I have shamelessly—shamelessly—cribbed the ideas in this post from the fine folks at Manta (www.manta.com) and Jessica Swanson of the Shoestring Marketing University.
What they want you to do is to write simply and make every word count. The itsy-bitsy Manta blurb advises you to “Stay focused on what you are trying to do without writing above the heads or interests of your audience.” Ms. Swanson echoes the idea in the first part of this sentence when she counsels you to decide what you want to accomplish before you write a word.
Ms. Swanson offers several tips for would-be ad copywriters. I think they’re helpful to all writers, and I recommend you read her article, which will take you all of five minutes. The tips I particularly like are:
- Always write with action in mind: Tell readers what you want them to do. Don’t expect that they’ll intuit your intentions. Help them get past inertia by suggesting that they try, buy, visit a webpage, or whatever.
- Keep it simple: Write straightforward, easy-to-understand stuff. And consider writing at the fifth-grade level. I’d say “good grief,” except that simple stuff is easy to absorb. Actually, I read a few years back that the Wall Street Journal is written for tenth graders, so maybe this injunction is not as crazy as it seems.
Write in chunks of time comfortable to you: If you’re new to writing, sitting still and thinking, which our culture does not encourage, may seem a bit like torture. Even for professionals, writing in 15-minute chunks may work best if you’re in a restless mood. Take a break, I say, wash those coffee cups in the sink, check the mailbox, and hit it again.
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