Content Writing Archives - Bike Lane Business Development

How to speak your customers’ language. No, I mean literally.

Keep language simple to speak your customer's language

What do you think of when you hear terms like these?

Venti
4K LED Curved 3D
3.5 GHz CPU
50 Mbps download/10 Mbps Upload
2.8-liter engine
AKC Norwegian Lundehund
Force majeure
Myocardial Infarction

If you said that they were all scientific names, you are partly right. You might have said they were names made for pretentious brainiacs, some people would agree with you. In literary terms, this is called jargon.

Webster’s Dictionary defines jargon as:

1 : the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group
sports jargon
2 : obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words
an academic essay filled with jargon

Jargon is like a habanero pepper; you should use it sparingly. You should avoid using it in almost all of your communication, in both your written marketing like your website and printed material. It should also be used infrequently when your team speaks to your prospects and customers. If you can, avoid it at all costs.

A masterful example of this is the way Apple first marketed the iPod. Mp3 players were commercially available in the late ’90s. They sold under various memory sizes. If you talked to a salesperson in a store, and you would hear, “this one has x Gb, and that is why it’s expensive.” If you asked what that meant, they would tell you it holds more songs. (That is the first sign of jargon, by the way. If your customers ask “what does that mean” it’s jargon).

In October of 2001, their first ad for the iPod, Apple described it with only five words “1000 songs in your pocket” with no mention of how many gigabytes it had. Five simple words launched a product that took the digital music world by storm.

Electronics experts will tell you there were quality, design, or performance reasons that this happened, but it started because apple spoke to people in terms that were so simple everyone could understand.
Did people avoid buying the iPod because Apple didn’t tell them the technical specs? I don’t think so.

Take a hard look at your product or service and find all the mp3 players in there. What is your marketing saying to people? What are your salespeople saying when they talk to prospects? Get all that mp3 player talk out of there and make it iPod talk. Speak your customer’s language.

There is a time for jargon. As I said, jargon is like habanero, so here is your five-alarm chili recipe. If you are in an industry that sells highly specialized products or services to an audience that is highly fluent in your specificity, then you are forced to use it.

I have a client who manufactures military-grade communication equipment to military contractors and government agencies. Breaking down their marketing message into simple sound bites would indicate that they didn’t know their asses from their elbows to their clients. They are speaking their customers’ language.

That is the lone exception to use jargon. Use it when its absence hurts your credibility. That is a rare case, indeed. You may have people ask for technical details, or highly informed prospects and clients, but most times, simple language will not turn people away.

Jargon does.

p.s. Here are what those terms are:

Venti – a serving of a drink of coffee measuring 20 fluid ounces
4K LED Curved 3D – An ultra High Definition, three-dimensional Television with a curved screen for a more immersive viewing experience
3.5 GHz CPU – A measurement of the speed of a desktop computer
50 Mbps download/10 Mbps Upload – The speed at which data can be downloaded from your cable provider and the speed at which you can upload data to it
2.8-liter engine – The size and relative performance of a car engine
AKC Norwegian Lundehund – A rare dog certified by the American Kennel Club
Force majeure – Legal term meaning an unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract
Myocardial Infarction – A heart attack

Speak your customers’ language by avoiding jargon

Two lessons from stand-up comedians to help your content writing

Content Writing

Two things I (and my clients) struggle with within the “Content is King” world of marketing is:

“Who the heck wants to listen to me anyway?”

and

“How can I create enough content? I don’t have enough ideas.”

I’m a big fan of stand-up comedy and have met many of them. The need for both quality and quantity has been a thorn in the side of comedians forever. Here are two things that I learned from stand-up that I have used to help my clients:

Write Every Day!

One way to work on improving your content writing is to just start by writing every day. No matter how great or terrible it may be. In interviews, Jerry Seinfeld (@JerrySeinfeld) said (I paraphrase) that he knew he had to write comedy every day to become better at it. He put up a big calendar and checked off each day when he wrote something. If he had a streak of days checked off on his calendar he would be less likely to skip a day. That is critical in content marketing if you want to improve. This will help you write better and obviously will improve your volume of work.

Blogging/Content Marketing, in my opinion, is sharing what you can teach or entertain your audience. Small and medium businesses face the issue of creating content if they are trying to market themselves in today’s crowded environment. I work with business owners every day that struggle with what to say. They either talk about themselves too much or they don’t talk at all.

Don’t be afraid to write about “Simple Things”.

Self-doubt over the quality is also a huge problem. Whatever it is that you do well there is a good chance there is someone that does it better. What people lose sight of is that if you are good at something, there are still a LOT of people that are not! There are days that I work with my clients and think “How can they not know this?” because it is so obvious to me.

I have a friend (Mike Hanley @standupmike, a little plug…) who also does stand up who I find very funny. Not just on stage, but also in everyday life. He has a way of looking at very simple everyday things in a slightly different way. Other comedians do and say things that NO ONE is thinking of (Gallagher smashing watermelon anyone?) I think that content marketing and comedy are very similar in this way. You can provide content that is very useful to your audience that looks at things they already know slightly differently, or you can provide content that they have never ever considered.

Comedians, like marketers, are looking for you to want to listen to them. Their goal is to entertain. Yours is to entertain sometimes, inform, or educate them. Now, whether you take the route of a slightly different view of the real world like my friend Mike, or you do something totally off the wall or outrageous like Sam Kinison, that’s up to you. But know that whatever you do or say, there are people that can learn from it. Do it every day, and it will improve in both quality and quantity.

Watercolor words?

Content Writing

Paint a picture for your customer is marketing truism. It is also a universally necessary skill to get your audience, regardless of industry or medium, to change it’s thinking.

I have seen this video before but have never shared it until today. Please, enjoy it, and visit http://purplefeather.co.uk/ to find out more about the company that created it.

I feel that this video does a great job of painting a picture of how to paint a picture (as Alex Blumberg said in the Startup podcast, “a little meta, I know”). It conveys in less than 2 minutes what it means to paint a picture with your words.

Think, if you could do the same thing with your marketing message, how much spare change would fall your way?