If silence is golden, brevity is platinum. That might be an overstatement, but here’s a good rule for your marketing content: If you can’t say anything brief, don’t say anything at all.
Think about it: When you talk to customers, do you shout at them? Do you go on and on about yourself? Do you keep them from speaking? Of course not. People wouldn’t listen to you.
The way you write your marketing should be the same as the way you talk to customers. Allow for pauses. For space. Writing is your voice. Make it sound like you.
If you must say less, it follows that what you do say needs to be important. So brevity also gets you thinking about your message. When you’re thinking hard about what you’re going to say, chances are it will be worth listening to.
I was thinking about the reasons I give people to be brief when they’re writing content. Sometimes, people still trust it, and I understand. I get all the reasons people think they want to fill a page with words. And the intentions are good. But it still works against them
I found a good example of what I’m talking about: it’s the Maui page on Hawaii’s official tourism site.
Now, why would I be thinking about Maui as I sit in the West Virginia mountains in February? Who knows. What’s interesting is the strong example they provide on how brevity works in web copy.
Maui is one of the most famous vacation destinations in the world. There’s no end of interesting things to do or see on a two week trip. The economy is driven almost exclusively by tourism. They’ve got a lot to say, right?
And when you land on the site you see: Two paragaphs and five bullets.
It’s not because the writer assumes you know everything. You wouldn’t be at the site if that were true. It’s because she’s allowing the reader to participate. The reader wants information, not the sales pitch. The more good information he can get, the more likely he’ll be to, in this case, go to Maui.
Being brief invites readers to explore, not wade through piles of stuff. By just writing what counts, you give someone searching for tourism information exactly what they’re looking for: a visit.
Tags: business trust, content marketing, Copywriting, Social Media