What if you got a text message like this:
It almost seems unnecessary for the person typing AND the person reading.
Why can’t this be shortened down to something nice and sweet like this:
Now all the Grammar Nazi’s in the world will revolt at the literary atrocity above……but isn’t this just WAY MORE DAMN EFFICIENT?
- It uses less characters.
- It takes less time to write.
- It takes less time to read.
- It uses the already pre-defined context to transmit a message (you were obviously trying to meet Jason at a movie).
When transmitting information from one brain to another, sometimes there are ways you can hack the length shorter…..and thus make it more effective.
But there’s this legend in the marketing community that somehow Longer = Better. (insert your own penis joke here)!
It’s kinda true in some ways, look at all these charts that show longer articles get more viral:
(This is the part of the article where I jack a bunch of charts from other websites to make what I’m saying more believable)!
Yup….proves my point.
See? I told you.
But here’s the thing:
Lemme show you some examples of how lots of information can be crammed into a small package:
FIRST EXAMPLE:
I remember my favorite image I ever made was on my first sales page, it looked like this (‘HoR’ stood for ‘House Of Rave’):
(I thought I was sooooo cool for making it in Photoshop even though it was a template I used).
WORD COUNT: 20.
There’s only a total of 20 words in this picture, BUT, let’s break down the sheet amount of context that your brain spools up when seeing the image:
(You don’t have to read this whole list….i’m just breaking it down byte-by-byte to show the volume):
- The picture is of a familiar Snickers bar package.
- The “bite sized” reference is a reference to an old Snickers bar advertising campaign.
- The “wrapped up” reference is referring to how a Snickers bar is wrapped up.
- You are understanding that if you buy the copywriting course it’s small and quick to digest.
- You are understanding you will learn this information quickly.
See how much bang-per-word I got? Nice.
SECOND EXAMPLE:
Chris runs an online hearing aid store called EarMall. He also sells refurbished hearing aids.
He had a bunch of copy about how in the medical industry, anything that’s considered “refurbished” has an ENORMOUS mark-down making them like 6x cheaper. There’s also another little secret that showroom models, or units that’ve been returned because of sizing mis-matches, or any unsold inventory are all considered “refurbished”.
For this reason he can sell the EXACT SAME HEARING AID for hella cheaper.
But instead of relaying this in a lot of text, he could so the same in a much shorter span. Here’s the original text about this process in an email:
WORD COUNT: 396
So what if we re-did all the text explaining why refurbished hearing aids are much cheaper and got people’s attention with THIS instead (which is way more “grabby”):
-or-
Now Chris can still use his sales copy to get people interested, but a easy-to-understand image can capture the attention FAR better in this situation.
THIRD EXAMPLE:
Tanuja business LoveBitesByTanuja makes desserts from healthy stuff and is trying to appeal to the Paleo-type crowd who wants to eat desserts, but not get all the sugar & crap that goes in them.
This is easily explained in long-form copy, but here’s the kicker:
Most of Tanuja’s sales come from INSTAGRAM!
That means at most you get one picture to explain your product! So long form sales copy in the Instagram format is much more difficult as you have to get people to SEE A PICTURE –> GET THEM TO CLICK A LINK –> READ LONG COPY ON PHONE.
So here’s some sales copy Tanuja has to sell her desserts through email:
WORD COUNT: 782
Ok….that’s nice and all. And probably would work in some distribution channels like email. HOWEVER, what if you instead distilled that same message down to a much smaller one, like this:
-or-
-or-
Basically you can cut the message size down DRAMATICALLY to initially get people’s attention. Then once their attention is captured, you can start going into your main point.
I bet there’s a way you can effectively communicate just SOMETHING in your life today at least 50% shorter. It’ll save you and the recipient both lots of time :)
Sincerely,
Neville Noshir Medhora…..or “Nev” for short!
P.S.……If you shorten something today, share it in the comments below. Or if you have an example of something that conveys A LOT OF INFORMATION in a SHORT timeframe, post it in the comments below also!
sources sources sources sources sources
http://blog.newswhip.com/index.php/2013/12/article-length
http://buzzsumo.com/blog/long-form-content-improves-content-marketing-conclusion-7-recent-studies/
http://www.lovebitesbytanuja.com
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