The Communication Barriers You Put In Front Of Your Readers

The Communication Barriers You Put In Front Of Your Readers Without being aware of it, you are building communication barriers that make it impossible for your readers to enjoy what youve written. Blogging advice such as just write or write regularly isnt bad advice to get someone going with content marketing, but it is only the starting line. As you keep blogging, you start to pick up an understanding of the other considerations for your writing that go beyond merely writing regularly. Regular content creation doesnt do you any good if youre creating communication barriers that your readers arent able to get past. Five posts a week that dont get read are worse than one post a week that does.  What communication barriers are you creating in front of your reader that might cause this? What causes people to not read what youve written? You Prefer The Clever And Obscure Your goal is clarity, not cleverness. Its hard to resist the urge to be clever, because it feels creative, edgy, different.  But readers want clarity.  Being clever for the sake of being clever is something only you enjoy, and not your readers.  Readers want unique, original, fresh, exciting–but too often clever veers from this and is more about you showing how witty you are. Readers dont want clever, because most of the time clever is confusing.  Readers dont want to feel dumb and unintelligent. They dont want to feel like that third person in a conversation who is missing out on all the inside jokes. They dont want to feel as if you are writing to exclude when they dont understand your jargon, your metaphors, or your references to pop culture that you assumed everyone knows. This avoidance of cleverness seems counter-intuitive when we are told to grab onto on trends as a method to get traffic.  Capitalize on trends, yes, but use them wisely. Provide explanations and context, without assuming your readers know what you are talking about. Understand that clever trend-based content is not evergreen and has a short shelf life. Your goal in writing is one of clarity, not cleverness. Readers want to understand what you write.A recent example of assuming readers would understand trends involved the infamous  Richard Sherman interview  (following the Seahawks victory over the 49ers). Blogs began using that incident as fodder for their post headlines and content. Dont Go All Richard Sherman On Your Readers the headlines said, or Why The Richard Sherman Method Of Content Marketing Doesnt Work. Maybe youre not from the U.S.A. Maybe you dont follow the NFL. Or maybe youre like me who didnt know who Sherman was, didnt see the interview, wasnt online for a few days when it happened, and was confused by the sudden influx of Richard Sherman-themed blog posts in my RSS reader.  I didnt read a single Sherman-themed blog post. I had no idea who they were talking about, and figured it wasnt a post meant for me. Capitalize on the trend. Use the obscure reference if you need to. But always provide a brief explanation or a link to where the reference is explained. If your post relies heavily on your reference being understood, youd do best to explain it up front and set the stage or just accept the gamble youre making on who will get it. The drive to use overly obscure or overly trendy references leads to the next communication barrier: proving how smart you are. You Have To Prove How Smart You Are You may be smart, but your reader doesnt want to feel stupid. What you are trying to do with your content is communicate with your reader so they understand what you want them to understand. You are not writing to impress them. You are writing to empower them, so they leave feeling like the know something new. If you are writing to impress people, stop writing and leave the room. Not a single person there likes you. Writing that is meant to impress people, to show them how smart and talented and wonderful you are, how many amazing things youve done, how cool you might be, how traveled and enlightened you are, is tedious and often preachy. Its the content marketing equivalent of the braggart who makes everyone look at his vacation photos. It is similar to the Dilbert cartoon character known as the Topper, a fellow who always has to be the best of everything. You are writing to teach, to inspire, to make laugh, to encourage, to help. You are not writing to build yourself up or make others feel less about themselves. If you cant explain it to a six year old, you dont understand it yourself. Albert Einstein If you write to impress, no one will read. People want you to help them, not help yourself. You Confuse Personal With Self-Indulgent Ive seen several blog posts which list self-indulgence as a reason readers dont stick with you, and thats true. We just talked about how you should not seek to impress people. However, the admonition that readers dont care about you or your life, and are only interested in whats in it for them, is not exactly true. Its all about how you go about using your own experiences. In some cases, your personal experiences and personal story are part of whats in it for them, if you handle it right. People are asking whats in it for them, but they will listen to you use personal experiences if they can get there through the path you already took. People want to know, from you, that: They are not the only ones with this problem. They are not the only ones who feel this way. They are not the only ones who find something funny/sad/angering/scary. That someone like them found a way out, a solution. That someone like them found success. That someone is listening to them. Your personal experience and life examples can encourage readers that they are not alone, not abnormal, that the things they struggle with are valid and that they can still succeed. Self-indulgent is writing about yourself and bragging. Being personal is writing to connect with another person and help them solve problems. Being personal is always acceptable. You Mistake Informality For Crudeness Content that is conversational feels more human. Ive appreciated the conversational approach to content over the years, and I dont mind slang or even a swear word here or there. There is power in language, and a linguistic slap in the face once in a while is a necessary jolt. Unfortunately,  the idea of friendly, casual, and conversational language has become fairly crude. Casual and informal conversation doesnt have to mean crude. #BetterBloggingThis is a sensitive suggestion to make. Opinions vary on whether this is bad, whether its powerful, whether its all about keeping it real, or whether its judgmental. Regardless, I suggest thinking long and hard about how you write when it comes to trying to be informal and using crude language. Perhaps that is how your conversations go, and that is how the people around you communicate, or that is how the other bloggers in your niche talk. Maybe you dont care if people leave your list because you didnt want such sensitive, easily offended people anyway. Fair enough. But lets be honest about why youre doing it: 1. You think by being shocking, youll stand out from the huge crowd. More than once, Ive just left a blog post which, had all of the unnecessary crude words been removed, would have been quite good. After a while those words lose their shock impact and start to serve as little more than an exercise in unnecessary adjectives that should be cut for the sake of tight writing. Reading such posts goes beyond Im offended!! and into this person cant write. Unfortunately, this kind of shock is short-lived, and readers who stuck around are quickly desensitized to the language, no longer seeing it, and you are left right where you started. And, youve lost the ability to shock them, which is something that could have been used once in a while for worthwhile effect. 2. You have a weak idea and are trying to hide it behind shocking language. Ive been the writer in this scenario, and it feels very powerful to just throw it all in a blog post, especially a rant, and think youve written something powerful, but crude language often shows up because we dont actually have a strong idea with facts or ideas that matter and were trying to hide that flaw in our post. Some writers, it seems, want to create a controversial blog post not through challenging topics or ideas, but through a surface treatment of language. Shocking language seems like a good way to spice up a dead post, get noticed, get debate going, or hide the weakness in an idea. The reader is so taken off-guard by language that the paltry idea isnt even noticed at first. You Dont Rage Against The Expected It is very difficult to write something new and unexpected that no one ever has written, and do this three or four times a week. I know this. Sometimes I pull it off, but sometimes I put my best into a post, shake my head, and just accept that while it was a good post, it wasnt all that unique and that Ill try again the next time. You should want to be unique for your readers sake, not just to stand out from the crowd.  Your reader is tired of the same stuff. There is no shortage of blog posts with similar titles promising all kinds of things that get readers to check them out but, sadly, upon reading, have the same tired points and conclusions.  The internet is replete with blogs full of promises, exclusives, secrets, and schemes vying for your attention. How disappointing for readers to arrive at a much ballyhooed destination to find nuthin new.