Writing for Busy People

March 30, 2006 by

After reading the Church Marketing Sucks guidelines for guest blogging, I came across this post from lead Firefox engineer, Ben Goodger. Ben writes: “It’s great when people make contributions in the form of ideas and proposals, but it’s even better when they’re written for busy people.”

Here are some of Ben’s tips for writing for busy people:

  • Make important points up front.
  • Clear taxonomy of headings, and lots of them.
  • Write clearly and succinctly.
  • No long, unbroken paragraphs or tracts of text.
  • Prefer bulleted lists with clear points to paragraphs.
  • Use of emphasis in formatting to make important things clear.

As someone who is trying to learn what types of promotional materials to create for our camp, I’m finding that I would rather read a list of highlights than a few long paragraphs in a brochure. I read recently, “Don’t tell them you’re surrounded by a beautiful forest. Show them.”

I’m beginning to believe that the less on our promotional materials, newsletters, etc., the better. With a web site packed with the information everyone needs (written with Ben’s tips in mind, of course), I want to point them online. The other promotional materials, I believe, may just need to catch their attention. Let the web site do the rest.

Post By:

Cory Pina


Cory Piña is a husband, father, and student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. He uses Twitter for almost nothing important @corypina, and occasionally posts something meaningful at thisiscory.com.
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3 Responses to “Writing for Busy People”

  • Nathan Colgate
    March 30, 2006

    As a proof of this concept, you might enjoy knowing that I first read the bullet points of this post. Then, after deciding it was interesting, I read the remainder of the post.
    Great job! :)


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  • RC of strangeculture
    March 31, 2006

    Although sometimes I am a guilty culprit of long writing…I love and strive for keeping it simple and not-over-wording it.
    I love your point your bring up.
    (And yet the challenge I fight is creating tone at the same time…I like to read things were you can hear them being spoken to you.)
    –RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com


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  • phill Longmire
    March 31, 2006

    I am actually starting to…
    • Think in bullet points
    • Talk in bullet points
    • Subscribe solutions in bullet points…
    http://pastorphill.typepad.com/phillip_longmire/


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