Copy Unlimited blog » Productivity

Five ways to improve your writing

Kevin — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 06:00:41 +0000

Breaking the rules, talking to yourself and killing your darlings

“How do you write so clearly?” somebody asked me recently.

Clearly, me? Do I?

Well, yes, I suppose I do, but it’s not because I’ve got some secret that nobody else has access to. I didn’t climb a mountain and meet a copywriting sadhu.

I just follow some simple rules. Or, in some cases, break them.

1. Read it out loud

If there’s one tip you should remember of the five, this is it.

Often, when we write, the words remain lifeless on the page – and we wonder why.

Wonder no more.

Scriptwriters know all about this. Words, phrases, entire passages that they thought were flowing, sonorous and effective, suddenly fall apart when spoken out loud by actors.

What worked on the page simply doesn’t work when spoken.

Now it’s not that people all read out loud when they read. Or even silently, moving their lips – what linguists call ‘subvocalisation’.

But a lot of people hear voices in their head (nice ones, I mean).

So read it out loud. I promise you, you’ll be surprised. As soon as you start doing it, you’ll see what doesn’t make sense.

As a Telegraph journalist might have done when he wrote the following phrase a couple of months ago:

Mr Clegg will leave his own conference early to deputise for Mr Cameron, whose wife Samantha is due to give birth next month, at a United Nations meeting in New York.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I read that, I immediately had visions of of Sam Cam with her feet in stirrups in front of the UN General Assembly.

See what I mean? Read it aloud, and you’ll avoid problems of delivery.

2. Break it up

Most people skim, and pick up the sense of the copy. So make it easy for them.

Break up your text with headings, bullets, bold and underline. Summarise the main points in boxes. Repeat your message. Repeat your call to action.

Include.

Enough.

White.

Space.

…so that copy can ‘breathe’ and not overwhelm the reader.

Break up ideas into paragraphs. Break up the paragraphs into sentences, and vary the length of the sentences. Some short. Some much longer, just for variety, and so that it all flows better.

Writing has a rhythm. So learn to dance with it.

3. Break the rules

How many times have you heard that a sentence can’t finish with a preposition?

You know what? Yes, it can.

Would you say products in which we specialise or products we specialise in?

Now you know that the first version is probably more correct. And you’re right – it is.

But it sounds stilted, formal and pedantic. Are you any of those things? Do you think your target market would respond to somebody who was ?

Of course not.

So be yourself, and write how you talk. And if that means breaking ‘rules’ (never begin a sentence with and, never use contractions, don’t use informal words or slang, don’t split an infinitive) then go ahead.

Break. And watch the magic.

4. Kill your darlings

This is a phrase from classic writing guide The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

Your darlings are those phrases you’ve laboured over lovingly. You’ve crafted them, tweaked them, reworked them, polished them. You’ve watched them grow and develop, and are justifiably proud of them.

You’ve obeyed rule number 1 (read them aloud) and you’re still pleased with them.

Just a little too pleased, in fact. Every time you read them, you smile to yourself. And that’s an early warning sign.

It could be a clever pun. Or a particularly long, obscure or high-flown word. Maybe it’s humorous alliteration or words that mirror each other. Perhaps it’s a clever-clever tagline, or a Latin-inspired name that hides its meaning to all but the most over-educated.

Kill it. Before it kills your business.

Simple language works best. Because it’s simple, direct, and doesn’t get in the way – like the best newsreaders, whose sober dress sense doesn’t detract from what they’re saying.

5. Plan, write. In that order.

Copy is not like a letter. You don’t sit down at a blank sheet of paper and pour your heart out as you would to your granny or your dear old Aunt Joan who’s sent you a fiver for your birthday.

Copy should be structured, focused and concise. It should have a clear aim, and tell a simple story.

And throwing words on the page won’t achieve that.

So plan first. You can use MindMaps or bullet points, or just scribbles on a piece of scrap paper.

If you don’t know how to begin, then start at the end. Why are you writing this? You want somebody to buy? To make an appointment? To call? To set up a demo?

Fine. That’s the end. Now work backwards. What’s the thing that will clinch that decision? Good. That’s your killer argument.

Now work back to the detail – not too much, but enough to build to the killer argument.

Now back a step to the intro paragraph. Now back a step to the headline.

And you’re done.

Plan it forward. Plan it backwards. But whatever you do, plan it.

Then write. It’s the only way it works.

Find out more:

Words of wisdom. Pleased with what you’ve written? Too pleased? Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style will help you kill those darlings.

Good lessons from bad service

Kevin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 06:00:15 +0000

Living in the slow lane on the information superhighway

My broadband was restored last week, after being down for three weeks.

Yes, that’s right. Three whole weeks.

But there’s nothing more tedious than a rant about bad customer service, is there? So I’ll spare you the ins and outs of the sorry saga.

Instead, I’ll turn it on its head, and tell you what it taught me about service – and about myself.

Service (without a smile)

Good service – whatever it is you do, whatever you sell – really isn’t all that difficult.

But it’s not one big thing – instead, it’s all the little things. And getting those right means having a plan, setting goals and making sure you meet them.

So if I were sharing a skinny latte with the Big Boss of my ISP, what would I tell him (or her)?

Train your staff. Is there anything more trust-busting than being told by a second support person that the first person you spoke to was ‘new, and may have got it wrong’? Learning on the job is part of the job; learning at the customer’s expense is dangerous and damaging. So train them first, then release them into the wild.
Tell the truth (even when you’d really rather not). The truth is your secret weapon – even when it’s bad. Hiding an embarrassing truth is worse than telling it with openness and honesty. An open-kimono approach works every time (metaphorically, you understand).
Get your story straight (and stick to it). Do BT engineers work on Saturday and Sunday? Search me. I was told yes, then no, then maybe. Can support people talk to BT? Yes, then no. Would I get SMS updates? Yes, maybe. But not always. Not really. A simple story has a unique and winning quality – its simplicity.
Organise your company around the customer. Yes, OK, they work shifts, and they’re sometimes off sick. And what if they get run over by a bus? Or they leave? All these things could happen, but it doesn’t mean teams can’t be organised into cells of 2-3 people who are instantly familiar with specific problems. It means that customers don’t have to endlessly explain their problems to a new person.
Use technology. Especially if you’re a technology company. If I can see that my friend Sally is calling on my landline, why can’t they? Better still, why can’t my incoming number fire up their database and bring up my record? And why is the database so slow (I’m just waiting for the record to come up, sir)?
Don’t pass the buck (even internally). No, it’s not support, it’s accounts. It’s our faults department. It’s BT Wholesale. It’s BT Openreach. It’s the exchange people. It’s the call centre, you see. Your company is a blob, Mr ISP – one big blob that I see as a brand. So make sure that Blob Inc. does its stuff seamlessly.
Be pleasant, open and helpful – even when the shells are coming in and you want to hunker down in the bunker. Smile even though you’re on the phone. And here’s a thought: listen. Pick up on the signals and ‘mirror’ the language and tone of the speaker (yes, it’s an NLP thing – and it works).
Communicate. OK, you’re doing stuff, and the problem’s in hand. But does the customer know? If not, why not? Send a quick email, update the support ticket, let them know about that stuff. Manage their expectations, and they’ll never be disappointed.
Don’t forget the value of existing customers. New customers are expensive and difficult to find. So why alienate existing customers needlessly? Treat them well and they’ll stay forever.
Don’t wait until people shout – because when they’re shouting, they tend not to listen. And other people hear. Shouting is what I did in the end, when I posted a damning message in my ISP’s discussion forum (it worked).

Warts and all

So what did I learn about myself? Well quite a lot, actually. Living in the slow lane of the information superhighway wasn’t all bad.

My three weeks of subsonic internet access taught me:

You can’t do two things at once – though super-fast broadband makes you think you can. Multi-tasking is multi-stressing, and being forced to do one thing at a time made me calmer, more focused and more organised.
Having a backup plan, like a nuclear deterrent, gives you a warm fuzzy feeling. You know it’s there if you need it. In my case, my nuke was my Nokia, which give me reliable, if slow-ish, access to the internet, used as a modem for my PC.
Don’t get angry at bad service. If you do, you lose twice over. And no, I’m not going to say get even instead. Just accept it for what it is, and if you’ve got a problem, focus on the resolution, not the obstacles along the way.
Think laterally. When I was dealing with the support team, I was working in a walled garden. Worse, a soundproofed (think Truman Show) walled garden where nobody could hear my screams. When I changed tactics and shouted from the rooftops in a public forum, help materialised as if by magic, and the problem was quickly resolved. Think laterally and you beat the system.
Take a break – from the online world, that is. Offline really isn’t that bad. You learn to slow down, read more carefully, not flit from one thing to another. You concentrate better, feel more centred and don’t feel as frazzled at the end of the day. Since my broadband came back, my browsing habits have changed. I spend less time online, and get more out of my day.

So bad service wasn’t all bad. Even forcing myself to see the positive in a very negative situation (which goes against the grain in a serial moaner, I can tell you) changed how I see things.

I even discovered that with a Starbucks card, you get free wifi. So now I’ve got another reason to go for a grande skinny decaf extra-hot wet latte.

As if I needed one.

Find out more:

Butterfly mind. Are Twitter and Facebook affecting how we think? at the Daily Telegraph.
Wifi with wings. Get yourself a Starbucks card and you can surf while you sip.

Want more? Ask for less.

Kevin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 06:00:50 +0000

In an age of too much information, be careful what you ask for (you might just not get it).

I just sent a PDF by email to a client. It’s password-protected – not by me, but by the person who sent it to me – and I told her so.

It’s password-protected, I wrote. Here’s the password, I wrote. It’s case-sensitive, I wrote.

A couple of minutes later, back came the reply.

It looks like it’s password-protected, she wrote. Could you let me have the password?

Sound familiar?

I’ll bet it does. In our always-on, 24×7, welcome-to-the-machine world, it’s easy to feel swamped by the deluge of data.

So we find ways around it.

I’m no exception. I’m just as guilty as anybody of skimming, scanning and hopping from one headline to the next.

But how else can you cope with the onslaught of information?

More importantly, how can you help your prospects and customers cope? Because it’s not just about helping them deal with information overload.

It’s about helping you make the sale, get the call, find a lead or receive an enquiry.

Here’s looking at you

OK, time to get our priorities right. You first.

And for a very good reason – because if you can’t see the wood for the trees, the message you get out to your target audience will be muddled, confusing and frustrating.

So how do you focus on what’s important?

Easy – cut down the distractions.

Do one thing at a time. What happens to you when you’re overloaded? Personally, my pulse increases, I feel like I’ve had too much caffeine, and I get a strange tingling feeling in my arms and legs. If I start dumping the ballast (Skype, reading the news online, checking social networking sites) and do just one thing, I can feel my mojo returning and my karma heave a sigh of relief. You will too.
Go offline. This is a really scary one, I know. And if you’re anything like me, you can’t trust yourself to really, really go offline. Luckily, help is at hand. Freedom is a devilishly clever little program that disables your internet connection for up to eight hours at a time. The only way you can close the program is by rebooting – which is enough of a disincentive to all except the most recalcitrant.
Speed read. No, no, I’m not suggesting you plough through a Buzan book or fork out a fortune on a course. Just adopt one simple technique. It’s something I learned a few years back when I wrote copy for a speed-reading guru. Everything else I’ve forgotten, but this one simple tip has stuck: read the first sentence of every paragraph. Nothing else, just the first sentence. You’ll pick up the gist without reading the bits in between. It’s simple but smile-crackingly effective.

And that’s it? I hear you say.

Well yes, it is.

Because if I listed my 50 Top Tips for increasing productivity and getting more done, you’d work out a 51st one – skip them.

So there.

Now what about your customers and prospects?

Slowly, slowly, catchy…

You’re overwhelmed. They’re overwhelmed. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get through to them.

You simply have to think ahead – and more importantly, think like them.

Make it easy. I skim, you skim, he skims, she skims. Face it – we all skim, so make it easy for people to do it. Break up your copy with bold, bullets, headings and colours. Vary the font size, but don’t go too wild (here’s a tip: use three point sizes maximum, and multiples of two e.g. 10pt, 12pt, 14pt).
One (idea) at a time. Divide your ideas up into paragraphs. Cut down the paragraphs, so they don’t look so daunting. Make sure each paragraph passes the ‘read only the first line’ test (yes, it’s a game two can play).
Summarise before, summarise after. Don’t launch into the detail straightaway. First, give a summary – but not an executive summary, or at least, don’t call it that (nothing sends a shiver up the spine quite like those two fatal words). So it’s an overview. Then, follow with the detail, and at the end, wrap up with the main points. So your prospects have three opportunities to pick up your message.
Don’t give too many choices. I’ve just been looking at broadband offerings. I’m having trouble with my current ISP (more about that sorry saga in another post) and I’m thinking of switching, after seven years of loyalty. But is the competition making it easy? No chance. Especially BT – there’s Anytime This, Total That, the Everything Package, the Almost-But-Not-Quite-Everything Package. Evenings and Weekends, free this, unlimited that. So which one did I go for? None of them, of course. I decided simply to cut and run.
Make it obvious. How often have you read through copy and thought, yes, yes, all very well, but what do I do next? If your time is short, so is theirs – so don’t waste it. Get to the point fast, and show them what to do next. Allow for impatient readers, and impulse buyers. Have a clear, simple, easy call to action.
Communicate often enough, but not too often. It’s a delicate balancing act, and it’s important to get it right. Let them know you’re out there, but don’t be a corporate stalker.

Meanwhile, back at the copy ranch, I got an embarrassed email from my client.

I must stop skim-reading, she wrote.

No, I thought, you mustn’t.

You’ve just got to start doing it properly.

Find out more:

Nothing left to lose. Freedom’s more than just another word – it’s a way of life. And it’s available for Mac & Windows here. As used by Dave Eggers (and Rachel).

Good lessons from bad service

Why is simplicity so complicated?

Kevin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:00:17 +0000

Easy is the new hard. No, really.

So there you have it.

The all-singing, all-dancing, everything’s-connected National Health Service IT system is to be ‘dramatically scaled back’ (i.e. quietly scrapped).

Mind you, I could have told you that. For two reasons.

First, I got a bad feeling about three years ago, when I did some copywriting on the subject. The background reading (all 500 pages of PDFs) was grimly compelling.

A bit like watching a road accident that’s about to happen but not being able to do anything about it.

Front-line staff weren’t behind it. It was ambitious, fiendishly complicated and promised the earth.

Mind you, it also cost the earth. Back then, my bedtime reading suggested anything between £6bn (€6.6bn/$9.8bn) and £30bn (€33bn/$48.9bn).

To date, it’s come in at £12bn (€13.2bn/$19.6bn).

My second inkling came when my doctor tried to use the system. She didn’t want to do anything complicated – just to book an appointment.

But it was complicated, as I’ve written about previously (High tech or hype tech?). And in the end, I bypassed the system and used the telephone to make the hospital appointment myself.

Not good.

Easy peasy lemon ketchup

The trouble with big projects is that they’re big. No one person can get their head around all the individual pieces, so they project is compartmentalised. And that means it very quickly becomes fragmented, complicated and disconnected.

A couple of years ago, I boarded a train at London’s King’s Cross station in the rush hour. I took an outside seat in a group of four. In the two seats opposite were a hassled-looking middle manager and her shiny-suited sidekick.

As the train pulled out, she flipped open her folder and peered at a spreadsheet printout.

“You know that consultant, the one with the gold-rimmed glasses, in Peter’s section – you know, whatshisname?” she said hopefully.

“Oh Graham, you mean,” he said. “What about him?”

“Well,” she said, “he’s paid £900 a day and he’s been with us six months. Do we know exactly what he does?”

I did a quick mental calculation, and came up with a figure of close on £100,000 (€110,000/$163,000).

“Hmm, ” said the shiny suit. “Not really. I mean, not exactly. Erm, no.”

“We should find out,” she said, lazily snapping the folder shut, “one of these days.”

Or tomorrow, I thought. Or right now. Because that’s my tax money (yes, they were civil servants – couldn’t you tell?).

Easy does it

Difficult is easy: you do one thing, then another thing, and yet another. Each without reference to what came before. You add a bit here, and there. You spread responsibility among different groups, and patch holes as they appear.

Issues are dealt with as they come in, not according to how important they are. And before you know it, you don’t know where you are. And neither does anybody else. And the result is organised, project-managed chaos. At £900 a day.

So what’s the answer? If difficult is easy, what’s easy – difficult?

Actually no. It’s easy – when you know how.

Here are my top tips for keeping it simple, staying on top of things, and never losing sight of what’s important.

And for leaving the office early (that’s the clincher, isn’t it?):

Keep a log of your day: and see how you really use your time. Important things should take priority, with urgent ones trumping them only if they’re also important.
Review your tasks, and update and re-prioritise each one every day. Or better still, at the beginning and end of every day.
Take stock: check where you are with a project regularly, and make course adjustments if you’re off-track.
Be realistic & honest: if you know you can’t achieve it, don’t say you can. If it’s too big to tackle, break it down into smaller, manageable chunks.
Peel off. Adding another layer to an already-complicated process just makes it more complicated. Instead, strip away the unnecessary layers and get back to basics.
Communicate. Tell people what you’re doing. Ask them what they’re doing. And if you’re the only one doing anything (like me) sit down and have a serious talk with yourself now and then.
De-junk. Recently, I threw out old clothes, LPs, clever-but-useless kitchen gizmos and anything I hadn’t used in a year. It felt so good (better than skinny, to paraphrase Kate Moss). Take the same ruthless approach to your work and you’ll feel supermodel-light in less than no time. Need it? No? Junk it. Move on.

Now wasn’t that easy?

The risk of reward

Kevin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:00:22 +0000

More doesn’t mean better. In fact, it can mean worse.

A few months ago, I was chatting with a headhunter – no, not the South American type, but one who hunts in the concrete jungle.

He places top people into top jobs in the City of London, the beating financial heart of the capital. Think huge salaries, big bonuses and corner offices with walls of glass.

“So,” I said, “what makes them move? Is it the chance of even bigger salaries and bonuses?”

He didn’t even pause to think.

“It’s never about money. Never. Ever.”

Surprised? I was too. Surely you can never have enough zeroes on the end of your bank balance or big fat carrots on sticks at the end of the month?

Apparently you can.

For after a certain point, money fails to motivate. And that point is not as far down the line as you might think. For even high-flyers in the City are motivated by lesser things.

Like real challenges, new horizons and things that keep them fresh, alert and engaged.

What makes people tick is at the heart of Dan Pink’s talk, which I’ve just finished watching. The surprising science of motivation was delivered to TED Global in Oxford during the summer.

Here’s what I took away from it:

Larger rewards almost always lead to worse results.
Incentives dull thinking and block creativity.
The key to the 21st century can be summed up in three words: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Google ‘gets’ it (that’s why we have Gmail, Orkut and Google News).

But I don’t want to spoil the talk by giving too much away.

Grab a skinny latte, put your feet up and treat yourself to 18 minutes and 36 seconds of entertainment, insights and sticking candles to walls (no, really – trust me).

If you’re reading this in an email and can’t see the video, click here instead: The surprising science of motivation.

Enjoy.