Comments on: Feedback: What Makes Good Writing http://www.enthusiastinc.com/blog/feedback-what-makes-good-writing/ The goal of this blog is to provide a two way communication with our clients, those investigating our approach, as well as the ever growing and insightful Internet audience at-large. Tue, 6 Jan 2009 14:54:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1.2 By: Jacob Bear http://www.enthusiastinc.com/blog/feedback-what-makes-good-writing/#comment-2 Jacob Bear Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:58:17 +0000 http://www.enthusiastinc.com/blog/feedback-what-makes-good-writing/#comment-2 Great comments! Regarding Jon's questions at the end: If you're targeting your marketing materials to different sets of prospects (and you really should be doing this), then it makes sense to focus on fewer topics. This is almost always the preferable situation. But sometimes you need to find a way to say it all, especially if you don't know which aspects of your business will have the most appeal. There's a simple way to do this, and it can also ease the pain of excess terminology. Many people won't read your marketing piece word-for-word, but only scan it. If you include lots of bold headlines, and each one summarizes one of the benefits of doing business with you, there's a good chance a sincerely interested prospect will find what they're looking for. In fact, writing headlines is a good first step to writing a marketing piece. Come up with 10-20 headlines. Each one should either describe the benefits of responding to your call to action, or it should explain some technical term. For example: "How 'selective combobulation' slices through red tape and reduces your overhead" You would then follow this headline with a paragraph or two about--you guessed it--selective combobulation and how it reduces overhead. You can probably also sneak a subtle call to action into a lot of these sections. Once you've got 10-20 of these (and it's OK if some are redundant), you pick out the best ones, arrange them in any order you like, do some final editing and polishing, and presto! You've got a killer marketing piece that promotes your business in detail and is still easy for your prospects to read through. You can also "recycle" your individual healline/paragraph combinations for shorter, more targeted marketing pieces. Any comments? Great comments!
Regarding Jon’s questions at the end: If you’re targeting your marketing materials to different sets of prospects (and you really should be doing this), then it makes sense to focus on fewer topics. This is almost always the preferable situation.

But sometimes you need to find a way to say it all, especially if you don’t know which aspects of your business will have the most appeal. There’s a simple way to do this, and it can also ease the pain of excess terminology.

Many people won’t read your marketing piece word-for-word, but only scan it. If you include lots of bold headlines, and each one summarizes one of the benefits of doing business with you, there’s a good chance a sincerely interested prospect will find what they’re looking for.

In fact, writing headlines is a good first step to writing a marketing piece. Come up with 10-20 headlines. Each one should either describe the benefits of responding to your call to action, or it should explain some technical term. For example:

“How ’selective combobulation’ slices through red tape and reduces your overhead”

You would then follow this headline with a paragraph or two about–you guessed it–selective combobulation and how it reduces overhead. You can probably also sneak a subtle call to action into a lot of these sections.

Once you’ve got 10-20 of these (and it’s OK if some are redundant), you pick out the best ones, arrange them in any order you like, do some final editing and polishing, and presto! You’ve got a killer marketing piece that promotes your business in detail and is still easy for your prospects to read through.

You can also “recycle” your individual healline/paragraph combinations for shorter, more targeted marketing pieces.

Any comments?

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