On Writing for the Web, Part 3: Hitting the High Points

You can distill the four parts of this series on writing for the web to one word: audience. Part 1 of this series looks at analyzing your audience in the planning stage of writing, part 2 asks you to look at whether your draft addresses your audience's concerns, this part looks at elevating those concerns for your audience with a powerful style, and in the next post part 4 offers tips for making every word matter to your audience. Audience, audience, audience, audience—just in case I didn't say it enough.

How do we heighten our audience's concerns? By bringing the key point to the top of the message. Let's look at a well written example from "Investing in 2020: A Year to Be Selective," which I accessed today from the website of investment banking giant Morgan Stanley:

What a difference a year can make. At this time in 2019, major U.S. stock indices had logged their worst yearly performance in a decade. While the start of 2019 may have felt rocky, investors ultimately witnessed a remarkable year. The S&P 500, the broad U.S. stock market benchmark, rose more than 30% and now sits at or near all-time highs, while the main bond benchmark, the Barclay's Capital U.S. Aggregate Index, gained around 9%—both up three times their long-term annual averages.

The first sentence, only seven words, is the key point of this paragraph. The second sentence starts by pointing to the bad year of 2018 without mentioning it, and by placing this information in a clause beginning with while to minimize its value in contrast with what follows it, namely the good news of a remarkable year. The third sentence gives the supporting data, concluding a powerfully focused and articulate paragraph. 

Placing that short first sentence at the end of the paragraph would make it appear amateurish and melodramatic. We read online looking for the key points upfront. 

Perhaps delaying the point works well in fiction writing, where suspenseful writing leads to page-turning, engaging reading. Here's a self-written fictitious example of placing the key point at the end of a paragraph for humorous effect:

This morning I woke up remembering I had not checked the mailbox the night before. Since it was still dark, I thought it was all right to step out into the cold winter air in my underwear, as the mailbox is only five feet from my front door. There I found only one item, a letter from the IRS demanding an audit of my tax returns for the past five years. Trembling, as much from the letter as from the Arctic temperatures, I then realized I had locked myself out of the house. I began knocking, and then banging, on the door for my sleeping wife to wake up and rescue me. No response. Except for a stray dog that leaped on me and bit my thigh before running off in the darkness. At this point I was shivering and screaming in pain while banging on the front door. Within seconds a police officer pulled up his car on my driveway and handcuffed me, half-naked, frost-bitten, and bleeding, unwilling to listen to my raving about accidentally locking myself out of my own house as he shoved me headfirst into the patrol car before whisking me off to the police station. I am having a bad day.

That last six-word sentence is an amusing understatement, but it is an example of the kind of writing you'd be better off avoiding if you were writing for the web.

On Writing for the Web, Part 2: Using the Talking Points

Part 1 of this series examines audience analysis in writing for the web. In fact, all four parts of this series rely on a deep understanding of audience: their tolerance for detail, comfort with rhetorical approaches, familiarity with varied syntax, and preference of vocabulary. This post covers level of detail for your online content.

The most valuable tip I can give is to create talking points. Each sentence you write says some specific thing, often more than one thing. You should have names for the things you express. Look at this example:

Our company was founded in 1991. At the beginning of the internet explosion, we created an online presence. Our clients, in turn, needed to reach a larger marketplace for their products and services in an increasingly global economy.  We have helped numerous organizations big and small brand themselves to a worldwide audience. 

This passage has 4 sentences and 52 words, but bean-counting should be at the bottom of our quality control list. First, let's call out the talking points, making sure we limit the points to no more than one or two words, such as problem, impact, method, cause, options, solution, benefits, and plan:

• History – Our company was founded in 1991. 
• History – At the beginning of the internet explosion, we created an online presence. 
• History – Our clients, in turn, needed to reach a larger marketplace for their products and services in an increasingly global economy.  
• Achievement – We have helped numerous organizations big and small brand themselves to a worldwide audience.

Our first problem with this passage is having the most important sentence, the achievement, buried at the bottom of a history paragraph—not a good idea. Second, we have a lot more history than we have achievement. Third, we are combining two ideas into one paragraph. By calling out the talking points, we might rewrite the passage like this: 

Since our founding in 1991, we have helped numerous organizations big and small brand themselves to a worldwide audience. At the beginning of the internet explosion, we created an online presence. Our clients, in turn, needed to reach have reached a larger marketplace for their products and services in an increasingly global economy.  

By bringing the achievement sentence to the top of the passage, we have entirely eliminated the need for history with 2 sentences and 36 words, a 50% sentence and 31% word reduction. Far more importantly, we have a more effective audience-focused message.

You can use the talking-point method for any kind of content. It will transform your online writing to a style aligned with your audience's concerns.

On Writing for the Web, Part 1: Addressing the Audience

This post begins a four-part series on writing for the web, whether blogging, tweeting, or posting on sites like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.

Start with addressing your audience. If you have a new enterprise to promote, a Great American Novel to sell, or a vacation site to recommend, always consider how that business, book, or bungalow relates to your readers. You wouldn't want to sell igloos in Ecuador or roller skates at the Mount Everest base camp. You would surely want to address the potential buyers, in other words, the right audience. This is a three-step task: identify, plan, and find.

1. Identify 
You can best identify your audience by answering a few questions:

• What is their demographic profile (sex, age, race, ethnicity, religion, education, income, occupation)?
• How much of their information do they get from reading social media?
• What keeps them up at night?
• Why and how does your content address their concerns? 

These questions are just a starter. They often lead to other questions, so keep your mind open for those flowing ideas.

2. Plan
Now you should be prepared to answer not only those questions, but to respond to them with a clear approach. For example, if affordable healthcare keeps them up at night, explain how your enterprise addresses that concern. Write down those answers and responses, so you will do the writer's equivalent of talking the talk. Those notes you compile will inform your approach to writing social media. 

3. Find
Finally, you've got to locate that audience. Where do they go to stay connected? Do they read posts on LinkedIn? Facebook? Tweets on Twitter? Blogs? Are they more interested in vlogs on YouTube? Go where they go.

Happy 15th Birthday, WORDS ON THE LINE!

On this day 15 years ago, I began WORDS ON THE LINE with the aim of offering resources for business and academic writers. With this post, the 894th, I remain true to that purpose by providing links to my greatest hits:

• The Books section offers 68 reviews of books that may inspire you or guide your writing.
• In Diction,  you'll get a lot of advice in 26 posts on word choice and etymology.
• Email renders copious tips throughout 25 posts on employing the most common mode of business writing today.  
• Many of your Grammar questions will be answered in this section of 54 posts. 
• Reading this 20-part series on Logical Fallacies will enable you to avoid rhetorical blunders.
• The Style section (109 posts) covers an exhaustive range of topics, including active-passive voice, parallel structure, and sentence construction.
• Theory and Writing Process comprise 169 posts abundant with advice on the greatest writing challenges and their solutions. 
• The 11 posts in Websites is a clearinghouse for a legion of excellent websites for writers.

And there is much more in this blog for developing writers in any field and discipline based on my 24 years of full-time and 21 years of part-time writing consulting to business, government, nonprofits, and academia. Here's to the next 15 years of WORDS ON THE LINE!