TIPS 6-10:
Messaging

Knock down cognitive barriers with clear, concise core messaging

#6 Active vs Passive

It's generally well known that you should almost always choose active over passive sentence structures. In passive sentences, the subject is the recipient of the action: "Content writing tips are contained in this guide". In active sentences, the subject performs the action: "This guide contains content writing tips". But why does it matter?

Research (Dillard and Pfau, 2002) has found that "sentences with more complex grammatical structures [are] more difficult to understand or comprehend. This comprehension difficulty could affect the persuasion process negatively, presumably because comprehension is an antecedent to persuasion or attitude change." Active sentences increase processing fluency, which makes your message accessible and attributes a positive emotion to what you're saying.

#7 Keep it simple

Simple accessible language is essential to get your core message understood at scale. There are some marketers out there who will argue against this for fear of insulting their target audience, but a study found that even users with graduate degrees completed tasks faster when language was simplified, and they had no negative reaction to the simplified content.

Ultimately, simple copy delivers results to business operations. A General Electric Informational Services case study found that updating user manuals with clearer language lead to 125 fewer customer calls a month. GE saved between $22,000 and $375,000 a year for each customer who used the revised manual.

#8 Word choice diversity

A common trap many writers fall into when trying to use simple language is repetition. Yes, you should avoid complex language, but you can still offer up a variety of simple words for your readers.

Dillard and Pfau (2002) have done a lot of research on this subject. They found that there's a connection between persuasion and word choice diversity by looking at the type-token ratio (TTR), which is the number of different words used in a text divided by the number of total words. A low TTR means your language is redundant, while a high TTR means it's relatively diverse. They found that readers find messaging with a higher TTR to be more interesting, which creates a positive connection between them and the communicator. If that isn't a reason to brush off the old thesaurus, I don't know what is.

#9 Coherence markers

Coherence markers are words and phrases that connect ideas together. They can be referential (pronouns that replace nouns) or relational (causal connection words like so, but, therefore, etc.).

I'm including this controversially because most marketers will remove coherence markers when they get the chance, especially when writing advertising copy, because they don't add semantic meaning. In these cases, when word count is extremely limited and you want to be short and punchy, omitting them is sometimes the right choice. But, if you can include them I'd suggest you do, especially in long-form content. A 2007 research paper found that coherence markers not only boost the clarity of your message but also its persuasiveness.

#10 Positive frames

Remember when I told you negative headings get more clicks than positives? That's still true, but while negative superlatives draw people into your content, positive frames make them stay. A frame is just how you phrase something. A positive frame describes a tangible thing (Eat healthy food), while a negative frame describes its absence (Don't eat unhealthy food).

A study on advertising statements found that negative frames exhaust more cognitive resources than positives, so they take longer to process. This reduces comprehension and degrades the impact of your message. You obviously can't avoid using negative frames, but you should use positive frames as much as possible, especially in ads where a message needs to be understood at lightning speed.