Melanie from Jellyvision shares a great post here about how State Farm could have dramatically improved the verbiage in a letter they’d just sent her. You don’t have to be in the insurance business to benefit from the lesson here—think about your audience and communicate with them like a nice human being.
We all have opportunities to make impressions with our written communication. Whether you’re:
- A counselor writing a newsletter for your parent community;
- A student writing a thank-you note to the teacher who wrote your recommendations;
- A parent emailing a teacher about your student’s progress in the class; or
- A job searcher composing the email to send with your cover letter and resume
…don’t write sentences like you’re composing a federal law. Just communicate like you were talking to someone. You’ll get your point across and make a much better impression.
And if anyone from Jellyvision is reading this, I have one point of constructive criticism: I loved the verbiage on your site, but it took me quite awhile to find an explanation of what Jellyvision actually does.