According to the First Site Guide, around 7 million blog posts are published daily. This should give you a good idea of how prolific content has become. However, creating this content is not a walk in the park. Content writers have to make sure their content is unique and provides some value to the readers. In this article, we have highlighted the importance of writing concise content and how to write concisely.
When writing content for a blog, they have to keep it concise. It is mainly because most people don’t want to read long pieces of content. If you’re a writer and are struggling to create content that is concise, then this article is for you. We’re going to discuss how you can keep your content to the point and make it as concise as possible. Before we get into that though, let us tell you a bit more about the importance of conciseness in content writing.
The importance of conciseness in content writing
Maintaining conciseness in content writing is one of the most important things a writer has to do. It is mainly because humans have a low attention span and they refrain from reading content that is too long. The Treetop says that the average human attention span is only 8.25 seconds. Besides this, when a piece of content is too long, there are chances that it might include fluff. Irrelevant information and fluff can make the content look amateurish and dull. It can also make the content less engaging. This is another reason why conciseness is important in content writing. Keeping the content to the point and explaining things straightforwardly is always recommended. Now that you know a bit more about the importance of conciseness in content writing, let us move on to discuss how to write concisely. Read our blog on 7 EASY TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE CONTENT WRITING to get an in-depth understanding of the ways using which you can make your content engaging and impactful.
How can you achieve conciseness in content writing?
1. Only discuss the important points
The answer to how to write concisely begins with writing the important points. This can be a great way to keep your content short. Discussing only the main points and important things in a blog post can help you bring down its overall length and keep it optimal. If you try to add and explain things that don’t really contribute much to the overall context of the blog post, it can reduce its quality and make it seem like it’s trying to accomplish too many things at the same time. When too many things are being talked about, the content also becomes confusing for the reader. They might not be able to gather the information they really need. This makes them leave the content, which is bad for engagement. Focus on discussing the main points, the things that would actually be valuable for the reader. Read our blog on 7 RARE QUALITIES ONLY CONTENT WRITERS POSSESS AMONG ALL THE PROFESSIONALS to get an in-depth understanding of the qualities that you must develop if you are a content writer for successful career.
2. Avoid repeating information
The next answer to how to write concisely is to avoid repeating information. It rarely happens that a long blog post talks about different things. Most of the time when a blog post is too long, it is because it has repeated information. Therefore, to ensure your content stays concise, try talking about a particular thing only once. When information is repeated, the content not only gets longer and longer but it gets boring too. Who would want to read the same thing being conveyed differently? If you don’t have anything other new to add to the blog post, you can just leave it to what’s already been added. Remember, when it comes to content, more is not always good. This can be a bit tricky as sometimes you might repeat the same information without realizing that it has already been given before. In instances like this, it is recommended that you make a summary of your content, just to be sure. What summarizing will do is help make a single point for every key information that is conveyed in the content. You can then use those points to shorten your content by removing instances of repetition. Manual summarization can take some time though. If you don’t want to do it this way, then leveraging an online summarizing tool to shorten your content is always an option. Read our blog on REWARDS & CHALLENGES OF SUCCESSFUL CONTENT WRITERS IN INDIA to get an in-depth understanding of the various rewards and challenges faced by a successful content writer in India.
3. Avoid writing long sentences
The most important answer to how to write concisely is to avoid writing long sentences. Too many long sentences contribute to the blog post being long. If you can bring down the length of your sentences, the overall content’s length will obviously be brought down too since sentences together make the content. The best way to write shorter sentences is to use an active voice as much as possible. The active voice is shorter and more direct because it clearly states who performed the action on what. For example, the sentence “The mouse was chased by the cat” can be shortened to “The cat chased the mouse” simply by converting it from passive to active voice. The passive voice introduces additional words to the sentence and places the focus on the receiver, resulting in a longer and less concise sentence. You can try avoiding this so your overall content stays concise. Read our blog on ARE SHORT ARTICLES VALUED MORE IN THE MARKETING WORLD? to get an in-depth understanding about the importance of concise writing in the marketing world.
Content writing requires conciseness. It is one of the most important things that a writer has to ensure in their content. In this article, we have discussed some things that answer the question of how to write concisely. These points can help you keep your content concise along with briefly discussing the importance of short content.
