On Words and Business

Why is business writing often dull?  The what and who of any business is communicated via the written word, so maybe it’s time to be interesting about it.

In What’s Your Point? Jason Fried gives a few examples of exceptions to the rule, and some hints about what makes good business writing good.

• Be original
• Care about how your product or service is described
• Use buzzwords and jargon sparingly if you must use them at all
• Let the business’s personality shine through
• Tell an original story

Storytelling For Business 101

1. Be human. You’re talking to individuals, not soulless corporate entities.
2. Use examples. People like to know what happens to other people.
3. Include emotion. Be sensible but don’t be afraid.
4. Take a position. You can’t say everything, so have a point of view.
5. Be a champion for your readers. They’re depending on you to be genuine, trustworthy, and to make it worth their time to read your words.

What is thought leadership marketing?

• Sharing your cutting edge ideas and thoughts about your product, services, or market space.
• Starting a brand new conversation.
• Imagining a fresh approach to the story.
• Putting yourself and your company in the vanguard.

What are your great thoughts?

Let your lazy side guide you: Driven to Distraction. I love it. And not just because I’ve been looking for an excuse to indulge my lazy side (or should I say looking for a decent excuse to use for my slacking off?).

As the author states, trying to act bigger than you are is exhausting. Using “we” instead of “I” when talking about your business. I dislike it when I hear freelancers or sole practioners who talk about themselves and their business that way. It’s dishonest and, in my book, it’s also dishonorable. For another thing, sometimes people want to work with a very small company or with a freelancer or sole practitioner.

If someone wants to work with a larger company, then they won’t be happy to discover that you’re a sole practioner or that you’re relying on contractors, not employees, to round out your team. I can imagine how exhausting it would be to keep up that front.

Let’s hear it for laziness!

Interesting premise to this blog post: we are all knowledge workers and companies who get this will win in the end.

The message here is that everyone is the face of the company, whether their job is in PR or corporate communications, or they are on the front lines. That anyone in a company can be communicating about the company and there isn’t as much oversight to outbound communications as there used to be. That’s a good thing in general. But these days it’s so easy for a message (good or bad) to spread, that it opens up a can of corporate worms.

It involves a lot of trust on the part of any company that empowers their employees via social media and let’s them join the conversation.  The companies that do this will win in the end. Does that make everyone a knowledge worker? I’m not sure.

Who knew the Luciano Pavarotti was such a marketing genius? Check Chris Guillebeau’s Art of Non-Conformity article about the famous tenor’s secret to success. He did it for his audience, it was all about giving.

It might seem to make sense in his profession and not others.  But it’s an interesting exercise to figure out how it applies to each of our own businesses. And that it’s possible even without a Twitter account (although he sure got more exposure through his work than the average desk jockey does).

How will you give to your audience today?