Image: Information overload.
We’re continuing with a series of posts addressing the idea found in many online articles describing the most common “mistakes” of content writing. We’re instead attempting to help readers focus on several important “best practice” factors to produce better content.
We’ve already looked at audience and jargon. This time, let’s discuss TMI: too much information.
A good post can turn into a great post when the amount of information in it is properly tailored—or it can become a bad post if the amount of information in it is wrong.
A bad post can be bad in part because it provides too little information. That’s annoying to a reader and leaves her disappointed: she came to your site looking for answers, but you haven’t provided them. She’ll look elsewhere, probably by backtracking to her original search and clicking on one of the other links that was returned, along with your site, by that search. She probably won’t be back.
A post can also be bad because it provides too much information: TMI. You’re less likely to lose the reader (“potential customer”) by providing TMI, but it can still happen. A reader doesn’t want every detail associated with the question she asked: she wants the answer to her particular question. If your post doesn’t do that effectively, she might once again move on.
How do you hit the correct level of information delivery and not fall into a TMI problem? There’s no simple mechanism, but the issue to be most aware of is (once again) your audience.
Let’s take an example. Suppose that your business is a California legal firm and one of its specialties is employment law. You want your firm to show up in searches that might be used by potential clients seeking assistance with a workers compensation claim. A new decision comes down from the courts regarding the going and coming rule, and you want to post something about it on your site.
How should you do it—without delivering TMI?
It will depend on who the post is targeted to and in what ways. We can quickly think of three very different ways to write this kind of post, depending on the audience, but there are others.
If the goal is to pull potential clients who might search on, for example, “workers comp for crash while commuting,” that post will not be written with a deep level of detail. The focus at that point would be to explain to the client that, in a nutshell, “it depends.” A post of this sort might explain that there are general rules around this issue, but also numerous exceptions, and that each case is different. In addition to providing a few very brief summaries (without citations) and urging the searcher to contact the firm to discuss their specific case, the post might work in a summary of the new ruling. Doing this would show that your firm understands the legal issue and also that it’s up-to-date with current law. Doing all of these things should give the potential client a favorable impression of your firm—without providing TMI.
That first case is the most likely goal of a post like this, but it’s not the only one. Perhaps a firm has developed—or is in the process of developing—a formal or informal network with other firms, of those who take similar cases or those who make referrals for clients they’re not suited for. This post might target a slightly different ideal search string. It also might be structured differently, perhaps minimizing the client-facing appeal but expanding the level of detail in the summaries (and it will probably provide citations). Summaries themselves might include links to additional details of those cases and even to additional, similar cases. The pitch in this post might be refocused toward a more knowledgeable legal user seeking assistance on behalf of a third party, rather than to an individual seeking help for herself.
Another situation could be that a firm is actively promoting its depth of expertise in cases which are similar to the one being discussed. A post of this kind would probably go into much greater detail and discuss more cases than either of the other versions shown above (although, alternatively, it could go into exhaustive detail on a single case). This type of post will almost certainly offer numerous case law citations. A post like this can still be written to a reasonable word count—and avoid the TMI problem—by relying on links to outside sources when appropriate.
This is, in fact, an excellent reason to use external links: to provide additional detail, but to keep that detail off your own landing page for a specific search.
This is also why you should always make external links open as new pages. You don’t want to force a user to backtrack from linked pages to return to yours; your page should remain open as the knowledgeable source that provided additional information.
Is there a simple solution to the TMI problem? As with the going and coming rule, “it depends.” It’s a moving target, based on exactly what you’re trying to achieve and accounting for many variables: your audience, their interests, their goal in a particular search, and so on. But keeping the TMI issue in mind, as part of a checklist used when approaching each post, goes a very long way toward helping you achieve the right balance.
Every post produced by Waltham WordWorks for our clients includes the right amount of information: not too little, and not TMI. Let us work with you to produce the best possible content for your needs. Contact us today to get that discussion started.
Future posts will discuss other “mistakes” and “best practices” to address in your site content. Click the “follow” button just below the search box to receive notifications of those future posts—we don’t collect or share your information, it’s for this purpose only.
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