Content is king for modern day marketers, but what good is that if your messages don’t rally your followers?
The answer is another “C” word – conversation. People enjoy reading clear, easy-to-understand writing. The simplest, clearest style is to write the way you talk.
This is especially important in marketing, where content is an economical stand-in for a salesperson. A light, conversational style is much easier to read than stuffy, formal prose.
So how do you connect with warmth, authenticity and humanity? Here are some tips for keeping it real.
- Imagine yourself speaking to a person instead of writing. Would you say, “This car has sufficient acceleration” or “This car really takes off”?
- Use slang expressions such as goof off, pop in, and kick back. Their everyday flavor can help strike a chord of familiarity with readers.
- Eliminate technical jargon, unnecessary words, redundancies and run-on sentences. You’d risk annoying people by rambling on in person, so don’t do it in your written content.
- Know your audience and what’s important to them, then speak their language and appeal to their interests.
- Use less formal contractions where you can – you’re, they’re, we’ve, I’m.
- Pepper your content with pronouns – I, we, you, they.
- Use a simpler word wherever possible – help instead of assist, buy instead of purchase, get instead of obtain.
While these choices may seem minor when viewed separately, their cumulative impact creates a conversational tone that increases clarity and reduces confusion.
When all is said and done, talking the talk that gets read comes down to one irrefutable fact: When you write simply and make your message easy to digest, you become the reader’s friend. When you write pretentiously and make comprehension a challenge, you become a royal bore.
