Short is Sweet! Especially when you are storytelling for marketing.

Confession time. The very first thing I do when I open a link to read a story is scroll to the end. No spoiler alerts, I’m not trying to see how it ends, I am trying to see when it ends. 

In today’s lesson I learned I am definitely an Inspectional Reader. On-line I am a “skimmer”, and even with my favourite books I am admittedly “superficial”. 

So here is the thing. I find the hardest part of writing is to be short and sweet. 

Our last assignment on summer vacations, I deleted entire paragraphs just to get it down to the suggested max word count. As a radio newscaster I used to have to write my stories for the website, and you’d have thought they were a newspaper feature.

The more blogs I read, the more I realize they are a collection of ideas and insight, rather than encyclopedias of knowledge. Several ideas can generate several good blogs, rather than 1 long one that nobody (especially me) finishes. 

So today I learned I need to write the way I read. 

Short and sweet.

Not simple. Concise. Entertaining. Engaging. Not just for that one story, but for the future ones I hope they return for.

Have you discovered your method? Realized your best path?
It’s actually quite enlightening. 

This post was originally published in a series for the Algonquin College Social Media Certificate in June, 2019

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

Clark, B, Copyblogger (August 27, 2008) How to Read https://www.copyblogger.com/how-to-read/