Talk about TMI: Your readers receive the data equivalent of 174 newspapers — ads included — every single day, according to USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Too much incoming, too little getting in

But with all that incoming, very little information gets through to our readers. People spend, on average:

1. More than five hours a day on interpersonal emails, according to the 2019 Adobe Email Usage study. That includes:

• Three-plus hours a day on work messages: “Can we meet at 3?” “Here’s the report I promised.” “When can you get me the social media strategy?”
• Two-plus hours a day on personal email: “Would you pick up Greek yogurt on your way home from work?” “I have good gossip; meet for margaritas at 5?” “May I show you the most darling picture of my kitty?”

Add Slack and text messages, and you can see that we spend the bulk of our days communicating interpersonally.

But that’s not the kind of information PR pros and other communicators are worried about …

2. 48 minutes a day reading for business, according to a study by The Economist Intelligence Unit and Peppercomm.

That includes The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Business Review, the best trade publications in the business, PR Tactics and other association publications, the latest leadership books, the HubSpot blog and more.

Whatever time remains — and that’s not much — may get divvied up between business-to-business brand content.

Let’s get real: How much of that 48 minutes are they spending with your white paper?

3. 16.2 minutes a day reading for fun, according to the 2019 American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Right now, I’m squeezing into my 16.2 minutes a day: Melissa Banks’ novel The Wonder Spot, Psychology Today, a guidebook on Uruguay and The New York Times.

That leaves virtually zero seconds for your email newsletter on “3 reasons you need an eye exam (even if you have 20/20 vision),” your message inviting me to share my thoughts on your business or other business-to-consumer messages.

Let’s get real: How much of that 16.2 minutes are they spending with your email newsletter?

How to get through to readers …

One way to get through to readers with way too much to read and way too little time to read it is to give readers more for less. Give them more information they can use to live their lives better in less time and space.

Keep this formula in mind: The average reader reads about 200 words per minute. That means they’re reading, on average, 9,600 words a day for work and 3,240 for fun.

Does it make sense for you to ask them to spend a third of that on your blog post?

Let’s get real.

The post Let’s get real appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Don’t mix metaphors. Fewer are more persuasive. Choose one concept for comparison and stick with it.

Here are some other metaphor do’s and don’ts:

DO sync with the subject.

Match your metaphor to your message’s topic and tone.

I once found a participant in one of my writing workshops comparing her company’s new shopping mall to “the phoenix rising from the ashes.” Not only was that a cliché, it was also the wrong comparison and tone for the topic — not to mention the wrong scale.

“Thunderous dunks and lightning-quick running backs offend the serious reader in two ways: 1) They are clichés; and 2) They are questionable, even as hyperbole,” writes Steve Wilson, sports writer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Unless we can create a fresh image or make a strong case for hyperbole, we should equate forces of nature with acts of humanity.”

The best metaphors are appropriate to the topic, tone, occasion and audience.

Sync with the topic. The more your metaphor draws from the topic, the more elegant the result will be, as this passage from a Time magazine movie review of sensational summer movies illustrates:

Instead of leaving the theater with a rosy glow or warm tears, dyna-moviegoers feel like a James Bond vodka martini. They have been shaken but not stirred.

Sync with the audience. This metaphor from Speechwriter’s Newsletter is in perfect sync with the audience:

I hope your holidays were holidays and that, when they were over, your brain began to hum like an old IBM Selectric.

DON’T overdo it.

A 6-course metaphorical feast can be too rich to digest — and can make your reader feel a bit nauseated after. Break it up with some plain-vanilla explanation.

“Cram three similes into a single paragraph and you become a parody,” writes Jack Hart in A Writer’s Coach. “Write page after page of featureless prose and you become a drudge. So work your way through a rough draft eliminating and adding color. A figure of speech every third of fourth paragraph is usually about right.”

Try Hart’s recommendation:

Limit your metaphors to one every three or four paragraphs or so.

Communicate, don’t decorate. The key: Make sure your metaphors don’t distract from your message. So ask, “Is this metaphor architecture? Or interior design?”

Don’t write a groaner.

Metaphors can be great. They can grab attention, clarify complex concepts and entertain your readers.

But sometimes writers, working toward a metaphor, reach too far and wind up writing a groaner instead. Take these, from an article in the latest issue of Women’s Health magazine:

Not that you should squirm like a toddler-tortured caterpillar during a workout.

Your power levels are at their highest, so make the most of them by going hard and sweating like a wool-wearing Floridian.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sweating like a wool-wearing Floridian just reading this.

The post Don’t mix metaphors — and other metaphor ‘don’ts’ appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Want to write more readable messages? Increase engagement on your webpages? Otherwise boost your writing skills?

As we plan our upcoming Master Classes, I’ve been creating a lot of new slides. Here’s a sneak peek at some of my favorites.

1. Stop boring them to death. Reach more readers — and sell more products, services, programs and ideas — with storytelling, metaphor and other creative elements. The boss thinks that’s fluff? We’ve got the data to prove it works.

2. Knock out brilliant drafts with less effort. Use a writing process that works with — not against — your brain. Prewrite, write, then rewrite.

3. Engage readers with social posts. “Our readers don’t want to read stories,” writes Brian J. O’Conner, editor of bankrate.com. “What they want is a big button they can push that says, ‘Solve my problem.’ It’s up to us to be that button.”

Write posts that solve their problems. Don’t write about us and our stuff.

4. Use the bait your readers like. That’s my grandfather, George Wylie, serving his famous catfish to Doc Severinsen, the band leader for the “Tonight” show. Grandpa said, “If you want to catch a fish, you need to think like a fish. Then you need to use the bait the fish like, not the bait you like.” So what bait are you using on your readers?

5. Go beyond the subject line. Email recipients consider four elements — aka “the envelope” — when deciding whether to open or delete your message. If you’re not writing them, MailChimp is, and not too well. Increase open rates by addressing all four elements of the envelope.

6. Journalists rank PR quotes as the least valuable thing in a release — below the boilerplate and dateline. So how can you transform lame-ass quotes into snappy sound bites? To write quotes that journalists want to run and that readers want to read, take the Wah-wah out.

7. “This is too easy to read.” Said nobody ever. Nobody wants it to be harder. Use free online tools like HemingwayApp to measure, monitor, manage and improve readability. For all of your audiences. Because readability helps everyone.

8. Write better bulleted lists. Web visitors look at 70% of the bulleted lists they encounter … but only if you do a few things right. So show the parts, show the whole and make lists parallel.

The post 8 content writing tips and tricks to try now appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

I recently attended a conference where the Nielsen Norman Group unveiled its latest eyetracking research. After more than 20 years in the lab, watching people read and respond to text, they reported this finding:

“This is too easy to read.”

— Nobody ever

Literally, in decades of research, nobody has ever told them that, including highly educated domain experts.

Nobody wants it to be harder.

Some of your audience members can’t read very well, according to the latest worldwide literacy study.

But what about those who do have the skills to read easily?

But that’s not my audience.

It never fails.

When I talk in my writing workshops about the importance of making copy easy to read and understand, there’s always one person who can’t believe the advice applies to her.

“Are you kidding?” she gasps. “I’m writing to executives/pharmacists/school district superintendents/telecomm engineers/financial planners/horse breeders. These folks are superbly educated, brilliant and divine. There’s no way they’ll read anything that easy.”

So you think your audience wants it to be harder? Think again.

I’ve always argued that if you think your audience members are especially elevated or educated, then you should make your copy more readable. Executives, surgeons and other highly educated readers, after all, tend to have more stuff to read and less time to read it. So we need to make messages for those folks even easier to process.

But even if you’re writing to brain surgeons, you still want to keep your readability in check. That’s because:

1. People don’t read at their grade level. On average, high school graduates read at the 9^th grade level, according to William H. Dubay, readability consultant at Plain Language Services.^[1]

College graduates prefer to read at the 10^th-grade level, but may be willing to read information in their own fields at a higher level.

2. Reading skills decline over time. Plus, reading skills decline over time. According to the PIAAC, reading and numbers skills:

• Increased from the teenage years through the mid 40s
• Plunged some 25 points between the 40 to 54 age group and the 55 to 64 age group
• Dropped 30 more points between the 55 to 64 age group and the oldest adults

That’s partly because seniors, on average, spent fewer years in school than young people. In fact, one-third of Americans age 65 or older fall into the lowest level of prose literacy.

On average, adults read at 5 grade levels lower than the last grade they completed.

3. People don’t want to read at their grade level. People don’t want to read at their grade level.

As Douglas Mueller, president of the Gunning-Mueller Clear Writing Institute, says:

“People prefer to read and get information at a level below their capacity. Even a Harvard University professor prefers to get information without strain.”

Nobody wants it to be harder. In this environment, how do you reach real readers — those who can’t read, or just don’t want to read, at higher grade levels?

Make your message more readable. Because readability helps everyone.

Readability helps everyone

Readability helps everyone — from Harvard University professors to brain surgeons to rocket scientists. Or so says a new study by the Nielsen Norman Group.

NNG researchers started with an off-the-shelf pharmaceutical ad. You know how hard those are to read, what with all of the legalese, caveats and disclaimers. Then the researchers had two groups of people — highly literate folks and those with lower literacy — read the ads and answer some questions.

Highly literate group performs better. Unsurprisingly, in the first test, the highly literate group outperformed those with low literacy on all three measures of success:

1. Understanding. People with higher literacy understood the message better.

• The low-literacy group answered 46% of the questions right.
• The highly literate group answered 82% correctly.

2. Task time. People with higher literacy read the message faster.

• Those with low literacy took 22 minutes to read the ad.
• The highly literate group took only 14 minutes to read it.

3. Satisfaction. Nobody likes reading a pharmaceutical ad. But the low-literacy group enjoyed the experience even less than those with high literacy.

• Those with lower literacy scored their satisfaction 2.5 on a scale of 1 to 10.
• The highly literate group gave the experience a 3.7 out of 10.

Then the folks at the Nielsen Norman Group rewrote the ad. They used shorter sentences, shorter words and explanatory graphics to increase readability.

Highly literate perform even better. Unsurprisingly, the low literacy group performed significantly better on the more readable ad. The real surprise was that the highly literate group also performed much, much better with more readable copy.

1. Understanding. Both groups understood the clearer message better:

• The low-literacy group answered nearly half again as many questions correctly — 68%, compared to 46%. That’s a 48% increase.
• The highly literate group understood the more readable ad 13% better, answering 93% of the questions correctly, compared to 82%.

Do you really want your highly educated readers to misunderstand 13% of your message?

2. Task time. Both groups read the more readable message faster:

• Those with low literacy took only 10 minutes to read the revised ad, down from 22 minutes for the more difficult one. That’s a 55% increase in reading speed.
• The highly literate group saved nine minutes on the revised ad, finishing it in five minutes, down from 14.

That’s a 64% increase.

Give me my nine minutes back! Nobody wants to spend more time reading your message, especially not your super-busy highly literate readers.

3. Satisfaction. Even when it’s better written, nobody enjoys reading a pharmaceutical ad. But both groups preferred reading the revised message to the original:

• Those with lower literacy liked reading the revised ad 76% more, increasing their score from 2.5 to 4.4 on a scale of 1 to 10.
• The highly literate group liked reading the revised ad 30% more, boosting their satisfaction score from 3.7 to 4.8.

Remember, in all of the Nielsen Norman Group’s research, not one single person has ever wished that anything was harder to read. Repeat after me:

“My audience is not the exception.”

Nobody wants it to be harder.

So how do you make your message easier to read and understand for all of your readers, no matter what level they read at (or want to read at)?

Whether you’re writing blog posts, content marketing pieces or news releases, you can improve your Flesch Kincaid grade level scores and other readability formulas by doing two things:

1. Write short sentences: Learn how to reduce your sentence length and improve your sentence structure to make messages easier to understand.
2. Reduce word length: Learn how to reduce syllables per word and write in plain English for good readability.

Do that, and watch your writing readability text soar.

Because nobody wants it to be harder.

Learn more:

• Improve your Flesch Kincaid reading level score for more readable messages.
• Nail the Flesch Reading Ease test to make difficult-to-read copy easier to understand.
• Make any piece of text more readable by boosting readability scores.

____

Source:
^[1] William H. Dubay, The Principles of Readability, Impact Information, Aug. 25, 2004, p. 7

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