On Words and Business

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, why the long face?”

Although I laughed so hard I cried when I first heard that, I’ve never met anyone since who thinks it’s funny. Who knows why it struck such a chord, but it did. But it sure doesn’t do that for anyone else. So I usually only bring this out when I want to tell people about the joke I, and apparently I alone, love so much.

Makes me think about using humor in communications with customers. It really does have a place, in almost every industry. If used properly, of course. And the MarketingProfs have obliged with a nice article about how to use humor effectively in marketing communications.

I recommend incorporating humor in your communications. It might feel daring at first, but quite often that’s when you get your best stuff.

Does word choice matter?

Friends have heard me say again and again that the purpose of language is to communicate. So it doesn’t matter to me if, on occasion, some thoughts or words are a bit muddled, as long as I understand what they are trying to convey. This is true with friends and family. None of us is perfect all the time, right?

This isn’t true, however, in business. When communicating with customers and potential customers, it is important to take the time to determine what you want to communicate and the best way, and the best words, to do that.

It starts with the headline. You gotta grab ‘em and pull ‘em in.

Michel Fortin discusses some principles of communicating effectively with headlines.

The MarketingProfs.com have some ideas:

• Write engaging content Remember signing up for classes in college and that age old question–would you rather sign up for an interesting course with a dull professor or a dull subject with a fabulous professor?
• Post regularly
• Add pictures Not that I’ve done this yet, but people do like to look at pictures
• Add links
• Know why you are blogging and who you are blogging for
  
• Remember blogging is about communication, not promotion

Things go wrong. Technology doesn’t work like it should. And customers don’t always know what they’re doing, even if you think they should. So just make sure your customers know how to get in touch with you. Make it glaringly obvious. In all your encounters.

A CONTACT link on every page. A phone number or email address on the bottom of each page. A HELP link. Something.

I just spent twenty-five minutes on WebEx, ostensibly in a meeting. Yet I actually spent about twenty of those minutes clicking every button, and scrolling through the lengthy help file, to try to find help. I went back to the original email with the link, but there was no hint about how to contact the event hosts. I couldn’t see the presentation slides. WebEx is pretty easy to use–click the link, join the conference. But maybe I did something wrong. Or, perhaps something was wrong with WebEx. Or with the space-time continuum. Who knows. I don’t. There was no way to get in touch with the hosts of the call. So after twenty minutes of trying to fix the broken technology and hearing little of the audio portion, I just hung up and logged off the event.

The post event survey asked for my feedback. Too late, though.