![]() In the past, I had a tendency to make things complicated. We had our own version of the KISS principle in my family. Analyse Performance – Engagement and analyticsĭo your startup a favour and start exploring the content marketing journey.Do you know the KISS principle? It’s an acronym for “keep it simple stupid.” It was first coined in 1960 by aircraft engineer Kelly Johnson as a design principle for the U.S.Run A Campaign – Email, newsletters and ads.Start Getting Social – Tweeting and sharing.Have A Content Plan – Planning and Timelines.Build A Website – Content and messaging.Improve Your Writing – Readability and grammar.Create Your Brand – Personality, style and tone.Know Your Audience – Customers and targets.Define Your Vision – Missions and manifestos.My new book, How To Write Killer Content For Your StartUp, gives you all the tips you need to get the best from your blogging, content marketing and social media content.įind out how to write, plan and improve your business content, broken down across ten easy-to-read chapters: How To Write Killer Content For Your Startup If not, then it may be time to keep it simple, stupid!Īnd if you need some inspiration, read this letter from Roald Dahl to a fledgling writer where he talks about removing those ‘beastly adjectives’. Read it through and ask yourself ‘Am I really making this as simple and effective as I can?’. So, keep that KISS acronym in mind next time you sit down to write some content. Just sit at your keyboard and bash away at the keys until it sounds right. Too much emphasis on learning the technicalities can end up killing the music of the language. Being a good musician is not about learning how to build a piano it’s about learning to play it as an instrument. And don’t get too bogged down in the technicalities of grammar – just write as you speak. If you can get that balance right, you’ll really start to hear those words sing. Good writing is about balancing clear, simple language with descriptive, poetic or technical language. Let the music in your writing sing through You also can’t hide a terrible cake under lots of decoration – it just highlights what a bad cook you are. Conversely, too much icing and decoration can ruin a good cake – you lose the essence of the cake and end up with a gaudy mess. But a little icing and decoration makes a good cake into a *great* cake. Without any icing it’s boring and too plain. The key here is that you can’t improve bad writing by adding lots of long words – it fools no-one. Choose your words wisely and make every word count. ![]() It needs to be interesting and have some personality. Your writing needs to be clear, accessible and easy to read. Throw away anything that doesn’t help your messageīalance is important.Get your idea across without using jargon.Don’t use 50 words when 10 will do the job.Focus on your message and make it clear.Keep it simple, stupid! (making the handy acronym – KISS). So the key to good writing is a simple one: It means understanding your topic, pulling out the most important elements and explaining them clearly. That doesn’t mean dumbing down or removing personality and individuality from your writing. And the best way to do this is usually in the most straightforward terms. What’s important, is getting your message across clearly. People who use long, unnecessary words are usually trying to cover up a lack of knowledge – fudging their lack of insight and expertise by blinding you with jargon and technical terms. Wrong: research by Daniel Oppenheimer has shown the exact opposite. And there’s a certain misunderstanding that using long words, and plenty of them, makes you appear more intelligent. Academic method tells us to write lengthy introductions and long, wordy conclusions. So, why do people make their writing long, complex and difficult to understand? You say something because you want to be understood, and that applies equally to the written word. That could be a story, an idea, a concept or even your own emotions. In basic terms, language is about communicating something to other people. So I’ve come up with my own little maxim for these situations: and that’s ‘Keep it simple, stupid!’. And it never ceases to amaze me how complicated and overly fussy some of us make our writing. ![]() As a writer and editor, I get to see a lot of content written by other people.
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