Subscribe in a readerWritten communications with customers, employees, and partners contribute to much of their understanding of your relationship with them. In order to provide value while maintaining a trustworthy relationship with the reader, you need to write in a believable manner that provides enough information for a reader to take action.
You can make your writing more believable by first highlighting every claim in the document, then review each claim while asking yourself:
Reinforce each claim with solid proof that is supported by outside sources or from a well documented study. Help readers understand why this claim is important and what it means to them. Don't just tell someone to do something, share with them why and how they should do it.
In order to be trusted, you must provided enough analytical and emotional support to prove you are worthy of trust. Supporting every claim with solid facts really improves this level of trust. Justify each action you want the reader to take.
Once you've supported each claim, it is also useful to highlight the facts and make sure they are directly associated with a specific claim. It doesn't help to have facts in a written document that don't seem to have any particular reason.
These suggestions work well for sales copy, marketing materials, documentation, or any how-to content you may provide to your customer. It adds the support necessary to help the reader trust you know the answer and that you can help them with their particular situation.
/ clearly-communicate | earning-trust /
By Justin Hitt at November 19, 2003 2:37 PM
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