Back To Business: How to Write for a (Too) Busy Audience

By Jackie Wilson.

September hits different when you run a business. 

The summer haze hasn’t quite worn off, sunburn’s still peeling, the kids are back at school (with an Olympic-level snack requirement), your inbox is behaving like a Kardashian, demanding ALL the attention, and somehow it’s already Q4 prep time. 

You’re spinning plates — some of them on fire — and the last thing you know you need is to wade through paragraphs of blah to get to the point. 

Guess what? The same goes for your audience. 

If you want your words to find a place to land with busy brains (including your own), it’s time to write like every sentence has somewhere better to be. Read on.

Let’s start with the Hook…

…(well, I would, wouldn’t I?) The reality is, right now we’re all drowning in subject lines, sales pitches, and ‘urgent’ WhatsApps. 

I’ve said it before, and yes, I’m saying it again: The way to stand out isn’t to shout louder — it lies in connection.

Start with something relatable, especially in September. You could mention the post-holiday ‘what tf was my laptop password?!’ syndrome (just me?), or the accidental gym bag you haven’t unpacked since July. 

There was that incident involving an over-ripe banana and your teen at the airport (there’s always an airport story). Or the interesting shade of green of that piece of cheese that got left in the back of the fridge when you piled into the car in such a hurry three weeks ago…

Why? Because story triggers empathy, and empathy buys you those extra 30 seconds of attention. Stories create a good vibe between the storyteller (you) and the audience (client/follower/student), and those good vibes lay the foundation for the 'know, like, and trust' factor. 

People remember what made them feel seen far longer than what told them to “act now.”

Make your words work for a living

Your audience is probably reading between school drop-off and their first Zoom/Teams call of the day, and digital reading habits tend to be all about skim-reading.

Research from 2006 isn’t conclusive, but it still tends to agree that the average person scans online text in an “F” pattern rather than reading from top to bottom.

Jakob Nielsen’s eye-tracking research with 232 participants showed that when scanning online content, users tend to read in patterns resembling the letter “F”:

A horizontal sweep across the top few lines (the F's top bar), then a shorter horizontal sweep below that (the second bar), followed by a vertical scan down the left side (the stem).

Translation: they’re hunting for the good/useful bits.

So when you’re writing for “busy brains,” think of that F-pattern: 

Hook them at the top, cut to the chase in the middle, and make good use of headings (left-aligned!) that pack a punch.

Maybe use bullet points and pull quotes so the key ideas can be grabbed at a glance. 

And remember the all-important white space! It creates a sense of elegance and “focuses the reader's eye on a desired part of the page or screen” as well as providing “a sense of breathing space for the viewer.”

Why does this matter? The busier the brain, the less energy left for decoding. Make your message easy to decode and digest.

Say less with more

Did you know that the average adult makes about 35,000 decisions a day (yes, even “latte or flat white” counts)? That’s maaad, right?! 

A 2007 Cornell University study showed that just food-related decisions number around 226 per day.

So let’s give a bit of a helping hand here. If you overload your audience with detail, you’re making them work harder than they want to.

Focus each piece of writing on one single takeaway. If it’s a sales email, decide: Do you want them to book a call, click a link, or hit reply? Anything else can wait.

When you strip away the noise, your message hits harder. 

Writing for a busy audience isn’t about dumbing things down.

It’s about clearing the path so your message gets through before the next ping, ding, or “Muuuum!” steals the spotlight. 

Respect their time, give them value — something worth stopping for — and make sure your personality shines through. Because the truth is, no one has time for everything, but they will make time for something that feels like it was written just for them. 

And that’s your job this September: make your words 

                                                                                           the ones 

                                                                                                           they choose.

Jackie is the founder-owner of BrickHouse, a small content creation company that mainly serves SMEs, and a media professionals with many years of standing.

She has over 25 years of experience as a freelance writer, broadcaster, and media trainer. She is a scrupulously precise editor who is utterly pedantic and very word-choosy. As a trainer, she worked with young journalists and reporters in parts of Africa and Central Asia–something she still sees as thoroughly rewarding and the most fun to be had while working.

Her content these days includes marketing copy, but she describes herself as a storyteller rather than a copywriter. A journalist to the bone, she does nothing without research, and the research object is her client’s story.