Communicate To Win

My definition of communications is this: When the thought in your mind is caused to exist in the mind of your reader, viewer, or listener you have successfully communicated.
This is easier said than done. To communicate successfully takes time, effort, expertise and a willingness to stay with it until you get it right.

Your content will either get read or get lost. That’s just how it is. Your content muse be superbly crafted, targeted, accessible, and promoted for it to have any chance of being consumed. That, too, is just how it is.

Here Are Some Broad Guidelines

1. Use common everyday words.
2. Write at an eighth grade level.
3. Write short sentences of 12 to 15 words.
4. Paragraphs are to be five or six sentences.
5. Do not write fluff. What’s fluff? It’s words that do not convey anything worthwhile to the reader.
   1. Here’s some fluff: In my opinion, based on 20 years experience and having worked with hundreds of clients, customers, consultants over many years, I believe . . . .
   2. Everything before ‘I believe . . . .’ is fluff.
6. Be crystal clear, don’t hedge, don’t dodge.
7. Do not use jargon.
8. Do not use vulgar language. It makes you look terrible and casts a very poor light on your work. You will hear people talk this way and write this way. Keep this firmly in mind, anyone who does that professionally is not selling something. So, yes, some people do communicate this way, but you don’t.
9. Acronyms
   1. Do not make up acronyms on the fly.
   2. Write them like this: Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Once defined, you can use the acronym.
10. Move important words toward the beginning of the sentence. Like this: subject verb. “Bob kicked the ball.” This tells you who did what.
11. Take the reader with you. When you write: Bob and Fred were standing on the corner. He said, “Let’s get a pizza.” Only the writer know who said that.
12. Take the reader with you. Write from the simple to the complex.
13. When doing an opinion piece state your position strongly and powerfully. Do not write weak opinions.

Editing

1. When you write, don’t edit. When you edit, don’t write. Get your work as good as you can and publish it. Once published, move on to the next project.
2. Editing means making changes that are substantive. When you get to the point of changing things for the sake of making changes, or are changing things that make no difference, you’re done.
3. Have your work read, and marked up, by someone you trust who is not a family member. Do this for all content that is important or will be published.