Posts filed under 'Writing'
Nick Usbourne’s
contest to write short lines that “protest the ridiculous jargon and cliches that permeate business language” has spawned some great entries. The winning entries have been applied to
mugs which you can buy at cafepress
. I think the price is a bit steep, but you have to like mugs which proclaim:
If my undivided attention is mission critical, we might have a problem
Shift my paradigm before I have had my morning coffee and I will core your competencies
and
Sorry I’m late, but my paradigm shifted over my integrated solution and I couldn’t gain traction
You can see
who submitted what catchphase
on Nick’s page. My favourites of the “also rans” come from Donald Carson:
I’m implementing a synergistic beverage action plan
Finally a concave interface for all my mission-critical caffeinated initiatives
and (how could this not have been a winner?), from Simon Young:
We appear to have begun an upstream shift while simultaneously experiencing a paddle deficiency
If you are ever tempted to write or speak like this,
try being ruthlessly specific instead
. In the words of contestant Mary Hughes:
If you still say ‘Think Outside the Box’ you don’t.
October 17th, 2005
I know at least one of the regular readers here is planning a white paper, so this
research data on white paper title effectiveness
from Marketing Sherpa is timely. Follow the link now, because the article will be subscription only after 16 October. The research looks at some of the 3.5 million white papers downloaded from CNET Networks B2B sites over the past 24 months, in a bid to find which titles were the most popular, in particular with highly qualified prospects, as opposed to those who are just window shopping.
Key research findings - your white paper will be downloaded by more interested prospects if you:
-
Keep your white paper title short and simple:
Long titles, puns, jargon and brand names turn prospects off, whereas a scannable, relevant title will generate a lot of downloads from interested prospects. “Hook, Line and Sinker: Phishing attacks going professional” is a no no. “Phishing and the Threat to Corporate Networks” works well.
-
Break long titles up:
If you must use a long title then use a colon to break it up, like this: “Hosted CRM vs. In-House: Which Direction Should Your Company Take?”
-
Use the present participle:
Which means offer
ing
action steps eg “Eliminat
ing
,” “Identify
ing
,” “Prevent
ing
,” and so on
-
Check your search keyword statistics:
Once you have identified what your prospects are searching for, include those keywords in your white paper title. The difference might seem subtle, but the impact could be big. For example, white papers with “spyware” in the title were 77% more likely to be downloaded than white papers titled “anti-spyware,” because prospects typically search using the name of the problem they hope to solve, rather than name of the solution.
Lots of common sense here, but worth a read nonetheless.
October 6th, 2005
Great comment from Cliff Atkinson
on
Beyond mind mapped bullet pyramids
:
By stating the conclusion first, you also lighten the cognitive load on an audience, because they don’t have to struggle with holding many fragments of information in short-term memory before you explain what they all mean.
argues for the “conclusion first” approach for similar reasons.
A reader, no matter how intelligent, has only a limited amount of mental energy. Some of it will be used recognising and interpreting words, some seeing the relationship between ideas, and whatever is left comprehending their significance.
You can economise his need to spend time on the first two activities by presenting the ideas so that they can be comprehended with the least possible mental effort. To sequence ideas instead so that the mind has to go backward and forward to make connections is simply bad manners, and most readers react by refusing to do so.
Minto also makes the argument for the sake of clarity. Readers and listeners may misinterpret your message if you don’t make your point first:
The reader (or listener) will assume that ideas which appear together logically belong together. If you do not tell him in advance what the relationship is, but simply give the ideas one at a time, he will automatically look for similarities by which he can group the points being expressed…
Alas, people rarely put the same interpretation on groupings as you do…
August 16th, 2005
Jason Womack
linked back to this
June post from Cliff Atkinson
of
fame. Cliff argues that presenters should state their conclusion first. If the audience knows where they are going, they are more likely to pay attention. Great advice - and once again I am struck by the similarity between Beyond Bullet Points and
by
Barbara Minto
and even
by
Tony Buzan
.
Minto concentrates on business writing and gives the same advice: put the conclusion first and supporting information after. In fact Minto argues a conclusion at the end of the document may not even be needed. Buzan created mind maps to group information in a radiant hierarchy, with the most important point (effectively, the conclusion) in the centre.
This works because the human brain likes to group information. We cannot remember or process long lists of items, so our natural tendency is to look for linkage between separate items of new information. We group information items by drawing conclusions about the relationships between them. As we get more information, we start to make groups of groups. And to make sense of those new groups, we have to be able to group them with existing knowledge.
The conclusion gives your listeners or readers everything they need to group information, both with everything else you say or write and with what they already know. Why save it until last?
August 15th, 2005
Lifehack
points us to the
The Economist Style Guide
: what a great resource, for both writers and speakers. The biggest lesson I need to learn:
In general, be concise. Try to be economical in your account or argument (“The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out”—Voltaire). Similarly, try to be economical with words. “As a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigour it will give to your style.” (Sydney Smith) Raymond Mortimer put it even more crisply when commenting about Susan Sontag: “Her journalism, like a diamond, will sparkle more if it is cut.”
You can even test your writing style with the
Economist Style Guide Quiz
. I scored 9 out of 12. How did you do?
Bonus link:
50 writing techniques
, also via Lifehack.
August 13th, 2005
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