Online content creation is often spoken of in a purely functional capacity: You need to generate some words that will, in turn, give the search engines something to chew on, all while conveying your branding message in a clear and effective way.

But your writing can be technically precise, grammatically correct, and loaded with all the right SEO keywords, and still fail to make much of an impact—especially if it doesn’t start an emotional connection with your audience.

This happens only when you write in the right style—which includes classic writing ideas like word choice, tone, and voice. Style is the often-overlooked part of content marketing—a field that can be dull, lifeless, and overly technical—yet it often makes the difference between success and failure.

Style Defined

Style can be understood in many different ways; a recent Marketing Land article says it’s “a way of communicating,” which sounds right to us. After all, the style of clothing you wear says something about you, your tastes, your personality; and in the same way, your style of writing can convey communicate something even beyond the literal meaning of your words.

Of course, style can’t be relegated to just one aspect of your writing; it encompasses a few different things, among them:

  • Your diction, or the actual vocabulary choices you make.
  • The reading level you write on—simplistic? Elevated? Technical? Layman-friendly?
  • The author’s “voice”—the personality you inject into your writing.
  • The level of formality you employ.
  • The way your text looks on the page—for instance, short vs. long sentences, etc.

Why Style Matters

In the end, though, does style really matter? It does, and for a simple reason: Effective marketing copy must appeal to more than just the rational mind. Emotions are just as impactful to purchasing decisions. (Have you ever made an “impulse buy” that you couldn’t really explain, just because it felt right to do so?)

That’s not to say that writing has to be a direct appeal to emotions; in some contexts, something a little more formal and impersonal might actually be more appropriate. Yet style can have an effect on the subconscious, and make a reader either more or less agreeable to trusting your brand. For example, a style that’s technical and erudite will lead to a deeper innate trust of your highly-technical product, while something warmer and more casual would work better when trying to appeal to the readers of a parenting blog.

For marketers, style can be relied on for three basic purposes:

  • It can help establish and earn trust, as in our example of high-level style for a highly technical product.
  • It can help establish a connection with your reader, really lodging information in the brain.
  • It can have aesthetic appeal unto itself—causing readers to take notice.