Things I wish people would stop saying

Words and phrases have a tendency to get overused. In digital marketing, whether it's social media or longer-form blogs, this has never been more true.

The internet has a strange way of making people latch onto phrases and never let them go. Between this phenomenon and the tendency of any industry to build an arsenal of jargon, articles and social posts start to become intolerable to read.

A great example of this?

Such as.
The overuse of "such as" makes any paragraph sound stilted and cheap. It's not good language, and you're only using it to try to make your writing sound fancy. Stop trying to sound smart. It's not working.

Any occasion when you're trying to sound smarter or more sophisticated than you are should make you stop and pause. Why are you doing that? Be who you are. If that's slightly less fancy, write that way. It'll be more comfortable to write, which makes your writing sound more natural and read smoothly.

Trying too hard is like a kid looking up synonyms in a thesaurus to make their essay sound smarter. It almost never works out; it's obvious to the teacher (your reader) that you weren't comfortable with that word because it just doesn't land right.

Also on the list? Deliverables, Action item, and Bandwidth in reference to how much work/free time you have.

Be who you are, not who you want to be. If you don't like who you are, become who you want to be before writing that way.

Social Media: Sound like a human

Social media is a weird animal. And now that it's been so thoroughly appropriated by marketers and businesses galore, it's gotten even weirder.

The heart of social media, personal interaction, often gets buried or left in the dust in the rush to SELL SELL SELL and BE KNOWN.

Many times, clients don't understand social media, and really, neither do the agencies trying to help them. Facebook and Twitter end up sounding like tacky ad copy with snazzy puns and jazzy rhymes. All that's missing is the cheesy radio voice saying "CAAaaaall toDAY!"

Social media, whether it's a Facebook post, a Twitter tweet, or a Pinterest pin, is supposed to be casual, engaging, and personal. You're supposed to sound like a human. You're just another person, shouting out a tip or fun fact to other persons. The only difference is that you're the voice of a business, rather than an individual.

Instead of: "Come on down for the best auto repair here"
Post this: "Car trouble? Check out this article for tips on car maintenance to prevent big repair costs"

Instead of: "JOES PLUMBING BEST IN TOWN CALL US"
Post this: "Joe's Plumbing just won Best of Boston 2013 - 3rd year in a row! Thank you all!"

What does a bad post boil down to? What makes it "bad"?

• It's irrelevant to your customer
• It's all sales all the time
• It's begging for shares or retweets (make your post worth sharing and you don't have to ask!)
• It's not engaging or interactive

People like and share good info, interesting facts, and friendly advice. No one shares sales pitches, and no one wants to read a constant stream of business details. Be your customer's friend, sharing ideas and relevant articles, and they'll stick with you.

Be human. Have fun with it. Social media should be social activity!


Bonus: Spelling and grammar count. Yes, even on Twitter. There's no reason to get caught with tons of typos in the era of constant spell check!

I can see it now... a content vision

I recently read a blog post all about content strategy: defining a vision and sticking to it throughout your messaging.

I've written before about tone of voice (not here, elsewhere) and how the personality of your brand must be continued throughout the culture and content of your business, but where does this come from? How do you decide what that voice will be?

A brand's "voice" sometimes comes quite naturally. Other times, it comes from carefully crafted, thoroughly managed strategy. You tailor your word choice and phrasing and mediums of messaging to meet your strategy. Want to be seen as a hip, cool digital company? Would your audience and industry prefer a more traditional, professional approach? It's all about understanding who you are, how you want to be perceived, and what your target audience expects from you in order to put their faith (read: money) in your business.

As the A List Apart blog article suggests, it's crucial to identify the goals of your message, the vision behind every move you make. Author Russ Starke says, "the vision isn't just a list of goals; it’s a narrative that shows the organization’s future from the customer’s perspective."

• What do your customers need to understand about you?
• Where are you, as a business, going in the future?
• Will your customers understand and respond to this narrative?

It can be easy to look at this concept - big, scary "content strategy" - as something only big corporate companies do. And, while it's true that big businesses like Google and Apple and Target are highly invested in defining their voice and crafting the right message, it's equally important for smaller businesses to consider as well.

Every business has a personality. Make sure that personality comes through in your messaging (customer emails, in-store/office culture, billboards...) and achieves your goals.

The aforementioned blog post has some great info on the nitty gritty of defining your content strategy. For the step by step, read on! Defining a Vision: Making Sure Your Work Matters

How do you know when you know what you're doing?

Answer? You don't.

I'm pretty sure no one ever thinks they've got it all figured out. No one wakes up one morning and says, "You know what? I nailed this. All of it." 

We've all got insecurities and unsure-ities, and that's okay. 

Whenever I ask someone to participate in our corporate blog, they all inevitably say the same thing. "I'm a terrible writer." "I have nothing to say." "I'm not funny." And, without fail, I assure each and every one of them that they are not alone and that dozens of people have said the same thing before them, with fantastic results. Writing, achieving, doing - it all requires practice. And a little bit of luck. 

You have to take that leap of faith that, even though you feel like you have no idea what you're doing, and people must be crazy to let you loose on this(!), and you think you're going to do a mediocre if not terrible job, that you can go for it.

Whether it's with a client, a coworker, or a friend, why should any of them trust you if you don't trust yourself? So you may blindly fumble through it a little here and there, the end result is never (rarely) as bad as you think it will be.

You might never feel like you know what you're doing. No one does. Just close your eyes, brace yourself, and do it!

Words that aren't

(But should be)

Ideaful
[ahy-dee-uh-ful] adj. 1. having plenty of good ideas
e.g. That girl is so ideaful; she's always coming up with great new thoughts

Concise-ify
[kuhn-sahy-suh-fahy] verb. 1. to make more succinct, short and to-the-point
e.g. This section is really long; see if you can concise-ify a bit to make it clearer.

Conclusification
[kuhn-kloo-si-fi-key-shuhn] noun. 1. final summation of a point/article/etc.
e.g. Your blog is great, but it needs conclusification to wrap up at the end.

.

Industry Blasphemy

In the rapidly changing world of digital marketing, in an even more dynamic world of internet, it's easy to lose sight of how silly this business is sometimes.

Admitting that some businesses just shouldn't have social media? Total heresy.

Case in point:

• Funeral Homes
• Cemetaries
• Cremation Centers

I have worked with all three of these industries, writing their websites, and all three of them also purchased social media packages. The result? Aside from really depressing the team creating their posts, it's just plain creepy. It feels weird to read Facebook posts about death and tweet stats about funeral costs.

You might as well write "Like this post if you're bummed out too!" and call it a day.

What happens when you stop paying attention? You get old.

It has come to my attention that I've fallen behind in the social media game. I feel like I fell asleep and suddenly there were 13 thousand new apps and tweets and hashtags and slipslaps and I have no idea how to use any of it.

I swear I was on top of things a year ago. I was the cool kid with the apps and the know-how. Now suddenly I'm a grandma trying to keep up, trying to stay "hip to the jive" with the whippersnappers.

So now I'm playing catch-up. Trying to do ALL the THINGS. But there's so much to remember!!! @this, retweet that, insta-snap-follow the other thing.

Social Grandma Goals:

1. Figure out Twitter
2. Actually use Instagram
3. Write more

I have a Twitter account. I've had it for a couple of years. I do not use my Twitter account. 

Somehow, tweeting has always baffled me for the same reason that Facebook statuses can be weird. Why does anyone care about the sandwich I had for lunch? Do they really need to know that random thought I just had? It always seemed to me that my weird musings were left inside my head for a reason. 

But Goal Number 1 means sharing those thoughts, ideas, and nonsense with the world for better or worse. And hashtags. Figure out hashtags. (Goal 1-a).

I have a friend who works (and lives) in social media. When we have brunch, she starts in with "Our goal is to Insta 3 things today!" before I've even gotten to my eggs (I said scrambled, not over easy). 

Goal Number 2 is be like her. I will take and edit and hipster-ify photos until I'm blue in the face. Or just sick of holding my phone out like a lost tourist.

Writing is something I've always enjoyed, but was never sure I was any good at it. I've started and abandoned countless diaries and blogs. I was part of "poetry club" in middle school. When I started working after grad school, writing for fun or for soul took a backseat to writing for my job, and that's sad. 

But that's where this blog comes in! Goal Number 3 is to write more for the sake of writing. To get better. To feel better. To convey all the thoughts and humor that don't fit into 140 characters or less.

I hereby promise to stop being a social media grandma. I will be hip to the jive.