Eternal are the words...Immortal are the emotions
Doing critiques day-in and day-out, I get to see a lot of the copy mistakes that prevent business owners from making as much money as they could.
One particular sore spot in their web copy looks a little something like this:
“You’re caught up in the doing of things; in the everyday to-dos of your biz and family, multiple devices, overloaded inbox, friends, fans and followers. Your calendar is as crowded as your closet, you’ve got things in the most dangerous place in the world–AKA your head, your days are fueled by chaos and caffeine and you’re tired.”
When, in fact, it could (and should) look something like this:
“An overcrowded calendar…
Notes swirling around your already overloaded brain…
And today, just like yesterday, is brought to you by chaos and caffeine.”
One particular problem with example 1, is that they used way more words than they needed to.
More Isn’t Better
But, business owners who struggle to paint accurate pictures of their products and services usually end up rambling and talking far longer than they need to.
When in reality, less is more. Not just when it comes to copy. But in general.
Because the more you talk, you:
Increase your chances of losing the reader
Introduce doubt into your work
Widened the distance between you and your reader
Think of the last (boring) talk you attended…
The more the speaker spoke and took winding roads to explain simply ideas, the harder it was for you to stay awake and feel connected to the content.
But powerful speakers know they have to keep the words brief...yet powerful.
If you take a look at how powerhouse Neil DeGrasse Tyson uses brevity and simplicity to explain the most astounding aspect of astrophysics at about the 1:38 - 1:44 mark, you can see how he totally could make it long and drawn out.
His use of words here translates perfectly to copy. So, we’re not losing anything in translation.
And if you look at Bukowski’s charge that:
“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
~Charles Bukowski
Tyson is not merely an intellectual, but an artist.
And this really art…
And that’s also what holds the business owners back.
They are thinking intellectually about what they do, who they do it for, how they do it and why.
When, in reality, if they looked at those things through the eyes of an artist who knows how the colors they’ll blend will work together and who holds the vision of the final product within their mind’s eye, then they, too, are able to distill the complex into simplicity.
It’s the simplicity that taps into the hearts of the readers...it’s the simplicity that keeps their attention and pulls them through the page.
If you can translate all the complexity of what you do into powerful expressions of simple language, then you will:
Hold the reader for longer through the copy
Instill confidence that you “get” them
And increase your sales because of 1 & 2