Well, seems like the snow is going to be hitting us this weekend…

Hey! Andres here,

Welcome to the networking desk! Yes it might be chilly outside so stay warm, make some hot chocolate. Hey! And while you are at it, let’s schedule some events for next week.

Stay safe out there!

Here’s what we got this week:

• Making your content easier to consume.

• Events from the community next week.

Alright, let’s do this.

“Lean forward moment” of the week - 📖Simple Words Big Sales

There are tactics that rarely work for most businesses. Yet this is the only one I have seen work for small, medium, large businesses as well as non-profits.

That tactic is writing level.

A client of mine had an issue with his website having good traffic but low signups. Their site was getting only 10–20 secs of viewing time. Which was not enough for people to take any action.

After reading the content, I noticed it was very hard to read. So I kept the same idea and improved the reading level to be easier to read.

This resulted in users reading for over a minute and thirty seconds! Which generated more signups.

Another case was when I took over a newsletter for a non-profit client. I switched from a very formal style to a more simple, friendly tone. They went from having close to 10% open rates to over 62% (of course me playing with titles helped as well). But, after the first few emails, people started opening more as they could read the content faster.

I could go on and on with examples…

Now, how do you take action on this for your company or organization?

Every script. Website. Email. Newsletters, or anything you write, needs to go through a reading level calculator. My recommendation is to use Hemingwayapp — it’s free, and you don’t even have to give out your email.

When you paste your text there, edit it using its recommendations to reach a reading level of 3rd grade. 4th or 5th grade is ok too, but you get the most out of 3rd grade.

Many of my clients worry about attracting the wrong audience by writing in a lower grade level. This is NOT the case. 3rd grade only means shorter sentences. Easy to understand words. And no passive language.

Simple language makes it easier for higher level people to read. And makes it possible for lower level people to understand. Meaning: more people understand = they buy and donate.

🖥️ Use the power of words and branding to get more customers

🗓️ Now, the events…

⭐️ = My picks of the week

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Thank you for reading! Quick thing before I go:

1. If you are new or would like to read older posts, check out this page. There is a backlog of previous weeks of “The Networking Desk”

2. Know someone who would benefit from this newsletter? Be sure to share it with them! 📩 (just copy the link or forward this email) I will keep putting out great newsletters for them and for you. That’s a promise.

See you next week.

- Andres Inciarte