Best of Brand Marketing Distilled is our weekly distillation of the best of brand marketing and business intelligence. We hope the ideas and articles are fuel for your organization’s planning and success.
This week we offer a distillation of rules and tips for effective writing and for increasing your website’s user appeal. Effective writing and increasing your website usability will make your brand marketing more effective.
- George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing
This “Pick the Brain” blog post summarizes the classic George Orwell 5 rules for effective writing, which are: (i) use original turns of phrase, (ii) favour short words over long ones, (iii) cut unnecessary words, (iv) write active verbs, and (v) avoid jargon. There is also the common sense bonus rule that it is okay to break the rules as you see fit. As the author of 1984, George Orwell wouldn’t have been a fan of dogmatic rule following.
- What is usability?
Jacob Creech IntuitionHQ post is a good starting point for thinking about usability (and also the approach referred to using the grander term of design thinking). Simply, usability is the degree to which any object, device, or software application is easy to use with no specific training. It matters since it will help you connect and communicate more effectively with your target audience. It will also allow you to stand out from the competition and spend less time, money and effort on user support.
- 7 Best Practices for Improving Your Website’s Usability
Jacob Gube of Six Revisions provides a more modern take on improving the usability and readability of web content. His 7 tips are: (i) be concise, (ii) use headings, (iii) organize content for readers to scan or skim, (iv) use bullets and other formatting, (v) spacing matters, (vi) make your hyper-links user friendly and (vii) use visuals strategically.
- Ad Week: Data Points: A Nation of Multitaskers
More than ever we’re likely to surf the Web as we sample fall programming
The importance of focusing on web content and website usability is put into sharp focus given the data that your audience may well be both scanning your website and watching tv.
This Week’s Top Distility Rebranding Branding Content
- How to Choose Your Brand Architecture
A blog post in our brand architecture basics series which provides key questions to consider before you invest a dime in branding your next offer.