Today’s post is by Carlos Miceli who maintains his own blog, OwlSparks, where he covers philosophy, marketing, social media, personal branding, love, friendship, and more in short, carefully crafted posts. Oh yea, and he does all this in English, which is his second language.
Getting to the point can’t be a choice nowadays. We’re not talking styles anymore, we’re talking skill.
Why, you ask? Why can’t you just “go with the flow”?
Because we are all marketers.
If you’re going to sell something, you can’t put the context aside. And the context today pleads for brevity. Time is our biggest asset. Every word counts.
If you’re not going to make an effort to respect my time, why should I make an effort to care for what you’re selling me?
You’re free to ignore this. In fact, I recommend you to do it if you REALLY write only for friends and family. But the moment you step out of that zone, your rambling will always be judged before your content.
Don’t underestimate the power of scanning. It can make all that inspiration and writing go to waste.
Thanks to Carlos for his insights. Be sure to (1) Let Carlos know your thoughts on conciseness in the comments and (2) check out OwlSparks!
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Check out @CarlosMic guest posting on @jackieadkins’ blog “The Need For Conciseness” – http://bit.ly/U12vD
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Carlos, I definitely agree that being concise is a good marketing decision, whether you’re marketing yourself or a brand. You are being respectful of other people’s time and you are also playing to your audience’s short attention spans. For some people, they can get away with lengthy blog posts or rambling, but I think you have to earn the respect from others in order for them to invest this much time in you.
I also think it’s interesting how Twitter forces people to choose their words carefully and emphasizes the importance of brevity, maybe this notion will carry over into other areas of people’s lives as well!
Such a great point. I often feel inundated by my various inboxes – twitter, delicious, Google Reader, email, daily newspapers. If something is not short and to the point. I skip it. Even if the post is long (which is sometimes warranted) I like reading short paragraphs with key ideas highlighted. Thanks for a great reminder that every word counts
I came across this today while reading one of my favorite soccer blogs. A huge article, very well written, but extremely long. I couldn’t finish it.
Truth be told, I HATE that I couldn’t finish it. I hate the my attention span on reading only lasts a few minutes until I’m on to the next thing.
But, where does that leave posts or stories which in fact cannot be told in only a few paragraphs? I often wonder if people nowdays can really read and appreciate a book if we can only sit through an article at a maximum of 5 paragraphs.
I see more blogs developing ‘series’ to portray what used to be said in one long post, and I like that approach. It allows us to read bits and pieces that are quick, but keeps us coming back for more.
When novels really started becoming popular they were published as serials in magazines (which were really newspapers, but that’s neither here nor there.) Except for philosophers who wrote really long essays of deep thoughts that only “the elite” could find time to vest in.
I agree so much that consiseness and brevity is a great skill to have. In many of my business dealings, much of my personal life and a lot of writing. However I also agree with Ryan, that there are sometimes things that warrant a lot of reading and time. If we only took things in short spurts we’d never have Plato’s Republic or Dickens’ novels or the last 3 Harry Potters (which, let’s face it, were like Bible sized!!!)