3 WAYS TO ADD PERSONALITY TO YOUR BUSINESS WRITING

3 WAYS TO  WRITE WITH MORE PERSONALITY

Gain more readers! Raise your conversion rate! Have your clients buy, buy, BUY! How?

Show a bit of yourself. Even better, get a little emotional.

Yup, you read that right.

You might think it’s counter-intuitive; that too much personality or feeling has no place in business writing and communications. You’d be wrong though. Emotions are what effective business writing is all about. To communicate is to make a connection, and we connect through our emotional brain. Whether it’s an internal message from the CEO to middle management, a piece of tactical content marketing or a sales pitch, if your readers feel something, they will be moved – literally – to get onside with the message.

Why?

Because despite the most rational considerations, we still make decisions based on “feeling” or “our gut”- which is nothing if not an emotional response to a person, product or bit of writing.

The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain. --Daniel Goleman

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about gushing or melodrama here. In a professional writing context you never want to go crazy with “feeling,” but emotions are essential precisely because, in concert with the purely rational, academic piece, they are critical to decision making.   In “Why emotion based writing is crucial to your business goals” Brian Clark goes as far as to say “emotions don’t hinder rational decision making” but rather “without emotions, we’re incapable of being rational.” http://www.copyblogger.com/writing-with-emotion/.

Imagine a presentation or sales pitch where the speaker totally lacks heart or even interest; one where the person shows exactly nothing of themselves. Exactly.  It's true in your writing as well.  In an effort to "sound professional" or "be taken seriously," all the rational and objective facts, figures and rationale provided will make the report a complete bore. It sparks neither enthusiasm nor curiosity. In fact, you have no feelings about it at all, which is another way of saying you just don't care. Ryan Kettler at www.ConvinceandConvert.com argues, “emotional connection is the cornerstone of engagement.” Yes. And all day long, at that.

3 WAYS TO INJECT YOUR WRITING WITH EMOTION AND PERSONALITY

Here are three easy checks to ensure emotional engagement in your business and marketing writing while still keeping it professional:

1.      DITCH THE PASSIVE VOICE.

I know. It’s a grammar thing and you hate that. But it’s worth learning because it’s an easy way to energize your writing.

From Merriam Webster: (1) “Passive: lacking energy or will: lethargic (2) tending not to take an active or dominant part.”  I hope it’s obvious that we don’t want to be passive anything, especially as writers.

If you’re developing a voice for your brand, ensure it’s an ACTIVE one.      Ryan Kettler, marketing manager at SciQuest

The “passive voice” is when the subject is acted on by the verb: “The dog was kicked by Larry.” This versus the more immediate, active voice, where the subject does the acting: “Larry kicked the dog.”

See the difference in energy, in what we feel? There is distance in the former. It’s happening somewhere “over there.” The active voice by comparison is punchier, it’s closer to us - and we have strong feelings about Larry.

2. KEEP IT REAL.

Don’t underestimate people. Trust me, they will know: Unless you’re Leonardo DiCaprio, the minute you pretend to be someone or feel something, your audience will know it and call bullshit. When this happens you’ve lost them, possibly for good. One easy check for authenticity in your writing is to look at your use of superlatives. The “most terrifying,” “life-changing,” “best-ever,” “magic-bullet,” etc., you get the idea.

Marketers are particularly prone to the language of “over-sell,” but tone your language down to something closer to reality and you will be better served over the long term. Genuinely believe in what you’re saying or risk the dreaded eye-roll and complete disconnection of your audience (diet industry, much?).

Yes you want to evoke an emotional response in people, but you also want it to be a legitimate one. Keeping it real will keep folks checking in over time, versus checking out once (and for all).

3. And, having said that…USE EMOTIONAL LANGUAGE

So much professional and market writing is bland and full of “just the facts,” or it’s filled with industry-specific lingo and awkward sentence structure in an effort to appear more credible and legit (the “baffle them with bullshit” school of writing. Refer back to “Keep it Real.”).

Reading this kind of content is Work, capital “W.” The result is that we skim at best and forget about it at worst. Because we aren’t engaged, it tends not to make an impact and we don’t – or can’t – remember any of it.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion. - Dale Carnegie

One antidote: don't be afraid to use more imagery in your writing and to inject a little of yourself. If you’re famous for your love of fishing and want to keep readers “on the line,” bait them with a personal story then jiggle the hook a little (see what I just did there?).  Another trick is to scan for where you can exchange “flat” words for “peak” ones. Certain words like “confess,” “sparkle” or “crush” are inherently more emotionally charged than “told me,” “clean” or “overtake,” for instance. These kinds of words draw a reader in, causing them to feel something about your content. If you can tap into a reader’s emotional brain you can generally keep them engaged, and even better, make them want more.

AND SO…

If you want your employees, fellow insiders or clients to buy your message, product or service, building a personal, emotional connection with them is essential. For better or worse, we extrapolate from the writing what a person or organization is like. If the messaging is direct and energetic, fueled by empathy and authenticity, we assume the person or business is direct, energetic, empathetic and the real deal.

How do YOU want to be perceived?

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