I cracked up when I read this on the Content Rules website:
“Content is like milk. You’re always running out of high-quality content just when you need it most.”
Just like Homer and Fat Tony from the Simpsons each have said, “It’s funny because it’s true!”
The charity ACHIEVA serves more than 10,000 individuals with disabilities and their families in western Pennsylvania. To demonstrate the influence words occupy in the space of shaping people’s judgment of your brand, imagine your target audience bears the burden of intellectual disabilities. Carelessness with your messaging risks a catalog of consequences, immediate and damning.
Just as environmental stewards know it’s far easier to prevent pollution than to clean up the damage, ACHIEVA’s brand stewards exercise this same sensibility in their online press room by publishing a plain and simple summary of correct usage for their brand lexicon. ACHIEVA also shares a lesson in communications management: Take steps to prevent messaging inaccuracies that could tell a different story than the one you wish to spread.
ACHIEVA’s press room page greets media with “Publicity Guidelines,” spelling out what gets capped, first-reference phrasing, shorthand for subsequent paragraphs, and correct names of ACHIEVA’s family of organizations.
Click “person-first language” and you’ll find thoughtful guidance on appropriate ways to write about people with disabilities. You’re given words to dispel stereotypes, avoid labels, and make clear individuals with disabilities are people first.
How many of you PR, marketing, and communications professionals out there have celebrated coverage only to see your brand polluted with incorrect usage, perhaps even offensively out of context for your target audience? How easy would it be to take a couple hours to piece together a basic word usage guide to help those talking about your brand to talk like your brand? Very easy, even for busy communicators (can you say “intern”?). Don’t chance time cleaning up brand impurities (or allowing them to rot in cyberspace) when you can prevent misuse from running aground in the first place.
In print and online, here, there and everywhere in business communications, vaguely impressive words overused and imitated to the point of irrelevance waste time and money because the resulting message fails to differentiate or persuade. Under my skin at the moment are:
1. at the end of the day
2. best practices
3. cutting edge
4. exciting
5. great
6. innovate/innovative/innovation
7. join the conversation
8. key
9. new
10. passion/passionate
11. unique
Oops, there are actually 11…a sign my list could go on forever. The list of communicators and marketers equally peeved could also go on forever. With no effort, these pieces found me: David Meerman Scott’s The Gobbedlygook Manifesto, Top 10 Overused Buzzwords in LinkedIn Profiles in the United States, and Why is Business Writing so Awful?
Business writing tips the scale to awful because it’s weighted down by people too lazy or too busy to make time for precise writing. Repeated to nauseating extremes, these words get glossed over by readers who’ve grown indifferent to redundant generalities. Empty idiom makes your brand sound just like the other and does nothing to convince people of the merit of what you do or sell.
It really doesn’t take much effort to write much better. Help yourself with these simple suggestions for avoiding trivial language and distinguishing your brand messages.
1. Use www.thesaurus.com
2. Right click on the lazy word in your document and choose “synonyms” from the menu.
3. Keep a “word and phrase diary” of words and expressions you like from your readings. Revisit this list for inspiration when your copy sounds boring.
“Immunocompromised.” I came across this word the other day while reading one of the nutrition newsletters I subscribe to and guess what happened? I stopped reading. I had to put the breaks on the story in order to sound out and make sense of this mash up of consonants – four “m’s” alone!
“Those people with compromised immune systems” delivers six words instead of just one — to which you might say, “Isn’t concise writing with fewer words preferred?” As a general rule, yes, but not when those fewer words come at the expense of readability and understanding. Immunocompromised may be the clinically correct term. But the word’s unfamiliarity to the publication’s average-consumer audience highjacks immediate understanding and flow of thoughts. The word’s clunky configuration also causes the reader to stumble away from the story to make sense of the word.
Good writing uses words that not only facilitate the reader’s understanding of topic, but also keep people focused on the story (not the writing) in order to allow the message to be heard rather than detracted from.
I keep an envelope on my desk. For years now, this thing has sat dormant, only growing in girth as I stuff scribbled-upon index cards and paper scraps capturing random thoughts about communications. I never had lucid plans for these random ideas, but I’ve always had a clear sense these nuggets held value. Value for businesses about how to communicate effectively. Value for PR and MarComm professionals about how to keep pace with communications and still be able to leave the office at 5 p.m. Value for anyone who reads about discerning what’s worth their time in the growing web of recycled content. Value for anyone who writes about how to do it like a pro.
So when I sat down to write this inaugural post for The Log, I grabbed the envelope. The envelope’s contents symbolize what good blogs are all about — meaningful information. I routinely hear people talking about the need for their company to start blogging. Too often, their reasoning usually stems from one of two things: 1) thinking they have to because everyone else blogs and 2) wanting some other way than email blasts to disseminate information about their company’s products or services.
My main aspiration for The Log is to have a more creative outlet than the envelope on my desk for sharing meaningful insights about the business of communications that routinely pop into my head as I work with words. I do believe these insights can help people better communicate. Welcome to The Log.
By phone Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Eastern Standard Time at 717-284-8968.
Or email anytime to lbaer@lbaer.com
Copyright © 2012 by Lori Baer. This material may not be reprinted in any form without permission from the author.
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