How to Keep Your Readers Coming Back For More
The other day I was doing some research on an organic insecticide that my husband and I had used on our vegetable plants in our garden. Some of our plants died and the bugs are still thriving. So, I checked out the website to see what we did wrong (as it turns out, we did nothing wrong. More on this in a future post).
Anyhow, when I navigated through the company's website, I saw the unthinkable: a 29-line paragraph!
Now, I'm used to reading excessively long sentences and paragraphs; the ancient Romans are infamous for preposition after preposition. But that's Latin. That's the way it is, and you either read it or you don't.
When it comes to modern-day English and the Internet, people don't have the patience or the time to read a jumbled mess. They like to scan text so they can glean the information they need quickly and efficiently.
If you want your readers to read your content–this applies to all of your business communications–all the way through and to keep coming back for more, you need to conform to their needs. Here's what you need to do:
- Keep your writing succinct.
- Write clearly so your message makes sense.
- Give your readers what they want; provide them with something valuable.
- Make your content easy to read by adding white space and using bullets when appropriate.
- Avoid excessively long sentences.
- Choose words carefully and vary sentence structure.
- Don't waste time with the "unnecessaries" (i.e., he/she – just pick one).
So, do your written business materials need some revising? Be sure to check out my other writing and business posts for more tips.
- It’s been a long time… - February 10, 2024
- Realizations About Tracking Progress - May 28, 2020
- Goal Setting & Productivity 101 - May 25, 2020