This was my top post for the week of January 17, 2022 👇
I’m Really Enjoying 🚢 #Ship30for30
I’m at a point where learning this way of digital writing is ruining my online reading.
I’d felt for a while that online articles were too hard to read because they lost my attention so quickly. So many articles fail to deliver on the promise of their headline at all, let alone quickly! (And this is true for all publications I read, no matter how “reputable” they may be).
In short, here’s how you can improve your digital writing the Ship 30 way:
- Deliver on your headline’s promise up front, don’t make people wade through endless blocks of text to get it.
- Also, don’t use big blocks of text.
- Tell your story in the subheads.
- Also, you MUST have subheads!
- Your subheads can’t be clever; they need a point.
- Realize people don’t read the entire piece. You have mere seconds before you lose the reader.
- Put the reader first, not your ego.
Think about the reader. Who are they? How much time do they have to read this? Are you giving them actionable steps? Because they care more about what’s in it for them than they do about cleverness or flowery language.
Think of it this way: you’re writing an article for another person. It’s not your article, it’s their article.
They aren’t thinking of you at all—only the info they want. Don’t waste their time.
Writer Heather Larson 