Print is Dead

Over the past 5 years, print media and traditional advertising have quickly lost their relevance. Circulation has taken a nose dive for nearly all major newspapers while magazine sales continue plummeting. And I probably don’t even have to mention that if you still have a phone book, it’s best used as a door jam. Does this rapid disappearance of print mean that writing is obsolete?

Print is Now Online Content

Just because print publications are rapidly disappearing doesn’t mean people have stopped reading. Now the web is our go-to source for information. We can pick and choose what we want to read instead of having it force fed to us issue by issue. Best of all, online content can be constantly updated reflecting changes or updates. Unlike print on paper that’s old news even before it hits the shelf, web content is always late breaking with a multitude of competing sources within a click away.

What Happens to Your Message

Reading online is different than paper. We skim the text rather than reading from beginning to end. There are simply too many sources competing for our interest. We may read the first paragraph of the latest post on a blog, click on a link which leads to another site with more information, suddenly remember that we need check our Facebook profile, search several sites for prices on drapes we’ve been meaning to buy, and then take a closer look at that op-ed on nytimes.com that we browsed yesterday. Serendipity rules our activity, much like we used to browse books and magazines in a library only now it’s much easier.

So what does this mean for your business? It means that your message is competing with other bits of information from across the globe within a quick flick of the finger. In this environment, nobody takes the time to read what you have to offer from beginning to end. Bullet points, concise language, and small paragraphs are essential. Writing for the web has to illustrate a point rather than describe it and this is how persuasivetype.com develops your message. We take the time to learn your product or service and then match your message to how customers can best use it…in bits and pieces that work just as well together as on their own. Why not get in touch for a free assessment?

photo courtesy of visualeditors.com