One of the greatest weapons in a copywriter’s arsenal is, somewhat appropriately, bullets. Bullet points break up copy, get your point across succinctly, and are easier for readers to understand. They’re the time-stressed reader’s saving grace, which means they’re critical when you’re writing for a web audience whose attention span is somewhat less than that of your average squirrel.
As copywriting great John Carlton states in the video above, bullet points work.
So how do you use them effectively? Bullet points should be informative, persuasive, and brief. If your bullet point is a full paragraph, you might as well not use them at all. If you were summarizing the main highlights of each point for someone else, those are the nuggets of information you want your bullets to hit.
Effective bullet points:
- Use powerful verbs to start each in order to create dynamism
- Are brief
- List the highlights of each information point
- Take up only three to six lines – more are just as exhausting to the eye as paragraphs
- Appear only once or twice an article – unless the article is about bullet points
Tags: bullets, copywriting, John Carlton
