Keep
your content fresh
In Seattle, this is the time of year when we get some warm, dry days, and the flowering plum trees get pink with buds, and the snowdrops bloom, and you realize spring will come. There will be more rain, much more, but it will come. The promise makes one want to paint the living room and buy new pillows and wear pastels…OK, me anyway.
In a round-about way, a recent sunny Saturday inspired this article, because it's also a great time of year to give your messaging a rebirth. Keep your content fresh with these nine tips.
- Watch for oft-repeated words and stop using them. This is perhaps the most pervasive bad habit (I know I have to watch for it!). Hint: If you feel like you're saying the same thing over and over, you are.
- Strive for more colorful words. Just pick a handful and replace them with something more descriptive, more emotional, or just stronger. (In the previous tip, I just replaced "common" with "pervasive.")
- Trade places. Let someone else tackle the writing. Maybe they're not as skilled or as knowledgeable, but that's okay. You're just looking for inspiration through a novel approach or unusual take on the subject. As my youngest says, great minds think alike, greater minds think different.
- Adopt a radical new tone. If you're typically generic and boring, go wild! Go to the extreme. You can always tone it down later. Or be warm and fuzzy. Or silly. Or stern. Just change it up.
- Dare to be different. Everyone else in your industry does it one way? So why do you? It should be your goal to stand out from your competitors, not blend in. (Remember: If you can substitute your competitor's name for your own and the message still rings true, you have a problem.)
- Be very customer focused. Not in a tepid, just-dipping-your-toes-in way, but in an extreme, jump-in-the-deep-end way. Your customer wants to hear about her concerns, not yours. So talk to your customers in a way that snags their attention and demonstrates you feel their pain.
- Be very specific. If installation takes about half an hour, say it takes 29 minutes. If they'll cut their expenses with your doodad, tell them by how much exactly. Don't know? Of course you don't, every customer is different. But you can run tests, or use an existing customer as an example.
- Edit, pare down, butcher. See just how brief you can be.
- Alternatively, fluff it up with clever turns of phrase that make it fun to read.
Until next month,
Sharon
