Being a good communicator takes work. You need to practice your craft often. No one is perfect out of the gates. OK, let’s be honest no one is ever perfect. Perfection is a myth but what we can do is continue to strive to be better.
I want to give you a few tips I have borrowed from my years in Broadcast Media! You don’t have to do everything on this list but if you adopt even just one of these things it will help you become a more effective communicator. Many of these tips will help you when you are blogging, especially blogging for business.
- Be Clear & Concise: This sounds easier than it is. You need to make sure you are getting to the point in a clear and concise way. Tell it like it is people. Don’t get all flowery with your sentences. Don’t just write words for the sake of writing them. Just say what you mean. Getting some distance from your writing will help with this. After you have written a post, for example, save it, don’t publish and close the computer on it for a day. Come back to it a day or two later and see if it makes as much sense now as it did when you wrote it. If you are scratching your head while reading so will your audience/clients/customers. Or better yet, get a beta reader. Find a trusted friend to read over your stuff first. If it makes sense to them then you are good to hit publish!
- Be Conversational: I always like to write like how I speak. I think people will be more engaged with what you write when they can feel a sense of ease and casualness about your writing. Also, if you write like how you speak you will inject more of your personality into it. Remember, when I say write like how you speak it doesn’t mean using sloppy slang, mannerisms and bad form. Be conversational but don’t be sloppy.
- Get Word Efficient: This tip actually goes back to being clear and concise. Be efficient with your words. You need to get to know what you need to write and what you can easily leave out of your copy without compromising your content. There are always words we write that can be left out to tighten up sentence flow. For example, the word THAT is often one we can drop from a sentence without compromising flow or sentence structure.
- Get Human: Be real. Tell stories that affect people. The best way to better communicate through our writing is to think about things in relation to people’s lives. Does it make someone’s life easier, happier, more inspired? Make your audience care! Make them feel something when they read what you have written.
All four of those tips are things I use when writing broadcast copy. They are also tips I teach to my journalism students. Implementing all or any of these will help you better communicate your message to the world.
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