Rarely a day goes by without seeing tips about something — tips to raise healthy kids, tips to eat healthy (especially during the holiday season), tips for travel, tips for a better relationship, and on and on. You know, you’ve seen them.
Sometimes the tips are a single sentence, a directive telling you what to do, with a list of them almost seeming like orders shouted by a parent or someone in the military. Other times the tips go on for a page at a time, with explanations, examples, and endless information.
You may be wondering what’s the best or right way to deliver tips. The good news is there is no single answer to that question. It depends on many things. Here are a few variables to consider and to get you thinking:
Tips – Create Them to Suit Your Purposes
Your personality – the smarter or the more unsure you are of yourself, the harder you may find it to abbreviate the amount of information you provide. Either way, your inclination may be to want to justify your tip. Neither is right or wrong, by the way.
The amount of space you have – certain publications, both online and in print, have space limitations. They will give you a word count limit. It is then up to you to distill your tips to fit the word count.
Writing style of a particular publication – some publications are more narrative than others. They might appreciate longer explanations accompanying your “how-to.” Others, or that same one, use shorter tips as a “side bar” to a narrative article.
Other products and services you offer – if you already have a tips booklet with short tips, a natural expansion is a product and/or service expanding the tips. If you have an expanded product and/or service, you can distill it to a smaller tips product..
Reaching different audiences – based on who you intend to reach, some people will be more receptive to and interested in shorter bits of information. Others will appreciate more explanation of your tips. All audiences are not created equal.
