Watch this video:

His name is Sheku Kanneh-Mason and he’s 17 years old. He just won BBC Young Musician of the Year with this performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto 1.

Now watch this video.

Her name is Gabby Douglas, and she’s an American gymnast who won gold at the London Olympics.

Do you know what these young people have in common?

They make incredible feats look effortless.

Thankfully, writing copy isn’t as hard as playing one of the hardest pieces in the cello repertoire, or doing backflips on a 4-inch-wide balance beam.

But it still takes effort, and it needs to seem effortless.

Your reader should be able to absorb your copy, get the message and know what to do next without having to work hard. So don’t disguise your message in extra verbiage, bury your call to action in the middle of a long paragraph, or waste your reader’s attention by waxing lyrical about the state of the market.

Because if your readers feel like reading your copy is hard work, they’ll simply click ‘back’ or ‘delete’. And then all your hard work has been for nothing.