How To Write More Powerful Online Text

there all have one critical thing in common - they’re read off a screen. There are substantial benefits, too, in that while your message is on someone’s screen usually it has their undivided attention. You are genuinely “one-to-one” with them and that’s something you must respect - you are literally “in their face” and encroaching on very personal territory. The bad news about online communications is that your message can be “disappeared” faster from a screen than with any other medium.

There are a few more stark facts about online that influence how your message is received. One, according to the worldcommunications -claimsiacgnificantly ed web expert Dr Jakob Nielsen, is that 79% of online readers don’t read - they scan. That’s a little like the way people browse through brochures. What it means is that your message must be delivered in a way that allows key points - and benefits, of course - to be picked up at the same speed as readers scroll and scan.

Secondly, Dr Nielsen has also calculated that when people read from a screen they do so at a rate 25% slower than they read print on a paper page. That’s because, despite high-resolution screens and all the other technological wizardry, on-screen text is harder to read. For this reason your messages have to be very much more concise than they do for printed media - some experts say screen text should be just half the length of its paper equivalent. In my view, therefore, there are two very important things you have to remember if you’re going to get the best out of online text.

Firstly, go with the flow of the physical restrictions and write so you minimize their effect. Also, create your text so it works well for scanners (human scanners that is) by highlighting key points in bold - not italics or underline because people think those are links. That way people get the gist of your message while scrolling, although of course they will stop and read more carefully when an emboldened section really does catch their eye.

Secondly, bear in mind that even in its short little life the internet has already started to put its early folklore on a nostalgic pedestal and this plays a key role in determining what works online now. Having begun its days as an electronic kaffée klatch for individual tekkies the net has developed a very personal informality and straight-talking ethos that, miraculously, is being preserved and perpetuated with considerable success. And that’s all the more astounding when you consider the vast commercialism that’s replaced the early net’s endearing woolly-sweater-and-sandals innocence, naïvety and honesty.

Never mind, though. There are other good reasons why brief, straight, plain - even blunt - speaking is a sensible style to maximize the success of your online text. Obviously it helps overcome the physical restrictions (see above) and also works well in such a personal, one-to-one medium that is, literally, in your face.

Today you only have to think how emotional people get over the issue of receiving “spam,” to understand just how firmly the PC or PDA or other forms of electronic screens have established themselves as part of their users’ personal space. “You don’t just use a computer,” my late mother used to shout when she came by my office to see if I was still breathing, “you wear it.”

Well, although I don’t exactly read it a story and kiss it goodnight I’m bound to feel pretty close to my computer (and the messages it displays) especially as I often spend more hours a day with it than I do with my family. The moral? When you’re writing online text, in fact online anything, respect the close relationship people have with their screens. Knock before entering, then be the perfect guest. Be direct, don’t waste their time, but remember to say please and thank you. Then leave before you’ve worn out your welcome. That’s the way to ensure not only that you make a good impression, but also that you’ll get invited back.

E-mails

The one huge problem nobody seems to have solved yet, as I see it, is how to handle the vast amount of e-mails that most of us receive every day. Even I, as a humble one-person-band little business employing no-one other than myself and my two rescued dogs who spend most of the day asleep under the desks in my office, receive between 50 and 100 e-mails per weekday. Some clients of mine receive double that. No doubt busy business people I don’t know receive even more. How do you prioritize those? How do you decide which ones to read now, which ones to read later, and which ones not to read but to dump?

Ah, ah, I hear you say, what’s that got to do with writing? Let me tell you. If you’re writing a personal e-mail to a friend there’s no problem, particularly as you’re more likely to send it to their personal e-mail address than their business addy. But what about business e-mails that you want the recipient to take notice of? How do you make the best of the medium when your e-mail is likely to be surrounded by at least 49 others all shouting for the same person’s attention?

In the earlier days of the internet, if you were smart and could write a snappy short phrase you could attract attention in the subject line, perhaps including the words “relax, this is not spam.” Now though, the spammers have cottoned on to that one and if you see a subject line in your e-mailbox saying “not spam” it almost certainly is - to the extent that this is the first thing looked for by most of the spam filters you can get.

Spam filters will also choke out all the obvious spammy words like “free” and “opportunity” and “give away.” And you can’t be believed if you write something really homely and innocent sounding like “message from your cousin Marianne” because that’s what all the porno spammers do. So what’s the answer?

Or, so what’s the problem? If the recipient of your e-mail is likely to know you and knows that what you have to say is usually interesting, they’ll open it and probably sooner rather than later. It’s when they think your message is not likely to be of use, relevance or interest to them; that’s when you’re relegated to the delete tab.

So what’s the most efficient way of ensuring people open your e-mails? You have to be interesting. That’s what’s in it for them, and their previous experience of your being interesting provides them with the incentive to read your new e-mail.

It’s also a good idea to confirm the fact that you’re interesting by getting over “what’s in it for you” in the first few lines of the text. If you don’t readers are often tempted to move on without going further, especially if they have 27 other e-mails to read. However here we risk straying into pure online marketing areas and once again, there is an impressive selection of reading matter available that goes into chapter and verse about that. But I do want to emphasize this point about being interesting.

Whereas the e-mail marketers might be agonising over how to write subject lines that get through the filters and get people to open the e-mail, a fair few of them may be missing the point that it’s not the subject line that matters so much as the name of the sender. If the recipient doesn’t know the sender it doesn’t matter how cuddly the subject line is, they won’t open the e-mail for fear of being sold some ugly garden furniture or pornography or even a virus. If they do know the sender but also know that he/she/they never have anything interesting to offer, they won’t open that e-mail either.

Do I hear the ringing of bells in terms of the quality of message? In online communication probably more than any other kind we have a tendency to forget that all the electronic gizmos are just enabling devices, and that at the end of the day the only thing that really matters is the message, not the means of delivering it. If the recipients of your e-mails know that you usually communicate interesting messages with something worthwhile in it for them, they’ll open yours even if the subject line is “more boring BS from Bobby.”