Writing: Here’s How To Make Complex Topics Simple

The ability to relay complex topics in a simple and straightforward way is an essential skill in content marketing. Regardless if you’re in the field of education, science, engineering, or IT, you need to ensure that your audience understands what you’re trying to convey. Here are a few ways in which you can ensure that you and your audience are on the same page.

Understanding Your Audience

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A common mistake that people make when they’re writing for an audience is to think about what they want to say as opposed to considering what their audience needs to hear. When trying to explain a complex topic to laymen, you need to consider what their current knowledge on the subject may be.

This means that you must first understand who your target audience is so that you can gather some contextual information about them. Apart from adjusting your content to make it more relevant to them, finding out a bit more about your audience will allow you to adapt your tone and language to suit theirs more closely. For instance, if you’re targeting a young and hip audience, try to allude to current trends and technologies, and other topics that may be relevant to their lives.

Identifying and Emphasizing Your Key Points

The quickest way to completely confuse your audience is to supply them with in-depth and detailed knowledge about your subject. Instead of impressing them, you’re bound to end up with a frustrated and even irritated audience. Determine the key point or points they need to understand in order to make informed decisions and explain these in plain language, devoid of fancy terms or jargon. If possible, use real-life examples that they can relate to bring your points across. 

For instance, if you’re marketing a complex and expensive solution to business owners, you want to focus on showing them how your solution will cut costs and improve efficiency and productivity. Unless they’re interested in learning about such details, you don’t need to provide technical information.

Use Diagrams and Pictures

As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Since our brains process visual information 60,000 times faster than words, incorporating visual aids such as diagrams and pictures into your content can help your audience grasp the information you’re trying to convey. Since infographics consist of a combination of text, images, graphs, charts, diagrams, and even animation, they are effective tools for simplifying complex topics or large amounts of data.

Apart from the fact that an infographic is visually enticing, it’s also an excellent tool for storytelling. Instead of just supplying boring statistics, you can turn the facts into a simple story. By providing your audience with a story and visual stimulation, you’re sure to keep their attention and bring your information across in an entertaining and simple way. For instance, a software developer can tell the story of how a fictitious character faces specific challenges at work and how using their new software helps him or her overcome these.

Why be boring and incomprehensible when you can have your audience enthralled. To effectively bring your message across, employ these simple steps to produce engaging and effective content.