With over 35,000 words to choose from and almost 1/3 of our time spent on email, words matter now more than ever. Layer on all of the distractions, clutter and excess and it makes you wonder why, outside of professional copywriters, many of us spend little time reflecting on how to make our words work harder for us.  Clear and relevant writing wins over complicated and bloated every time. Check out this great article from Mike Reed in the HBR for 6 tips that can help you improve your language and writing skills immediately. Your co-workers will thank you.

Here’s the cheat sheet.

1. Talk like a human, not a business

Traditional business writing is plagued by stiff formality and jargon. Maximize the potential of this insight to leverage your linguistic expression to drive communications ROI;) Drop the jargon. Keep the language simple, direct and natural.

2. Cut complexity

You’ve had lots of training to make you smart, a by-product of which is often the use of complex expressions. Stay away from overblown language. Keep things familiar, approachable and simple.

3. Make your content glanceable

Everybody is distracted and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content, most of which is delivered on little mobile screens. We are all skimming content looking for keywords and sentences. Accept the reality and tailor your content and formatting accordingly. You’ve mastered it on social, just bring a similar mindset into other channels.

4. Get to the point

The things that are important to you might not be important to everyone else, so think like a journalist; Have a strong headline to grab attention and anchor your content followed by the most important piece of info the reader needs to know. Only then should you build out additional layers to the story.

5. Human benefits, not product features

People don’t think in features, they think about the benefit that those features create for them. Always focus on the benefit. Apple didn’t launch the iPod as a mobile music player with 5GB of memory and a screen, they launched 1000 songs in your pocket. Benefits always beat features.

6. Visualize your reader, and write for them

Your reader isn’t you, which is the default lens that we all have when we develop content. Override this instinct by visualizing your audience. It’s always Audience before Content. Who are they and what do they want from this piece of communication? Warren Buffet is a great example, who visualizes his sisters when writing his company’s annual letter, which always balances accessibility and information in an inherently complicated business.

Check out the full article by Mike Reed that was published in the Harvard Business Review.

https://hbr.org/2019/12/writing-about-business-without-being-a-bore