Writing to Persuade

Remember the days of personal blogging?  All the blogs you read were from a personal standpoint, the writer either shared their personal life or would write a review about the latest gadget they had found?  They weren’t trying to sell you anything, they were just sharing their opinion and in effect probably did cause many people to try the product they were speaking of.

Today’s blogging world is a lot different.  Today we’re trying to sell something, whether it’s products, ad space, revenue from clicking or even ourselves we’re selling if we’re a freelance writer.  We often write to persuade instead of just review.

Today we’re going to cover a few points for writing to persuade.  One thing we want to avoid though is making the reader feel like we’re trying to ‘sell’ them.  Most people hate a sales pitch.  The only people who like a sales pitch are the one’s watching infomercials on late night TV.
 
When writing to persuade you should use logical arguments which contain no flaws in reasoning. Make sure you have strong arguments and evidence to back them up with.

Use reliable facts that come from a good source.  Use examples and statistics instead of your own opinion.  If you’re writing a personal review your opinion is important, but in general persuasive writing you need to stick with the facts.

Get testimonies from experts if you can.  People like testimonies and they like to hear from experts, so use those whenever you can.

Don’t use emotionally charged language.  To persuade you need to be polite and soft-spoken, or soft written in this case.

You need to anticipate opposing opinions and concede those if you can.  Try to hit every angle so the reader is persuaded without any further question because you’ve answered those questions already.
The most important thing is to remember you’re dealing with people.  In writing and selling we often refer to them as “target audience” or “the reader” and we forget that they’re actually people.  Treat them as a friend and persuade them from the standpoint as you would a friend you know personally.  Just because the blogging world has changed doesn’t mean you have to consort to being an infomercial.

Written by Patti Stafford from Patti Stafford
Posted on May 18th, 2009 and filed under Writing
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