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Always include critical details when writing promotions
What is the point of promoting something without explaining how to get it?
Due to my connection with Love Santa, I keep an eye on Christmas news around the world. Recently, I went to a site to read about some Christmas movies coming up – it mentioned things like Home Alone and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (one of which is debated to its place as a Christmas movie every year!) This is a news type site with a section on entertainment – it was Australian but I hadn’t been there before.
What struck me though was the lack of basic and critical details. Paraphrasing, the article said “SuperChannel {made up name!} is starting some Christmas movies in November and here’s their full schedule”‘ then listed all the movies for November.
The article had some links to other pages on the site about types of movies and so on, but no link to SuperChannel.
Personally, I have never heard of SuperChannel so I’m pretty confident it’s not a free to air TV channel. So how do I see movies they play? It is within a subscription to an on-demand service? Or maybe its an online channel of some sort?
Write it, don’t assume!
When writing, for pleasure as well as business really, make sure you give necessary information rather than assume people know it. Even when you know the audience well, be careful to not miss important details.
From the article I mentioned above, I can now tell you when Home Alone will be showing. I have no idea how to find it and watch it, so knowing the timetable is fairly useless. Maybe the writer or site assumes ‘our site members knows SuperChannel’ but what about new members or people coming across the article (as I did) for the first time? What about the members who know the name but can’t recall access details?
Even if your audience does know the basics, where/how to access something you are promoting is critical information to include.
Allude to an illusion
If you’re not careful with the pronunciation, allusion and illusion can sound very similar, and they are occasionally incorrectly swapped for each other.
An illusion is not real; so someone may have a false idea or see something that isn’t really there – they are facing an illusion.
Allusion is a reference to knowledge you assume your reader/listener understands, especially when referring to literary or art knowledge. For instance, I will make an allusion to Shakespeare’s work when I write: the young couple considered themselves to be as tragic as Romeo and Juliet. I can assume that most people know the story of Romeo and Juliet so the allusion explains a lot in few words.
To remember which is which, consider that illusion starts with I and often relates to a trick of the eye. Allusion starts with A and usually relates to Art and literature.
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