Content is a crucial part of digital marketing.
How you deliver content affects how well it performs.
People don’t like fluff or overcomplicated content, as it takes too much effort to go through it and understand what the message is. If your content is convoluted, or too long, it will lose its audience, and will become useless. Probably because our brains are constantly looking for shortcuts: the least amount of effort for the highest value result.
Instead, keep your content simple.
Keeping it short and simple can help your content stand out in the sea of neverending content that your audience is subjected to online. Here are our top tips on how to do that:
Straight to the point
If your audience has to hunt for the primary point of the content, they might lose interest. Try putting the most important information first, where it’s easy and quick to find.
Short and sweet
This sentence, for example, is seemingly okay for now but it soon becomes a little too long, eventually becoming too much of an effort to properly hold your interest for much longer, you’re likely to stop reading. This sentence is shorter. Here is another one. It’s easier to read, right? I bet you could keep reading on for longer!
Plain doesn’t mean boring
Don’t alienate your audience by over-using jargon or overly elaborate vocabulary. Use plain simple words that most people can easily understand. This also makes your content accessible to a wider audience, giving it a bigger chance of achieving its aim.
Check the readability
There are many online tools that can check the readability of your content, giving you guidance on how to simplify or improve it. Many also include SEO insights to help your content rank.
Speech-test
Read your content out loud to check whether it works, and whether anything should be removed. You can also read the content out to someone else, and have them repeat it back (from memory) to understand which parts stand out and which are forgotten.
Don’t make your audience work to get something out of your content. Simplify it. The easier content is to consume, the more likely it is to be consumed, giving it purpose. Simple as that!
For more top tips to improve your marketing strategies, find more articles on the It Works Blog. Alternatively, if you’d like expert assistance with your digital marketing, get in touch today!