How To Write Money Into Existence (Part Two)

School and university train people OUT of writing serious money into existence.

This series of articles is about turning that around. If you haven’t seen the first one, you’ll want to check it out. It covers the first step; making your writing ‘inviting’:

https://www.tearitupmarketing.co.uk/marketing-blog/x2fpi3ig0k3nq4znw6joba11h6rnp7 

Now, once you’ve given your writing a manicure, tarted it up, and made it look the part… What do you do next? 

The next challenge is to keep people’s interest and hold attention… But how?

Make Your Writing Charismatic: The BAR Test

That doesn’t mean downing 5 pints and letting your innermost thoughts ramble on the page like a drunken sailor. That would be unbecoming.

It’s about ‘humanizing’ your words. Making them easy to read. Think about how you chat to a friend at a bar. We want our writing to resemble that! 

Let's take an example from The 40 Year-Old Virgin of what NOT to do. In this scene, Seth Rogan asks our virgin protagonist about how he spent his weekend:

The dude’s reply:

“You know I just kind of hung out. I was… God, Friday when I went home… I really wanted an egg salad sandwich and I was just obsessing about it. I was like “Man, I’m going to make one of those.” So… So saturday I went out and… blah blah blah.”

Here's the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Iuh418Z1E 

—Nobody has time for that! His reply doesn’t pass the bar test.—

So always ask yourself:

“Would I say this to an actual human being in conversation?”

—Arno Wingen (Professor of Business at university.com, and Business Owner at ProfResults).

Two Iron Clad Methods To
Passing The BAR Test (and one really neat tech-hack)

There’s two methods here (I’ll share a bonus ‘hack’ at the end). 

1. Read your copy out loud as you edit.

2. Speak out loud as you write in the first place. Write THOSE words down.

These 2 hacks are absolute gold. Let’s go a bit more in depth on how to use them…

1. Turn horrid writing into something easy to read. 

As you read your copy out loud, you want to see where you get stuck, and iron out those blemishes. If you stumble across a word, or one word doesn’t flow very nicely into the next, then you fix it. You’ll also notice gaps in logic and points that don’t make sense as you read your writing back. 

Remember: no piece of writing can ever be ‘perfect’—especially a first draft. 

ALWAYS read out loud to make sure your writing passes the BAR.

2. Write Naturally From The Start!

Writing what you speak engages your innate voice, making your writing relatable.

Simply talk out your points, and type them as you go. Nothing more to it than that.

Try it. When you see the results, you’ll be hooked!

The Bonus Tech-Hack

Take this all to the next level by recording voice notes direct to text. 

Google, Notes app etc all have this feature. 

Or, you can record a memo and translate it into text. I use Cockatoo for this. It works really well. Highly recommended.

It was really handy when a founder of a multi-million pound EdTech company hired me to write his social media posts. He’d send me voice notes. I would translate those into text, and polish them up in a doc, ready for him to post.

Worked really well! 

Here’s a link to the tool (yes, it’s an affiliate):

https://www.cockatoo.com/?via=sam 

So use these methods to make your writing resonate with people! 

You’ll love the results. 

Sam Terrett

P.S. If you have websites, ads or other content that doesn’t pass the bar. Why not hand them to us? 

We’ll tart up your writing and make it relatable faster than you can say “I need a compelling marketing campaign that engages new customers.”

We’ll help you tear it up in your market:

tearitupmarketing.co.uk/contact