4 Tips to Make Your Business Content Clear and Concise

I promise the goal of this post isn’t to give you nightmares about Senior English.

But the truth is, clarity and conciseness matter—and not just in high school term papers.

In fact, as a business owner, developing clear and concise written copy about your company, products, and services is critical to establishing yourself online and growing your customer base.

In this post, we discuss why that is the case and give four tips to ensure your content resonates. 

Why Clear and Concise Writing Is Important for Your Business

Almost every business has some form of online presence, whether a website, YouTube channel, or social media account.

Regardless of which format or platform a company utilizes, the goal is the same: to find and connect with potential and current customers.

Online visitors are looking for clear, meaningful information about your company or product.

But if your business’s online reputation is sullied by unclear writing, overly wordy or technical content, or blatant spelling and grammar issues, you will find it exceptionally difficult to meet this goal.

Clear and concise writing, on the other hand, helps you connect with your customer base.

If a website has good copy with easy-to-find and relevant information, visitors will spend additional time on the site, making them much likelier to convert to paying clients or customers.

Visitors to a business’s website or social media page don’t usually come looking to spend a leisurely afternoon reading your content as if it were their favorite novel. Rather, online visitors are looking for meaningful information about your company or product.

If a website has good copy with easy-to-find and relevant information, visitors will spend additional time on the site, making them much likelier to convert to paying clients or customers.

If visitors to your site can’t find the information they need quickly, however, or if the content on the page is obtuse or otherwise hard to read, you can expect them to leave in a hurry, leading to high bounce rates and low customer conversion rates.

Poorly written content can also be detrimental to your overall brand.

Clear, concise writing helps ensure you—and not your competitors—make the sale.

You may have the best product or service that solves your customers’ biggest problem, but if you can’t clearly and concisely explain your value proposition in writing, it will be very hard to close deals.

Simply put, customers have expectations when it comes to businesses. They expect to be able to quickly and easily find you online, learn about your company and products, and glean enough information to make a decision about whether to buy from you or a competitor.

You may have the best product or service that solves your customers’ biggest problem, but if you can’t clearly and concisely explain your value proposition in writing, it will be very hard to close deals.

Clear, concise writing is a key component of supporting each of these expectations and ensuring you—and not your competitors—make the sale.

4 Tips for Writing More Concisely and Clearly

Knowing the importance of clear and concise writing is foundational, but putting this knowledge into practice can be challenging.

So what can you do to ensure your business writing speaks to the customer? Here are four tips to follow.

Use active voice

English has both the active voice and the passive voice.

In the active voice, the subject of the sentence is performing the action.

For example, consider the sentence, “The dog chased the ball.” The dog is both the subject of the sentence and the thing doing the action.

In the passive voice, by contrast, the subject of the sentence is the thing being acted upon.

If you were to write the previous example using passive voice, it would read, “The ball was being chased by the dog.”

The ball is now the subject of the sentence, even though it is the object that is being chased.

Visitors to a business’s website or social media page don’t usually come looking to spend a leisurely afternoon reading your content as if it were their favorite novel.

Regardless of the nuances of grammar, the distinction should be obvious: the active-voice sentence reads much better than the passive-voice sentence.

The former uses fewer words and is more direct, both important traits in clear and concise writing.

So while there are times when it makes sense to use the passive voice, most of your writing (i.e., 90 percent) should be in the active voice.

Remove unnecessary words

Clear and concise writing is direct and gets to the point.

There is no need to write flowery prose on your website or Instagram profile. Instead, focus on whittling down your early drafts, getting rid of any word that does not add value to the overall sentence and message.

There is no need to write flowery prose on your website or Instagram profile.

Good candidates for removal include

• Redundant modifiers (e.g., “this self-cleaning product never requires you to clean it” is better written as “our product cleans itself”)
• Overly long prepositional phrases (e.g., “our service is the best due to the following reasons:” can be shortened to “our service is the best because:”)
• Extra to’s and thats (e.g., “we are confident that this product will help you to lose weight” can become “we are confident this product will help you lose weight”).

Avoid jargon and technical terms

One of the besetting sins of many business websites is the overuse of jargon and technical terms.

While there may be technical terms in your industry or company that the people involved understand, it is still wise to avoid as much technical verbiage as possible.

The last thing you want is for a potential client to walk away from your social media page without understanding your product because they aren’t “in the know.”

If the reader needs a degree in a related field to understand your business’s website copy, it’s generally not a good thing!

A special caveat here is the use of acronyms. If you must use an acronym in your business writing, be sure to define it on its first use (apart from extremely common terms like A.M., P.S., and the like).

The last thing you want is for a potential client to walk away from your social media page without understanding your product because they aren’t “in the know.”

It is better still if you can avoid using acronyms altogether, especially if it is very technical in nature or off color. (Save those terms for your internal meetings and communication if you use them at all.)

Keep sentences and paragraphs short

Potential customers are not coming to your website or Facebook page to unwind and get some leisurely reading in.

One of the best ways to help your online community is to keep sentences and paragraphs short and to the point.

They want the information they need, and they want to find it as quickly as possible.

One of the best ways to help your online community, therefore, is to keep sentences and paragraphs short and to the point. Be direct and focus on your value proposition.

Leave working on your burgeoning career as a novelist for personal projects.