Guest: Kim - qualified Web Content writer
Step One: Boil your audience down to a set of principles
Honest picture of audience Jakob Nielsen ‘Your audience is selfish, lazy and ruthless’
- Only thinking about their own needs - “Where is that what I need?, forget all this comprehensive content”
- Lazy - don’t want work hard
- Ruthless - will drop engangement quickly
Book: ‘Dont make me think’ - Steve Kroog
Quickest way to get what we want, and sacrifice all else
Bombardment of content, so the user is averse to lingering
Step Two: Make your content easy on the eye
Make content simple as possible
- No introductions!
- Short paragraphs! 2-3 lines
- Short sentences! ⇐16 words
- Abundant subheadings
- Abundant Sublines (what is a ‘subline’?)
Very ‘lookist’, audience is very disciminating on first glance
Get to the point, as fast as possible
Start with key message
Writing Frameworks
Book: ‘Letting of your words’ - Ginny ‘reddis’(?)
Structure content in terms of ‘bite’, ‘snack’, ‘meal’
- ‘Bite’ → Headline, hook: Statement of topic attention grabbing, clear, very easy to digest
- ‘Snack’ → Brief summary of main themes: Even 3 bullet points
- ‘Meal’ → Stratified by subheadings referring to bullets or main points of snack
** Good for Landing pages
Writing framework: GUSTA method - longer form writing
- G: Grab attention
- U: Understanding → Show affinity with the issue the audience has, or the context they are in
- S: Solution → Describe the thing you are selling
- T: Trust → Addressing Questions, concerns
- A: Action → How much is the solution? “Buy it now”! Show how much it is
Kieran - Writing framework: ‘Problem, agitate, solution’
- Outline problem
- Agitate → Extrapolate details of issue, get into nitty gritty
- Show solution
Kim:
Get over yourself! Assume the audience won’t read a word you say
Tools
‘speechify’ → Automated reader which reads your content back to you Does it have rhythm and pace?
‘onelook.com’ → Alternative word suggestor (with contextual bearing??)
We are more intellectual when using simpler words, the output is more thoughtful