Nothing moves us more than powerful words. And nothing can kill a call to action faster than the wrong wording. You want your words to cut deep with your readers. You want them to feel what you say, deep down inside. You want them to be moved in a profound, emotional way. And you want to move them to action. Here are a few ways you can do this:
Clarity over Cleverness
Some writers think the best way to stand out is to make their content smarter than everyone else’s. They try to be clever, cute, or poetical with their words. But what if while you’re trying so hard to be unique and clever in your writing, you also manage to muddy your core message? No matter how fun your writing sounds, if the reader doesn’t get the point, you’ve lost out on a priceless opportunity.
Instead, be clear and simple and direct in what you say. You don’t need big words for fancy sentences to get a point across. Brevity is the soul of wit for a reason.
Word-Lovers Beware
You probably care more about the words you use and the way you use them than everyone else on your block combined. As a writer, it’s natural that you’d love words and language. But, a danger comes up when you think you can wax poetic in the middle of your marketing copy.
When people come to a business’s blog, they don’t come for the flowery language. They come to be informed about a product or brand or to get an idea. They’re not coming to your site to get a vocabulary test.
If you study the masters of content marketing, you can get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t in prose. Read Strunk & White. Study high-conversion copy. Make sure it’s high-converting and not just a high click rate. Study the words they use.
Put Power into Your Writing
Where simple phrases and words turn from simple to powerful is how hard they push the point you’re trying to make. In just a few words—”To be or not to be”—Shakespeare started one of the most famous sentences in the history of the English sentence. These are all very simple words.
Brian Clark of Copyblogger talked about this in one of his first-ever Copyblogger posts, in which he quoted Shakespeare himself. Clark focused on the length of the words in that phrase, which is important. Short and simple phrases stick in the mind better than long-winded phrases. Can you quote the rest of the soliloquy from that play? Probably not unless you are an actor or love Hamlet.
Brevity and clarity lead directly to power. Say what you need to say to make your point and no more. Write copy that is strong by making every word count. Inspire with what you have to say instead of confusing people with flowery language and cleverness. You won’t regret it, and neither will your readers!
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