On Words and Business

Popular wisdom says that you only have a few seconds to capture your client’s interest in written communications.

That’s the time it takes to read the headline and maybe the first sentence. If you’ve captured them, then you only have a few words to help them understand why they should keep reading. And so on, and so on.

Communications with customers and stakeholders shouldn’t be all bullet points or headlines. Sometimes you do need to communicate more information to your customer. But make sure they want and need that level of detail. Because sometimes there is no way someone is going to slog through anything past the first paragraph. So maybe you don’t need any more words than that.

Research. It’s part of writing pretty much anything. You have to know what you are talking about to talk about it and have anyone care what you are saying.

The topic on my plate right now is beyond my ken, and broad enough that individual interviews won’t yield a large enough amount of data to be relevant. So it is time to write a survey. And we all know how little time there is to connect to a person when asking them to take a survey.

It is important to create a short enough poll to keep the interest of our customers, prospects, or even non-customers. But it also needs to be long enough, and detailed enough, to yield relevant and useful results. This requires a level of skill in asking the questions and fashioning the possible answers. I guess we’ll find out over the next few weeks if I have this skill, or how easily I can learn it.

One of my favorite magazines is Entrepreneur. It is designed for business owners and startup companies, but the topics are just as relevant for larger businesses as well. The larger the business, the harder it can be to stay on message, to know the message actually.

If you find yourself overloaded with stuff–outdated articles, miscellaneous marketing materials, an unnavigable and incredibly large website–perhaps you need to simplify. The business. The message. The marketing.

Sometimes getting back to the roots of the business will help you clarify your future direction. Every business started out small, as someone’s dream. Try to remember that when you find yourself bogged down in the day-to-day operations.

A fabulous tip from Dan Santow’s blog Word Wise.

Be careful how you describe things in your marketing materials. If you want to give the impression of having a lot of items available, it is probably best not to start that description with the words “everything from”. You could just be telling the world that you offer one of everything ever made; and that you don’t think as much as you should about the words you use.

Words do matter. Especially in business.

For many of your stakeholders, written communications–websites, blogs, newsletters, email messages, letters, etc.–are the primary, or only, way they stay in touch with you. So your choice of words is important.

You can alienate your customers if you use too much industry jargon. It may be a term of art in your industry, but will your customers be impressed with your understanding of the industry, feel foolish that they can’t make sense of what you are saying (and too embarrassed about that to tell you), or feel patronized that you are trying to impress with important-sounding words?

Industry jargon can keep customers at a distance, so think about your choice of words. Don’t go out of your way to remove an insider term, though, if it really is the best way to get the message across. Just think first: is there an easier, clearer way to convey the same meaning?

Engaging customers is a tricky business and, no matter what you do, some customers will never be receptive to your message. Just remember next time you are drafting a communication to your customers or other stakeholders: word choice does matter.

Some great apologies, as listed by Seth Godin.

The apology I got from a customer service agent today was basic: “I’m sorry.” And was followed by a rote recitation of what the problem was. Okay, so my plane had mechanical difficulties and there isn’t much they can say about that, but spelling out the airline’s code for the problem was a bit patronizing as an explanation