How to Follow the Minto Pyramid Principle At the Article Level

Structuring your information like this allows you to instantly convey the takeaway that your readers are looking for and then prove its value throughout the rest of the article. Then, from there, you support your conclusion with layers of evidence that flow in a logical order. At the top, you start with the most important takeaway. What Is the Minto Pyramid Principle?Ĭoined by Barbara Minto, a former McKinsey consultant, the Minto Pyramid Principle is a writing framework that suggests structuring information in a pyramid format. This still begs the question, though - how do you get to the point, and how do you do it in an engaging way? We recommend following the Minto Pyramid Principle. Namely, communicating a key takeaway right away can potentially hold your audience’s attention for the entire duration of your article. However, there is a silver lining that you can pluck from that unfavorable statistic. In fact, according to research from Nielsen, websites only have 10-20 seconds to grab a user’s attention. As a result, if your content can’t cut to the chase, your readers will likely bounce to the next article that will. Whether it’s an article or an internal wiki post, people want to consume it as fast as possible. With 79% of online readers strictly skimming their content today, we can safely assume that people crave writing that gets to the point and gets to it early.

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