How to Make Your Marketing Easy to Read and Understand Part 2 - Adult B2B Mrkg. Tip

Increasing Readability - Part 2

Tuesday we talked about increasing readability in your marketing by being conversational. I know that an English professor would be delighted if you used the phrase "in accordance with." Your attorney might like that too. Your writing can be as complex or as simple as you choose to make it. I once heard about a doctor who would lean back in his chair when he was finished with dinner, put his hands behind his head, and proclaim..."My gastronomical satiety admonishes me to such an extent that I am no longer able to indulge myself beyond the limits of dietary integrity." All of that simply means, "I'm full." Now that's complicating it. Make sure you always remember the rules of thumb I just gave you - use short sentences and simple words - and they will help your prospect immensely...and ultimately, make you more money.

The third suggestion for increasing readability is to use a lot of verbs. Before you get scared off thinking I'm about to make you go to the chalkboard and diagram a sentence, relax. This isn't about being a wonderful student of grammar. It's just about using certain kinds of words to wake up your writing and your readers and make them more likely to take action. If you remember from way, way back in elementary school when you first started learning grammar, you'll remember that they described verbs as action words. That's what you want in your writing, lots of action words. You're probably thinking, come on, every sentence has a verb in it; you can hardly write a sentence without a verb. But understand, most writing contains nothing more than nouns and adjectives glued together with what's called the "be" verbs: is, was, are, and were. But you've got to think like the Chinese. Simplify and get rid of all the "filler" words. That's all that "is, was, are and were" are...they're filler words. They don't signify any action. That's why they're called "be" verbs because they just indicate a state of being - not action.

So what do I mean by action words? Here's a short list to give you an idea: blow, break, bring, call, carry, cast, catch, come, cut, do, draw, drive, drop, fall, get, give, go, hang, hold, keep, lay, let, look, make, pick, pull, push, put, run, set, shake, show, skip, slip, split, stand, stay, stick, strike, take, talk, tear, throw, tie, touch, turn, walk, wear, and work.

Using live words takes some practice, patience, and persistence. You'll find if you look at what you or your copywriter has written for you in the past, it's probably full of is, are, were, and was. It takes discipline to make yourself go back and rewrite the sentence or the paragraph or the page to incorporate live words. But like the rest of these writing tips, if you do it, your bottom line results can be greatly improved. And that's the name of the game, right?

So the first three suggestions for increasing readability using language were 1) using short sentences, 2) using simpler words, and 3) using live words.

The fourth suggestion then is to use more personal references. What's a personal reference? It's simple a word or a sentence that references the reader or listener - primarily with the word "you." In Dale Carnegie's classic work, How To Win Friends And Influence People, he states that people's number one motivating force in their lives - for good or for bad - is the need to feel important. He goes on to state that people's favorite subject to talk about is themselves. If that's true, and I believe that it is, then you'd be well off to address your writing directly to the reader and make as many references to them as possible

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