I like Powerpoint as much as the next guy, it’s a valuable presentation tool, it’s feature rich and a great complement to spoken presentations and keynotes. More than a decade after its debut in 1997 as part of the Microsoft Office suite, Powerpoint has gained a virtual stranglehold on executive meetings and presentations. The use of projectors, support for multimedia and outfits like SlideShare (which, you guessed it, allows you to upload and share powerpoint presentations online) has helped the eponymous presentation program nudge its way into uncountable processes and organizations.
Seth Godin recently blogged the article “Powerpoint makes us stupid” – these bullets can kill. See, the Powerpoint revolutions has created some casualties, not the least of which are organizations (like the US Army) bogged down with ambiguous and overcomplicated presentations and, possibly worst of all, the common trend to write content using bullet points.
People like bullets (not all people, but more on that shortly). They like bullets because:
- Bullets are an effective way of organizing content.
- Bullets summarize important points for quick and easy understanding.
- Bullets are easy, reading online is hard.
- Content developers can use bullets to explain key points rather than explain them with language.
It didn’t escape me that I used a bulleted list, I did it to make a point. The list above is easy to read and it gets a point across, but it’s cold and impersonal. It conveys information, but my tone of voice is completely lost.
So, like, think of it this way. When I write for this blog, I tend to write – more or less – how I actually speak. If we were talking about bullet points over coffee (because bullets are cool), the conversation would be a lot like the one I’ve started above – though the live version would be decidedly less one-sided. If I were writing for a rack card or brochure I might change my tone to sound more poetic. If I were writing for a corporation I’d use formal language and speech. This is all tone of voice, matching the language of the reader.
Using bullets is the absence of tone. Bulleted lists are to writing what paint-by-numbers are to art, the effect without the inspiration. So why are they still used so frequently? The answer, not surprisingly, lies in the problem of a slightly misogynist web. Stay with me while I ponder…
The internet was and still is a field where men hold most of the key positions (That’s why cracked always makes the front page of Digg). I’m not suggesting that women haven’t contributed as much, quite the contrary, but I’m suggesting that the web wasn’t (and isn’t) built for women. This doesn’t jive with modern marketing ideas, we know that women make most of the household buying decisions – well over 90%, so why don’t websites target that?
There are rules that govern design and communication, most of those rules defined by previous theories. Phrases like “above the fold”, “bullet points” and “call to action” are all things to look for in “effective” web content. Not so plainly, notice how they all have a decidedly military feel to them? It’s all very manly, the web, or at least it was.
Social media is about sharing and connecting, and in this – women rule. They are more likely to share content and connect with other people like themselves, (men are more interested in creating content). Women want to connect, to hear stories and to get long term value, men just want glory and status. Some companies are successfully marketing to women, but most are still failing and it’s because while their design and brand has changed, they’re still writing and building for men.
I have some theories about how some old rules are dying, or should die, and they lead to how to write better content.
The first old rule I want gone is bullets. No more, please? We all have big monitors now, nobody is surfing in 800 x 600 and, unless there’s something we won’t understand unless you explain it in point form, or your audience is exclusively men, we just don’t need them anymore. Women don’t like bullet lists, I don’t like them either.
Then I want to see people craft content to make the most of new resolutions. Turn to the website on your left. Now turn to the website on your right. Both of them were likely designed for 1024 x 768 resolution or less. Did you know that ol’ 1024 x 768 (finally) is the third most used resolution with 1600 widths topping the charts? Well, it is, and it’s a great landscape to craft awesome content.
Once I’ve knocked that small feat out, I want the whole world to start using contractions. This rule of formal language (sans casual commentary) is old and I’m really tired of people writing “did not”, “was not”, “is not”, etc… Remember the old Star Trek: TNG Episodes? Remember Commander Data? Remember the unusual habit he had of NOT using contractions? They did that specifically to make him sound less human. When we don’t use contractions, it sounds as though we’re scolding our visitors through a robotic box. Using them makes us seem more human and helps bridge the gap. Interestingly, I’ve discovered that a main reason for a lack of contractions is that apostrophes break source code. As a marketer though, I’d say that’s the programmers problem.
And last (for now) I want the world to fix their error messages, notifications and confirmation messages to be more human, because I don’t like it when a web page gets angry at me for making a mistake. I know this happens because web pages are made by programmers, and notifications are made to explain exactly what went wrong. I fondly remember arguing with a developer friend who always wanted errors to be structural and informative. I wanted to say things like “Whoops! We don’t recognize that email format, please try again”. He wanted to say “That is not a valid email address”. He never grokked that his would subtly treat people as though they were incompetent where as mine takes the blame onto the company.
The test I always run with web copy, or copy of any kind, is to read it out loud as things look very different on paper than they do when you say them. Once you’ve tried to read a bulleted list aloud, you’ll probably never use one again. Once you start writing naturally, not based on old methods, you’ll find your copy suddenly more appealing to people.
This entry was written by Sean Enns, posted on April 27, 2010 at 5:36 pm, filed under Copywriting, Marketing and tagged Copywriting, Marketing, Reference. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.