Remember to observe the 3:30:3 rule to earn the curiosity and interest of your prospects and foster engagement.
At our humble word factory we spend a lot of time on getting the first three seconds of any message or communication just right. We work on it diligently because effective writing follows what’s known as the 3:30:3 rule. 
The 3:30:3 rule is worth committing to memory, and putting into practice, since it is essential for great proposals, presentations, blog posts, press releases, websites, and dozens of other communications including your client success stories and whitepapers.
The rule works like this: You must earn a browsing prospect’s interest in the first three seconds of glancing at your piece. Malcolm Gladwell studied this issue of “snap decision-making” thoroughly for his best-selling book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.” He writes that decisions are made in a series of “thin-slicing” thought subsets and that the first “slice” of thinking yields the most important information for making the best decisions. For example, within just a few seconds of seeing your message, a prospect will make a snap judgement: Do you have something meaningful to say, and do you have a useful solution to my problem?
If you are successful in the first few seconds, the reader will most likely grant you another 30 seconds. This is where strong opening paragraphs are critical. An impactful introduction that speaks to a reader about his or her business need, and your elegant solution to it, is absolutely necessary to win that next slice of your prospect’s time.
Assuming you’ve been on target so far, your prospect will now grant you three more minutes to make your case. However, you’re still not in the clear. You need to get to the point quickly and succinctly and describe the Why, How and What of your business.
More tips for succeeding at 3:30:30:
- Talk about problems from the reader’s perspective, not products or services from your perspective.
- In addition to good body copy, use pull quotes, charts, and info boxes to make skimming easy.
- Create breaks in the body copy with subheads to emphasize key points.
Ask a few friends, not in your business, to read your materials. Do they understand them? Were they intrigued or were they confused? Was it clear why they might want to do business with you?
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