10 Tips to Make Yourself Understood Every Time

You want your writing to have an impact, so that means you need to make yourself understood.

It’s incredibly easy to be misunderstood. Especially today in this hair-trigger outrage climate.

What people think you are putting out is never exactly what you intend.

We all read and listen through our own brain filters, biases, and broken ideas about the world.

It is a sad fact that when people are busy, distracted, and multi-tasking, what you say and what people hear are often two very different things.

Let’s analyze what it takes to get your true point across, and how to make yourself understood every single time …

You can’t blame your audience if you are not understood. It is up to us to speak and write clearly so that our audience understands us perfectly.

First, what do we mean by “make yourself understood”?

For me, the meaning of making oneself understood is that your audience hears and understands the precise message that you hoped to communicate.

We are not saying they are persuaded at this point, just that your message was received and understood.

How to Make Yourself Understood First Time, Every Time

How can you communicate clearly? What can we do to write in a way that will make sure your point is transmitted without noise and you are understood every single time?

First, and most importantly, you need to understand who you are writing to or speaking to!

Your message could be absolutely perfectly crafted, but if you are speaking English and your audience is 100{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa} French then you are not going to be 100{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa} perfectly understood.

In copywriting, we have a concept of market sophistication along with the buyer’s journey, and essentially it means that everyone is in a different place when you communicate with them.

For one person they might be an expert, they have done all their research, and know all the jargon. The next person might be absolutely fresh to the topic and know zero but they are eager to find out.

Can you craft your message so both people are brought along on your journey with you?

One of the key ways to ensure nobody is left out is to explain any tricky terms that someone might not be familiar with, or to NOT use the jargon in the first place.

A challenge here is figuring out what your baseline is. Would someone have arrived at your message knowing or not knowing certain things? Should I have explained what “copywriting” is above?

How to Write to be Understood

Next, follow the following tips that all help you to be understood, and together will help you formulate the best signal you can:

1. Use simple words – I love the English language but so many words we use have more than one meaning, plus if you make it too fancy your reader is not likely to pick up a dictionary, they will just find something else to read.
2. Make it snappy – Short sentences, short paragraphs, use a phrase in place of a sentence and a word in favor of a phrase. Don’t overload your audience’s brain.
3. Be visual – You know what they say, a picture is worth many words. If you can’t use an actual picture, paint a picture with colorful words.
4. Repeat – OK, you might get bored of saying the same things but for the people you are talking to it will likely be their first time. Repetition helps people understand. Advertisers know it takes repetition to get a point across and have it remembered.
5. Rephrase – If you don’t get it right the first time, try again with another approach.
6. Mean what you say – Don’t say what you don’t believe. People have great BS detectors.
7. Say what you mean – Don’t muddle your words trying to please everyone. Say exactly what is on your mind if you want people to get your point.
8. Freshen up – Make your message new. If your content seems like something they have heard before you will switch off your audience.
9. WIIFM – Answer “What’s in it for me?” – Get over yourself, it is about your audience not you.
10. So What? – Spell out why what you are saying is important. If your audience doesn’t get why they should listen then they won’t.

It’s so easy to not be understood. Just look at poor Sverre at the top of this article. Poor Sverre, you couldn’t ask for a softer, gentler human being but for some reason, people think he is frightening 🙂

The Me-Me-Me Trap

A key way people fail to be understood is by being self-centered. The WIIFM part I mentioned above, but considered taking into account the whole exercise. Why you are in front of these people in the first place?

In marketing, we call it a “product-market fit“.

Rather than focusing entirely on the outcome that you want, instead consider why someone is going to want to hear you out, what outcome can you create for them, and how can you get them there.

Did I Make Myself Understood?

Here is the step a lot of people forget. It’s not enough to prepare the perfect information payload and delivery method, you also need to check it hit the target!

(Was that overly militaristic? Now I read it back I think I might have been playing too many tabletop wargames)

Check-in with your audience and find out if your communication was received correctly. The best approach is if you can speak to someone in a conversation, and ask them to paraphrase back to you what you said, but this is not always possible.

Online we should always be testing, and looking for signals in your feedback for when your message has been understood perfectly or when you need to change your approach.

Remember, however, your message needs to reach the right people at the right time. Do not fuss over the wrong people misunderstanding – the message was not for them to understand!

Social media is a good way to test a message before going all-in, just keep in mind my point above about the wrong people getting the wrong idea. Twitter especially seems intent on twisting our messages with ill intent.

“I like pancakes!”
“Wow, blocked, I can’t believe you hate cereal!”

Bottom Line: Are You Unable to be Understood or Failing to Tailor Your Message?

It is all too easy to blame others when we say something and people hear something else. In most cases (outside of the YouTube comments or Twitter) people are not being mean, they just didn’t get what you were saying.

Being understood is on you, it is your challenge to figure out. Especially if the rewards that you hope for depend on being understood!