All good things must come to an end. We’ve spent the last one, two, three, four, five blogs cov­er­ing Hake’s six key rules to clear­er, more effec­tive and engag­ing copy — and next week we’re going to have to find some­thing new to talk about — but this week we’re look­ing at:

Rule Number Six: Adapting to the Channel

ff before I’d even reached my #char­ac­ter­count

When craft­ing copy, it is impor­tant to con­sid­er and research the medi­um it will be pub­lished on to know what’s expect­ed and what will engage.

Social Media

While Face­book, Twit­ter, Insta­gram and LinkedIn might all fall under the same ‘social media’ cat­e­go­ry — they require very dif­fer­ent forms of content. 

Twit­ter — Short and sharp

Face­book — Engage­ment (com­ments and shares)

Insta­gram — Visuals

LinkedIn - Professional

Digital

Web­sites, blogs, newslet­ters — you might have a recur­ring theme in all of these (i.e. you) but your con­tent’s pur­pose and style should dif­fer. Head­lines, bul­let points and a great hook are essen­tial for all — 80% of your audi­ence will be scan­ning for infor­ma­tion rel­e­vant to them. 

Print

Print is a very dif­fer­ent beast. Those sit­ting down to read print will gen­er­al­ly have more of an inter­est in what you have to say and more time to read a lengthy arti­cle but you need a great hook that will get them in for the long-haul. 

Face-to-Face

Why am I talk­ing about face-to-face, when I spe­cialise in writ­ing? Pre­sen­ta­tions. We’ve all sat through pre­sen­ta­tions longer than Titan­ic and wordier than War and Peace. When craft­ing your pre­sen­ta­tion think about:

• Atten­tion spans (they’re not very…must remem­ber to buy milk)
• One key mes­sage per slide — we don’t need to read your script
• A log­i­cal framework
• Clear text

You want to be the engag­ing one, using your slides as an aid, not a crux.

The End

And that folks, is how you make six rules, last six blogs.