10 Tips to Help You Create Clear & Effective Written Content!

If you have to create any kind of written content for your business – a new page for your website, a brochure, a blog post or an advertisement for example, there are some simple things you can do that will improve the quality of your writing and help to ensure you get the results you want.

1: Know your audience: Make sure you’re clear about who you’re writing for. The more you know about your reader, the more accurately you will be able to tailor the style, tone and content of your writing.

2: Write in active voice: Use the active voice to help make copy briefer, clearer and more emphatic. The form of a verb will change depending on whether the subject acts (active) or is acted upon (passive). The passive statement ‘the mouse was caught by the cat’ for example, is better rephrased as the active alternative, ‘the cat caught the mouse’.

3:  Make it personal: Using personal pronouns such as, ‘I’, ‘we’ or ‘you’ to talk directly to the reader will help make your copy more engaging. By writing as if you are addressing an individual directly, the reader will be able to picture themselves in the text – and from a writing perspective, using this technique will make it easier to structure the key points you want to communicate.

4: Use creative headlines: Your headlines are going to have to work hard to grab the attention of a reader and draw them in to your copy. Try to make them as interesting, creative and persuasive as possible, but keep them succinct – you can always use sub-headlines to expand further on what you have to say.

5: Ask rhetorical questions: Asking rhetorical questions is an effective way to engage your reader. Use them in the main text, or as eye-catching headlines.

6: Include statistics & facts: Statistics and facts add weight to an argument, and as such are excellent tools to help convince your reader about important points you want to make.

7: Use quotations & expert opinions: If you can, use quotations from other people to back up what is being said or promoted, it will make the argument seem much more appealing. If other people, particularly experts, believe in something, this tool can be used to convince the reader that it must be right.

 8: Keep it short: Less is more. You’re likely to communicate more clearly if you try to keep to shorter sentences and paragraphs. There are no fixed rules, but as a general guide, keep sentences to between 20 – 40 words, and paragraphs to 10 – 12 lines. Don’t attempt to t address more than one subject in a paragraph.

9: Mix things up: Having made the previous observation, varying the length of sentences and paragraphs will help retain the interest of your reader by making it more visually interesting – as will the use of bullet-point lists

10: Be consistent in formatting: However you decide to format your writing, make sure you’re consistent, using the same style for headlines, sub headlines and body copy throughout. Take care over capitalisation, font sizes, and your use of treatments like bold and italics.

Do you need help getting your message across in writing?

Contact us now to discuss your project and let us help sharpen up your copy! Call us on 07801 192552 or email us at hello@deep-mc.co.uk.