Sometimes, less is more.

Concise social media copy forces you to get straight to the heart of what you want to say. As attention spans get shorter, it’s more important than ever.

It’s all about practice, the more you challenge yourself and push yourself to write more concisely, the easier it will get. I use Paragraph Planet to help keep my skills sharp. Why not have a go at writing a 75 word story.

Alternatively, here are my tips for writing succinctly:

1. Set your own word limit

Just because blogs and social platforms have generous character limits these days, doesn’t mean you should write the next Iliad. By imposing your own word count on your work, you will be challenged to think more creatively about your writing. It will also help you to focus on communicating only the key information.

2. Keep it focused

Avoid introducing lots of ideas at once and instead try focusing on only one key message. Cut out anything that isn’t directly related to that topic. Planning ahead will help with this. Once you’ve finished writing, look back at your plan to see if you have kept to it.

3. Write the most important thing first

You don’t need to write a lengthy introduction to your main point. Just start talking about it!

4. Choose simple words

The average reading age in the UK is thought to be around 9-11 years old, so choosing simpler words is good for accessibility. Don’t say ‘adequate’ when you can say ‘enough’ or ‘indicate’ when you can use ‘show’. Complicated words leads to complicated sentences and that’s where your wordcount begins to creep up.

5. Be brutal

Try temporarily cutting whole sentences and even paragraphs and re-read. Does the post still makes sense without it? Then you probably didn’t need them and you can remove the text permanently.

6. Rewrite instead of edit

Sometimes, editing what you’ve written can make things worse. You change a word, cut out a section and suddenly the whole paragraph no longer makes sense. Instead, take a sentence and completely re-write it. Think to yourself, how can I say this another way? This often results in more succinct sentences.

7. Read it again

If you have time, put the copy to one side and come back to it with fresh eyes. This helps you to see where you’ve repeated yourself, or notice where important information should be moved higher up.

8. Read it out loud

Reading the post out loud will help you catch things like long sentences and complicated wording.

9. Get someone else to read it

When you’ve written something, every word feels too important to cut out. You often can’t see what needs changing because you’re the one that wrote it. Having someone else read it to see if it’s saying what you want it to say, is going to help.

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How do you ensure you keep your wordcount low? Share you advice below.

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