Speak English! not jargon at your customers
Have you ever sat down to read a blog post or article and after three or four lines you are scratching your head and wondering what you just read? This has happened to me a few times. I have been looking at a few blogs lately and find that a lot of what people are writing is all written in jargon. Jargon is a noun meaning a language or vocabulary that is particular to a certain trade or profession. Jargon has it’s place, in professional research papers or trade magazines or quarterly publications. But it should not be used in a blog that is meant to reach potential customers. Why would you want to talk above the heads of your potential customers? Is it because you want to seem more knowledgeable? proficient? or experienced? Being able to tell the same tale and impart the same information in easier to understand language can still do just that. Speak as if you are speaking to a friend not an audience in a lecture hall and your customers will love you for it.
One of the first things you learn in Content Creation Marketing is that you have to get inside the head of your customer. Not just one customer but a few of them and get an understanding of what and who they are. When considering your potential client or customer, you want to determine their level of education and position at work. You should consider how they are positioned within their company. For example, are they a high-level decision maker, or are they a regular joe who sees an issue and wants to bring it to their bosses attention? Your goal is to provide them with a solution they can present to decision makers in their organization. In order to help them in this process, you have to state the question as they would. If you don’t understand the language your potential customer speaks, how are you going to communicate the answer in a way that will connect with them? The whole point of writing blogs and white papers is to connect through content with that potential customer. In Jason Fried’s article “Why Is Business Writing So Awful?” he discusses the emptiness of business writing due in part to the overuse of jargon and buzzwords. The words we use are important, not only in telling the company’s story, but also in how they are going to connect us to the people we are trying to reach. The prospective client or customer should be drawn in because what they are reading sounds very similar to how they would voice the question.
Connections today are vital to business and language is vital to making connections. We are drawn to people who sound like ourselves. So don’t push away prospective customers because you are more concerned about sounding “knowledgeable” about a topic. You need to speak the same language as your customers not try to talk over them in an effort to make yourself sound intelligent.
Source: Pace Feed
