Is being long-winded hurting your communications?
Posted February 5th, 2010“Give it to me short, sweet and if possible, in a colorful graph. Otherwise, I’m going to ignore you.”
Don’t you feel that way sometimes? Dr. Taly Weiss did some research on her blog TrendsSpotting that shows that of the top 100 blogs — most of them routinely have posts of less than 500 words.
As communicators, we often have complex issues to discuss or complicated products/services to explain. How do we accurately and adequately get the message across in this short and sweet world?
Here are some ideas we had.
- Chunk it. Break up your content into bite-sized pieces. If the reader is willing to invest in the first paragraph…and it’s relevant, they’ll keep reading.
- Visually trick the reader’s eye. Use lots of white space and color to break up copy and create the illusion that the copy is shorter than it is.
- Divert them. Use your initial pieces (direct mail, blog post etc.) to give your potential customer the highlights and then provide them with repositories of information. Point them to your website, blog archives, more detailed collateral, etc.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions? If so, we would love to hear them.
