Every Word Counts // Copywriting Tip

When you’re writing to sell, every word counts.

Actually, every word counts because none of the words count.

The words themselves don’t matter. The message does. People are unlikely to remember the words you used. They’ll remember what was said or they won’t remember anything at all.

Words are simply a tool to communicate a wider message and like any good tool they can be used well and used badly. When I say ‘none of the words count’ what I’m saying is a good marketing message is the sum of its parts.

By weighing up the value of each word you’re increasing the chances that people will come away remembering the message you are trying to communicate.

Note: I’m mainly talking about brand copy – anything that’s permanent, front facing and going to get a lot of attention compared to say, blog content which is denser and won’t necessarily get as much attention. There’s not as much pressure to make sure everything is perfect.

That being said it’s still a good idea to apply these principles to anything you write.

Good copy takes time

Writing with the mindset of every word counts means spending time on it. Looking at what you’ve written and deciding whether or not something needs to be there.

Often when we’re putting stuff out on social media the writing doesn’t get a second thought. You might look over it and delete parts you really don’t like. You might look for spelling errors. But it’s less likely that you will look at the overall effectiveness of the message being communicated.

To do this means taking a step back and letting the copy sit, reading over it and being prepared to press delete.

It takes more time yes but it could be the difference between people taking notice of what you’ve written and them just scrolling on by without a passing thought.

Of course, you can never guarantee that someone is going to stop and read any of it but by choosing your words carefully you can increase the chances of that happening.

Get ruthless 

Choosing your words carefully means being ruthless with what you’ve already written. First time around it’s going to be unwieldy.

Good copy is like a good steak. Lean. Tender. Full of flavour. Nothing gets in the way of the enjoyment of it. In fact, the issue here is more with what gets in the way than what makes it good.

Part of making every word count is getting rid of the words that don’t need to be there. The words that are actually harming the overall effectiveness of the copy.

There are two sides to this: words that are bad because they are meaningless and words that are bad because they get in the way.

In the former category we have business jargon and marketing nonsense. I think people use these because they think it makes them look superior and knowledgeable.

The reality is they’re either overused to the point of having no impact at all or nobody knows what they mean. Either way they’re not doing wonders for your marketing.

People don’t speak like that in the real world so they’re probably not going to resonate with it online either.

The same can be said for what I like to call Thesaurus spawn. I mentioned this in my Break the Rules post, combatting the idea that to be taken seriously you have to use fancy words. This absolutely isn’t the case and getting rid of words that you wouldn’t normally say should be high on your priorities when proofing your writing.

Get to the point

What about words that get in the way?

We’re talking about sentences that are twice as long as they need to be, use the passive voice (‘The car was driven by the man’ instead of ‘He drove the car’) or just go on and on.

In many cases you can cut a sentence in half and it will still say the same thing. You’ll get the point across quicker and increase the chances of people actually reading it. 

People don’t have time. Attention spans are tiny. Like, scientifically speaking, really quite small. The chances are very few people are going to read everything you write.

I often have to remind myself of this. When I’m writing something, I can trick myself into thinking that people are going to pay attention to every syllable but that’s unlikely to happen.

Most people will flick through to find the good bits. Which means there needs to be good bits throughout.

All this is not about reducing your word count. People still read long form content, if it’s worth reading. And there are other reasons for writing lots of words. I’m just saying, if it doesn’t need to be long, make it snappy.

To increase the amount of your writing that actually gets read, make your words count.

Remember the words don’t matter. Only the message does.

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