On Words and Business

If you’re in or near the marketing world, you hear every day how important it is to keep content brief. No one pays attention. And in the time it took me to write that, people were shutting their browsers in frustration at my verbosity.

But what if you have a lot to say? Is it okay to write something longer than 140 characters? Longer than one screen page? Longer than one printed page? Sure.

A lack of attention to longer form writing may be the direction we are heading. But I believe there will always be a market for lots of words strung together to form compelling content. White papers aren’t going away any time soon. Neither are articles in The Atlantic nor the great American novel.

The key with marketing content is to draw people in with the shorter content, which could be a blog post or just the title or subject line. Then keep drawing them in at every decision point.

If you write it, the people who want and need it will come. They’ll read. And they’ll appreciate that you took the time to tell them what they needed to know.

The people who can’t spend more than 140 characters or 10 seconds with your content probably aren’t your target audience anyway.

Yes and no.

In many social media outlets, it is most important to share the concept and the basic idea. A bit of editing and spell-checking is important so you don’t make too many errors that will make people question if you actually know what you’re doing. But it is also important to get to the point without droning on or taking up too much of your time to do it. You can link to the deeper, more detailed content that takes longer for someone to absorb.

For that more detailed type of content, like brochures, case studies, white papers, newsletters, etc., the words and how they’re written take on more importance, so a higher level of editing and time spent attending to detail is important.

It’s about finding the balance between the time you have to write the project, the type of information you’re sharing, and how important it is to make the information available at a certain time or via  a certain channel.

We’ve all done it–on our own or at the bidding of others–written in some dialect of business speak or, as Erika Napoletano calls it in her article in the September issue of Entrepreneur magazine, buzzspeak.

Anyone up for a paradigm shift? How about engaging in some mission critical change management? Or finding synergies?

It’s easy to get caught up in business jargon. But most of us don’t naturally speak that way–unless we are presenting to someone who only speaks business speak. Right? So why do we write that way?

I try to write simply. Except, of course, when I don’t. Or can’t. Or would get fired if I did. You know what I mean.

Let’s keep fighting the good fight!

Or is it?

Headlines, and their cousins email subject lines, do matter.

Have you ever gotten an email newsletter with a subject line like: Acme’s February Newsletter? You have to really care about the organization to bother opening that.

The best subject lines, just like headlines, help readers understand what they’ll get for the effort of continuing to read. Such as: Better Marketing Management or How to Grow Your Business with Facebook.

With a headline or subject line like that, readers know instantly if the content is relevant for them. These days, we all filter out so much information, anything that can help readers make an informed choice is a good thing.

When it comes to business writing, a lot of us (myself included) have a strong aversion to using emotion. Business writing is supposed to be staid and professional which means removed from the vagaries of mood or states of mind.

Readers are people, though. And people respond to emotion. When used correctly and fairly (not manipulatively), the use of emotion or feelings or mood or sentiments or human reactions in business communications improve our chances of reaching our audience.

Who among us hasn’t seen a commercial that brought tears to our eyes or made us laugh out loud or feel empathy? Was there anything wrong with that?

There was a commercial for the Sydney Olympics that made me cry every time I saw it. That was eleven years ago and, while I don’t remember the audio or video frame for frame, I still remember the experience and how it made me want to watch the games.

Why not tap into something deep inside us all to reach our customers and prospects? Why are we afraid to occasionally, when appropriate, move away from the corporate speak and gobbledygook and speak to the heart of what makes our audience tick?

Indubitably?, you inquire.

Categorically, I counter.

Let’s put that on the back burner and circle back to our discussion of core competencies. When you write, even if your audience has skin in the same game, do you really level the playing field by utilizing obfuscation and business-speak (or technobabble)? Let’s aim for the low-hanging fruit and get down to the granular level. Is this kind of conversation doable? Is it a best practice? Or will you be a change agent and do the heavy lifting sometimes, apparently, required to leverage the basic English you know you know? Plain English is not a magic bullet. But going forward can we just get on the same page and call a spade a spade?

What is your take-away from this?

If you’d like to take this offline to discuss, I’m on board with that.  Ping me!