Imagine you’ve published a 1,600-word column about the President of the United States.
You’ve put your heart into your column.
And you’re excited when people in Washington, DC are all talking about it. And sharing it with friends and on social media.
Only for you to discover from the data that almost nobody read the full story.
A bit humbling, isn’t it?
That’s what happened to Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Politico and Axios media companies when he wrote a column about President Obama.
How to Write Less But Say More
What VandeHei discovered, after sharing his frustration and delving into the data, was:
People skim. They share stuff without reading the whole story.
Why?
As VandHei explains in his 15-minute How to write less but say more talk at TEDxOshkosh, people are distracted.
Getting news or information today is different than in the past:
- Having a smartphone makes it easy to search or find information on a mass scale
- We’re flooded with information on a daily basis, it’s hard to get people to pay attention
- People often read the headline and a few sentences, but not the entire story
Did you know if you get distracted by something, it takes you 20 minutes to refocus?
Based on what VandeHei learned, his company Axios made changes in their journalism to publish smart content, delivered efficiently.
With fewer words.
And they heard back from readers, who sent notes with words of thanks for saving them time.
Which took VandeHei by surprise:
I never asked for a thank you, especially when you cover politics, you’re lucky not to get hit by a shoe, much less actually have someone thank you for it.
How can you follow the same path as Axios in your writing?
And become a more effective communicator, starting today?
Here are VandeHei’s tips:
- Stop being selfish. Write for the reader; audience first. What do they need to know?
- Grab me. What’s the most important thing? What’s the reason you’re writing?
- Keep it simple
- Be human. Talk like a person. Stop using big terms.
- Stop. Greatest gift you can give people (and yourself!) is to give time back.
Check out his talk and enjoy his two references to not getting a shoe thrown at you.
Source: TED
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Wrapping Up
In my mind, VandeHei’s tips are part of good writing: focus on the reader, keep it simple, use language the reader knows, and stop when you’ve made your point.
I hope you enjoy VandeHei’s 15-minute TEDxOshkosh talk as much as I did.
Share your thoughts or comments about his tips for improving your writing.
