Writing Branded Content Doesn’t Need to be Boring
(For you or your audience)
When I started working with my organization’s brand language team to better understand the guidelines set down by our leadership, I was skeptical. I feel that those of us that are passionate about writing may look down our nose at corporate communications as being beneath our notice. I have a particular style and voice to my writing, to take on the voice of my organization is not immediately appealing or intuitive to me. Having said that…there’s no reason why your content and communications can’t be written well, even when constrained by the Brand Language Guidelines of your organization. At the end of the day, Brand Language (as is noted explicitly in its name) is a language…and all languages have constraints, accepted word usage, and rules. As is the case in all languages, you can be expressive and creative within these guidelines.
The Goal of Branded Content: Value
We’re busy and our time is valuable. As the saying goes: Time is Money. So, we want to ensure that we are delivering value to our audiences; whether that audience is a group of internal stakeholders or external ones, we want to ensure that their time spent on our content is meaningful and impacting.
The best way to ensure that the value of our content is delivered to our audiences is to have the value statement (whether that’s immediately calling out the practical benefit to our readers or clearly outlining the “What’s In It For Me” statements) is highlighted up front and center into our documentation. Like any great piece of literature, television series, or film, our content needs to have a hook. Ultimately, I view that hook as being the business benefit to our audience.
Structure: Simple and Consistent
I often struggle with Simplicity and brevity when working on branded content. My own writing style can be long and circuitous; and not necessarily appropriate for official, branded communications. This is where I rely heavily on my peers and many re-writes to ensure that my readers’ time is not wasted on long, twisting narratives or unnecessary flourishes of the “pen.” Ensuring that the value-proposition is delivered up front is a great way to ensure your material stays on track.
The other important aspect of brand language is consistency. Whether we’re reading a book by our favorite author or the latest news from a company; a sudden shift in tone, word choice, and structure can be jarring and disruptive and cause one to think: “Was this really written by my favorite author?” While I am loathe to place restrictions on my personal style and voice; I fully acknowledge and encourage people to reference their organization’s brand language guidelines. Doing so ensures that our messages across the business are consistent and uniform with what our readers have come to expect.
Your organization may already provide you a number of templates that you can use. These templates save you time in drafting your content and ensure that your format remains uniform with other material in your organization’s library of resources. Take advantage of these resources!
Tone: Open and Energetic
This section can be up for debate depending on your organization. From a business perspective, I have found that an open, conversational tone is highly beneficial in making a meaningful connection with my audience. A more formal tone is likely more appropriate for certain organizations (e.g.: an educational institution or government agency); so, as always: know your audience and your brand.
I’ve been brought up writing in a way that has typically shied away from casual writing. As an example, my natural inclination is to eschew contractions (as an example). It may seem small, but the utilization of contractions (as you’d use them in conversation) is a great way connect and sound less formal. Referring to our rule in keeping our content simple, that same simplicity lends itself well to contributing to this more casual, conversational tone.
Second, energy is important to your message. Convey passion and excitement in your communications. If you’re excited about what you’re writing, and your reader can “hear” that excitement in your content, then they’ll in turn be energized by what you’re attempting to communicate. A great way to test this is to read your material aloud…and try and do so with passion (ideally, you have a partner in crime that can provide you feedback and input by listening to you). If you struggle conveying this energy as you read through your material, then perhaps you may need to rewrite and/or restructure the narrative to convey more energy. Again, a second opinion from a peer is always helpful in providing a fresh outlook.
Know Your Terminology and Limit the Occurrence of “Buzzwords”
Ensure you fully understand how your organization defines its business terms and vocabulary associated with its brand. All too often we find ourselves sitting in meetings or reading documentation that is loaded with un-intuitive business terms and buzzwords, and many times these terms are used in a way that are only loosely connected with their actual meaning.
We want to limit the usage of these terms so that when they are used, they hold greater meaning and impact to the reader. Additionally, content that is loaded with too many business buzzwords can take on the tone of “corporate jargon.” Not only is your content open to satire and parody, it’s incredibly dry and not engaging. So, next time you want to utilize “Net-Net” into your regular vocabulary, ask yourself: Is it more effective for me to utilize terminology of this nature to external stakeholders or is it better to utilize simple, plain vocabulary to appeal to a broader audience. As with many aspects of any type of content creation, your utilization of terminology and verbiage will depend on your organization’s guidelines and your particular audience.
On Flesch-Kincaid
When I was first introduced to the Flesch-Kincaid readability scale, I was skeptical. For the most part, my personal philosophy on readability and the art of writing is that it shouldn’t be “dumbed-down.” By raising the bar, we enable those around us to rise up to meet the challenge; collectively becoming better readers and writers. At least that’s my view. Yet, despite that, I’ve come to realize that calculating the “readability” of your content can be an invaluable tool in ensuring you don’t find yourself waxing poetic on your branded content.
While you can make use of the formula that calculates the word count, syllables, and sentence length; there are a number of options available that can automate this process either via the internet or on your own applications that you use to author your written content.
I’ve been encouraged to target my material to have scores above 50 as a bare minimum. In Flesch-Kincaid, higher numbers means that your content is “easier to read.” Why is readability important? If you are working for a global organization then you have audiences dispersed throughout the world. You should consider that not everyone may be a native English-speaker. Keeping your structure simple and readable and maintaining an open and energetic tone will ensure that value is not misunderstood or lost entirely. I encourage people to run your material through the lens of Flesch-Kincaid (at least once) to get a gauge on the complexity of your content.
Note: I’ve run this article through Flesch-Kincaid and (prior to edits) the score was: 47.2… Not too bad, but not quite 50…again I’m typically shooting for 50 and above. So I went through and made some edits, and after a multiple passes, brought this score up to: 49.5. Still short of 50, but I’ll be honest, it can be a slog tweaking your material. In this case, I found myself going through multiple edits only to gain ground by a few decimal points at a time. So, keep this calculus in the back of your mind: Is your effort worth the incremental improvements to readability scores?
Final Comments
If you’re a writer and take joy in writing; you don’t need to dread the prospect of creating branded content. Consider it to be a Writer’s Challenge. Ultimately, grammar is a set of guidelines and restrictions imposed upon us to ensure that our writing is understandable and standardized. I’d consider your organizational guidance, templates, and other resources to be part of the “grammar” of Brand Language; keeping your messages consistent and understandable within the organization.
There’s no reason you can’t have fun or be creative in the field of branded content. Agnostic of the joy of writing, adherence to organizational guidelines and internalizing the need to provide value-added content that is simple, consistent, and energized makes you a better writer and adds value to your own organization.
