Mobile Commerce, SEO & Social Media Blog

Write as Powerfully as your Product

Your product is useful, innovative and everyone should have one. But how can you convince customers of its overwhelming greatness?

We all know the power of language when it comes to branding. But many of today’s professionals fall victim to their own education when it comes writing. In an essay by Animal Farm-author George Orwell, the English language “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” If communication starts to become stagnant, then our ideas could also take the same route.

“Write clearly—don’t lose communication with your readers.”

The good news is that there are solutions to salvaging our writing.

For the solutions:

1. Efficiency: Relate Writing to Running Your Business
2. Use Fresh Ideas
3. Don’t Let Your Brains Get the Best of Your Ideas

Relate Writing to Running Your Business

One way to look at successful writing is to relate it to running a business. Think of each word as a dollar in a budget and a composition as the result of that budget. In academic or professional settings, some writers feel compelled to inject a large vocabulary to sound official. Like a business that uses each dollar efficiently, we need every word to count.

Here’s an example of an inefficient sentence:

In my opinion, it is not an unjustifiable assumption that the proposal is not only devoid of an incontrovertible focus, but it also diverges from the main approach of solving the complexities behind the budget deficit.

And here is a much better-looking sentence after some quick housecleaning:

I think the proposal lacks a clear solution to our budget deficit.

Both sentences say the same thing, but the second is more efficient. Why?

• It’s quick: every word counts.
• It’s human: it sounds like a person speaking.
• It’s active: Active verbs mean active readers.

Take Stephen King’s advice: get to the point.

Ask yourself:

• What am I trying to say?
• What words will express it clearly?
• Can I make this shorter?

“Salvage your writing with fresh ideas.”

Use Fresh Ideas

Branding can’t happen without originality and neither can good writing. Consumers are more likely to remember and appreciate original content. Get creative. Before writing, pretend you’re the reader. Ask yourself questions like “So what?” and “What’s interesting about this topic?”

Clichés

Remember, overused metaphors and clichés stifle new ideas – not just the obvious, like “hard as a rock,” either. After writing in a certain field for so long, writers tend to emulate what they’re used to reading. What we end up with are a ton of paragraphs starting with “It is interesting to note” or “By definition.” Boring!

Overused phrases are like that lazy worker who squeaks by on the minimum, but offers nothing to make an impact. Like a good business owner, a good writer should be motivated to increase the “productivity” of these phrases.

“Keep your brain out of the equation.”

Don’t Let Your Brains Get the Best of Your Ideas

Many writers in professional settings are smart and want to write smart, but sometimes end up alienating readers by sounding like talking heads. Remember those long, drawn-out articles from your college psych class? Of course not!

One problem with striving for larger vocabulary is that a lot of writers confuse the definitions of the words they use, which results in confusing the reader.

A tip: best-selling author David Sedaris said in Newsweek that he reads a lot of his material aloud to prove whether he can get a laugh out of someone with his writing. Don’t think of it as dumbing down a vocabulary, because you’d never “dumb down” your business. Instead, we’re making our writing (our “product”) available to a larger audience by making our language more accessible.

And remember what Orwell said: “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”

Alicia McNally Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.