founder and Managing Director, is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) and MBA with over 17 years of hands-on experience in marketing communications and strategy. Loraine has facilitated communications strategies and programs for various clients, including engineering and environmental firms, healthcare and information technology companies, startups, and non-profits. She blogs about marketing and social media at http://www.advantage-marketingblog.com and can be reached at lkasprzak@advantage-marketing.com.