It’s official – “rizz” has been chosen as the Oxford Word of the Year 2023. If you’ve never heard of this word before, you aren’t alone. A shortened form of the word “charisma” popular amongst younger crowds, it means charm, style and/or attractiveness. Regardless whether 2023 has been a productive year of writing for you or not, it’s still important to set ourselves up for success in 2024. Let’s recap some of Wordsmith’s top tips over the year and add some rizz to our writing –without sacrificing value!
Bringing focus back
A fast-paced work environment (which is normally the case for marketing agencies) inevitably leads to employees adopting a fast-paced work mentality – problems can appear for unexplainable reasons and it forces workers to cook up viable solutions on the fly. Being a quick-thinker is fine, but it can be problematic when someone’s thinking outpaces their ability to communicate… which can lead to uncoordinated explanations, sloppy instructions, missing details and other entirely avoidable messes.
Before you shoot off that email or relay the client’s feedback to your team, take a moment to recollect and ask the following:
· How much time do I have before this actually needs a response?
· Who am I addressing this message to and how formal does it need to be?
· What are the key points to cover?
· Did I rank the key points in order of importance?
· Do I need to provide background or context for things to make sense?
· Did I spell/grammar check?
· Does the flow make sense?
You’d be surprised how often we omit things from this simple checklist, but having everything checked off can make a world of difference for the people you work with!
Where’s the value?
With global economies undergoing recessions, consumers are definitely more mindful of spending – not to mention, many marketing budgets have shrunk considerably too. As marketers, it’s going to take a lot more convincing to get people to want to take out their wallets… or is it?
This might be the case if you are still thinking like it’s the pre-pandemic days, but modern consumers need to see and feel value before they are willing to listen to your call-to-actions. This requires a thorough understanding of your customers:
· Do your consumer research and keep it up-to-date
o A good way to do so is via surveys, social engagement and questionnaires – offer incentives to get quality responses!
· Know their needs, wants, pain points and struggles
o Your content needs to cover these topics so that consumers see a reason to check out your stuff
o Consider a “freemium” model if applicable – in game development, many games are free-to-play and reward players for continuously logging in or making progression. Players who want to achieve results faster are given the option to do so via in-game transactions. By offering a choice to consumers, they won’t feel pigeon-holed into their decisions and are more likely to commit for longer periods as long as they continue to perceive value from playing.
Don’t toss out that old content
Just because something is old doesn’t mean that it’s junk! It’s difficult coming up with new content consistently, so when you need something to fill up posting schedules, why not refurbish older material? However, you can’t just copy and paste an entire article and call it a day – there are some finer nuances to the art of repurposing content:
· Do content auditing on old material first and have a collection of key messages and brand stories
o Then divide this content accordingly with the different elements of your brand’s messaging pillars and value propositions
o Identify evergreen content (material that is relevant all-year round, such as SEO for example) and make new campaigns around them
· Consider recent trends and whether you can link them to your audited content – for example, less relevant or outdated content can be reused as handy case studies or guides
· Don’t forget you can always do throwbacks and celebrate milestones – just make sure you apply a modern and relative perspective so that it will entice audiences to revisit the content
Know which voice and sentence type to use
There’s always more than one way to write. Being able to pick out when to use the active/passive voice and when to use a specific sentence type will give you a much greater control over your ability to express and captivate.
· Active voice: highlights the subject and has it performing an action – best for general use: “Jeff roasted a turkey for Christmas dinner.”
· Passive voice: has the subject being acted upon by the verb – ideal for making objective statements (like reporting what you saw or providing news statements): “The turkey was roasted by Jeff for Christmas dinner.”
1. Declarative sentences: used for making run-of-the-mill statements and observations: “Jeff’s turkey was a little dry.”
2. Imperative sentences: used to make demands or requests, and can sometimes be disguised as questions (but they feel more like demands that need to be fulfilled and are usually not up for discussion): “Pass me the cranberry sauce. // Hook me up with some mashed potatoes please.”
3. Interrogative sentences: the true questions that expect an answer from the recipient: “What’d you think of Jeff’s so-called Christmas feast?”
4. Exclamatory sentences: these are generally reserved for attracting attention or for making call-to-actions, as they tend to feature an exclamation mark: “Look! Jeff is chugging 2 quarts of eggnog!”
5. Optative sentences: these are sentences where the subject prays/wishes/curses or expresses some kind of sentiment: “I hope Jeff doesn’t end up in the hospital, that eggnog smelled off.”
Cut the bloat with the “Paramedic Method”
If your writing feels like it’s being weighed down by unnecessary wordage, then UCLA English professor Richard Lanham’s “Paramedic Method” might be the solution to upping your word efficiency.
1. Underline prepositions
2. Circle the “is” and “to be” verbs
3. Identify the primary verb with a box
4. Change this action to a simple active verb
5. Have the person/object performing this verb as the subject of the sentence
6. Cut out unnecessary and slow wind-ups, such as filler subordinate clauses
7. Cut out redundancies
By following these steps, you can go from this:
From much heated discussion from the parents of our students and our teachers, it has come to our attention that certain students (who will not be named for the sake of anonymity) have been engaging in the act of bullying of other students – we need not remind you that this is a punishable offense of our school code that can lead to an immediate non-negotiable expulsion. Consider this your one and only warning.
To this:
We’re aware that certain students have been bullying others. Bullying is a serious offense that will lead to immediate expulsion – this is your only warning.
To “rizz” up your writing doesn’t necessarily mean to dump as much glamour as you can into your content. Just like with certain restaurants that coat their burgers with caviar and edible gold leaf to try and justify a $100+ price tag, more isn’t always better. Considerate and clean value are often worth a whole lot more to your audience!