Why Do I Write Like This?

You know, single sentences separated by a single line.

Let’s start with attention…

Attention is scarce and limited — prospects and customers can’t digest every message.

They see on average 362 marketing messages per day.

That is approximately 100,000 marketing messages per year!

It’s impossible to take all of that information in let alone process it.

“Ad blockers” on the prospect side and native content on the brand side, are on the rise to combat this situation.

Cognitive psychologist George A Miller said the human mind can only hold, on average, seven individual units of information in working memory at once.

99% of these messages will be missed by prospects.

So, unless your marketing message stands out, as you can probably guess, it will be lost forever.

To stand out, one way, especially if you a going to write a lot in an attention-deficit-disorder environment where porn is one-click-away, you need to make reading as frictionless as possible…

Singles sentences are easier to read than paragraphs.

When posting on social sites, it replicates part of what is called the “Dual Consumption Path”.

The “Dual Consumption Path” is when a prospect is presented with two options to read content or a sales script:

1. Consume the whole thing in its entirety; or
2. Consume only key parts of it (in other words, skim).

There are a number of ways you can help prospects skim:

• One sentence per line;
• Each sense as short as possible (like this);
• Words underlined;
• Words bold;
• Word italics;
• Words CAPITALIZED;
• Words colored;
• All word options combined;
• Symbols ✔️;
• Fast-forward controls on video and audio;
• Transcribed versions of video and audio;
• Video and audio versions of text;
• Etc…

Now, paragraphs are harder to read because when words are closer together, both in sentences, justlikethisitisreallyannoyingtoreadandinterpret, but also in when the line have little space between them, just like what is happening in this paragraph. Although some of the sentences in this copy have long sentences, anything beyond two punctuation marks starts to become harder-and-harder to read. It looks overwhelming especially when being read on a mobile device mobile. Simply put, a text wall is intimidating to read! In addition, if the whole length of the copy is long to start with, separating it up into single sentence makes it appear to be shorter than it really is.

So, if you want someone to read something that is:

• Long;
• On mobile; or
• On a social site…

Single sentences separated by a single line are the way to go!