Have you ever wondered if you’re over or underusing certain words in your written communication such as blogs, newsletters, website, etc.? Try using Wordle, it’s a free, easy-to-use service that creates a word cloud of your most commonly used words. Here at Marketing Works, we made our own word cloud out of our blog.
Aside from having a creative, visual representation of our most commonly used words, we identified other benefits to creating a word cloud:
1. Determine the main focus of your blog (or other written communication). When reading your Wordle, the large words are the ones that are used most often. It’s helpful to see what you write about in order to help develop your style and maintain consistency. For example, we looked at our word cloud and found our most commonly used words are “social media,” “new,” “audience,” “campaign,” “customers,” and “content.” This tells us that our blog focuses heavily on social media, innovation and aims to be audience-driven.
2. Identify what you are not focusing on. While the bolder and larger words on your word cloud represent the most frequently used words, you’ll also notice some of the words are smaller and not as prevalent. These words will help you identify the areas you haven’t focused on as much.
3. Assist you in shifting the focus. By analyzing your word cloud you can see where you are and where you want it to go. If some of the words you don’t focus on as much are something you thought you were doing a good job of communicating, a word cloud can help you change the direction of your written communication.