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Know thine audience

In any kind of communication the more we know about our audience the better. Whether we’re writing for the web or for a flyer tucked under a windscreen wiper, this knowledge gives us clues about how to engage our readers, viewers and listeners. Engagement is a necessary precursor to understanding. Without engagement what we’re saying may only register as a sound tapping on the audience’s ear drums. We need to engage to get the message beyond the level of mere noise and up the neural pathways into the brain where it can be processed and understood and, all being well, acted upon.

But knowing the audience doesn’t just give us clues about content that might engage. It also helps us structure that content – put it in the most compelling order. It helps us determine the best style to apply to that content – serious or silly or somewhere in between. And it gives us useful information about the length of that content, the media we use to convey it, the places we put it and the time we put it there.

If we don’t think enough about the end users of the content we’re creating we risk ending up writing for the person we know best (ourselves) and getting it spectacularly wrong for everyone else. What I find funny may offend you and vice versa.

Grab a blank sheet of paper (very old school I realise but quicker, more flexible, and cheaper than using a sketching app like iDraw). In the middle draw the outline of a face, give the face a name and make this person representative of one of your target audiences. Let’s call him Bob. Around Bob’s face, spider diagram-style, jot down all the characteristics you think might be relevant. You’ll be scribbling obvious things like gender, age and race, and less obvious things like which social groups he belongs to, his hobbies and interests, his tastes in everything from music to food, his media habits – which papers he buys, which tv and radio programmes he likes, which websites he visits and yes, of course, which social media platforms he uses.

You also need to consider things like how much your version of Bob or Nadia knows already, how motivated they are to behave as you wish, and what mood they’re in. Knowing these things will help you understand where they are intellectually. Where they are physically in terms of time and space will also be informative. Are they on the bus, at their desk or in their armchair? Is it morning, noon or night? And are they in a hurry or on the slow train?

Let me give you a real rather than virtual world example. One January day I was filling my van with diesel and, as the display raced towards £100, feeling the metaphorical chill wind of fuel price inflation as well as the literal wind of winter. So time: in a hurry. Place: garage forecourt. Weather conditions: cold. Mood: bad. Armed with this broad brushstroke portrait of Richard, Worcester Bosch was able to target an advert for its energy efficient central heating boilers on the pump trigger. It couldn’t say much – because both time and space were in short supply – but it said enough to get me to Google the company name when I got home. And now what’s sitting in the corner of my kitchen? Yes, you’ve guessed, an energy efficient boiler! The same ad placed, say, on the locker door in my local gym would be less effective. I’d likely be hot and in a much better mood and consequently much less receptive to the implicit key message: buy our boiler.

Drawing a series of detailed pen portraits – one for each distinct target audience – takes some time. But it’s time well spent because like Worcester Bosch (the company’s not paying me, honest) it informs all the subsequent steps we take in the social media and ultimately leads to a much better return on investment.

This demographic information as marketeers call it can be gleaned from a range of sources. Some of it frankly is instinctive because we are like the people we’re targeting and knowing ourselves is knowing our audience. Or perhaps we know people – family or friends – who are like our target audiences. If I’m targeting children specifically then I’d do well to look at my own children to guide my approach.

Young people are particularly challenging to engage through the social media. Not least because as children of the Internet age they are more adept at the technology than older people but also because behaviourally they’re still developing and this means their vocabulary, idiom, interests and even choice of social networks can change faster than you can say Pinterest.

If like me you’re no longer a card carrying member of the hip cool generation then a brilliant way of keeping up with your target audience is simply to observe them. Become a social media anthropologist. A latter day Desmond Morris if you will sitting by the Facebook watering hole watching the young lion cubs at play. It sounds a bit creepy I know. And when the cubs you’re observing are your own it’s called Facebook stalking. I’ve heard grown ups describe Facebook as a third parent, going to places that real flesh and blood parents couldn’t possibly go to keep an eye on their children. I’ll let you decide whether going this far is too far. But there’s no doubt watching the online behaviour of our customers and prospective customers (and competitors for that matter) is a legitimate business practice. It’s called market research and it predates the social web by a long, long time.

Now it’s way beyond the brief of this article (or the workshop manual it originally appeared in) to explore market research except insofar as it touches upon social media strategy. And to that extent all we really need to know is that market research is, at its most basic, asking questions and listening to the answers and then using those answers to inform marketing decisions.

So we need to ask questions of our social media targets, listen to the answers and let those answers inform our social media decisions.

Asking questions of our target audiences helps us to get to know them so well they can, metaphorically speaking, sit on our shoulders as we create our online content and act as our critical friends. We should be asking these imaginary individuals what they think of what we’re about to post. Do they like it? If the answer’s no then why don’t they like it, what don’t they like about it, how could it be improved? Have an imaginary conversation with the imaginary Bob before you start the real conversation with the real Bob.

One other point on market research. You need to ask what questions people are asking. Questions about questions in other words. These question questions are important to ask because of the way people use the social web. In essence we type questions into search engines (even if we don’t actually hit the ? key) and then rely on those search engines to find us the answers – the more relevant the better. If I’m thinking about buying a camera I might type “digital SLR vs rangefinder” or “Canon vs Nikon.” If I’m worried about that pain in the pit of my tummy I might type “stomach cancer symptoms.” (Don’t worry about me by the way, turned out I was just hungry)!

It’s not just the questions they’re typing into Google we should be interested in. What questions are they asking and what comments are they posting across the social web, on blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook? Maybe we’re in a good position to answer those questions for them, to add our own comments to theirs. What happens then is that our reputational stock rises – perhaps in one spurt so that they buy that slinky new Nikon camera there and then or perhaps by only a dribble but enough for them to return to us as a trusted source of information, refer others our way and maybe one day make that purchase, donate to our charity or get that lump checked out. And even if they don’t ever buy anything themselves they’re nonetheless leaving behind something valuable – a link, direct or indirect, back to you. Fantastic if they had something nice to say about you or your products and services. Not so fantastic if they had something nasty to say.

The fear of opening ourselves up to brickbats as well as bouquets is what stops many organisations from getting involved with the social web. But like conversation itself the social web is here to stay and is highly likely to integrate itself more and more with our everyday transactions – both social and commercial – so staying away will become less and less realistic. In any case organisations that open themselves up to criticism in such a public way find paradoxically, that managed well, they gain even from the brickbats. Dell Computers provides a fascinating and evergreen case study of this very point. First they feared the social web. Then they got a good kicking. Next they immersed themselves in it. And now they benefit from it hugely generating more than $1 million in sales directly from social media. The fashion retailer H&M is similarly instructive.

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/why-dell-is-a-great-case-study/

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Why content is king(er) than ever!

Good quality content – and plenty of it – has always been the single most important part of any social media strategy. How else can you be genuinely “likeable” on Facebook and elsewhere and get followers who stick with you so that your organisation gets the visibility it needs to “sell” whatever it’s selling?

And now content is more important than ever before: “King-er,” to misquote Bill Gates. Why? Because liking a page on Facebook is no guarantee that you’ll see all that the page posts on your own timeline. For a while now you’ve got to like that page and tick the “get notifications” option.

Picture of Facebook's get notifications option
Why your followers must click like and get notifications

And what’s going to persuade your followers to take both of those crucial steps rather than just the first? Good quality content. If you’re posting stuff that’s useful to them in some way then they’ll genuinely want to see it on their timeline. If your content isn’t useful to them they won’t want it cluttering up their timeline. Simple as that!

So why did Facebook add the “get notifications” option in the first place? Because if it didn’t our news feeds would be jam packed with stuff we weren’t really interested in. Zuckerberg and his buddies are constantly tweaking the news feed algorithm that determines what we do and don’t see. And forget trying to outwit it. The only – and I mean the only – way to get seen is to post good stuff. Which means building content creation into your daily schedule.

Of course there’s a bit more to it than that. Determining the best time of the day or night to post, for example. But that’s another subject for another day.

 

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Spot the difference

Keith is clearly a pedant. The sort of bloke whose teeth grate when he see’s a missing or misplaced apostrophe. So as a fellow traveller I was clearly disturbed to receive an email from him pointing out that on the ACM Training website I’d used different to rather than, in his view, the grammatically correct different from. Not the sort of thing, he implied, that becomes someone who leads writing for business and writing for the web workshops. And quiet write two. A bit of research was called for…

Turns out Keith that we’re both right. Different to, different from and even different than are all in common usage. Different to mainly in English English. Different than in American English. And different from in both traditions, particularly among(st?) old school grammarians. I realise, of course, that just because something is in common usage doesn’t mean it’s grammatically correct. But language, as my old English teacher loved to point out, is in a state of flux and that the rules of grammar can barely keep up. There are those in the vanguard of change who wouldn’t bat a proverbial eyelid at, what those in the rearguard would describe as, a flagrant disregard for authority. As someone who sits somewhere in the middle of this linguistic battlefield my view is that we shouldn’t get too caught up in these grammatical skirmishes. To do so risks bringing on a bad case of writer’s block as we fret over whether our use of words will offend. Too many people find writing hard work. That’s why they attend our workshops. Certainly they shouldn’t ignore the conventions of grammar. But nor should they feel weighed down by them. What’s more important, surely, is that we all learn to write clearly, concisely and that our words achieve the effect we desire?

Oh and yes there was a deliberately misplaced apostrophe in the opening sentence just to discombobulate you.

 

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How many words are there in the English language?

As a trainer I pride myself on being able to answer the many questions my trainees ask. But here’s one that got me stumped on a writing workshop the other day: how many words are there in the English language? My initial response was to say “a lot” which, at the very least,  has the virtue of being correct but in every other respect isn’t terribly helpful. So here is my slightly more considered response…

It depends who you ask and how you count.

Ask an organisation called Global Monitor who profess to keep tabs on such things and they’ll tell you 1,019,729.6 (yes, you read that right – point six)!  They base this questionable figure on a trawl of English words on the web. Do the trawl manually through all 20 volumes of the Second Edition of the Oxford English Diction and you’ll arrive at the much lower (but still impressive) 171,476. They base their figure on words in current use and count the same word each time it has a distinct and different meaning. For example, the word dog appears at least three times in the OED list – once as a noun (as in the dog barked); once as a verb with a traditional meaning (as in to follow persistently); and once again as a verb with a more modern meaning (as in…well, you know what I mean and if you don’t use your imagination)!

Whoever’s figures you choose there’s no arguing it’s a lot. So why so many? Another good question and an easier one to answer…

It’s Harold’s fault!

Before Harold Godwinson was beaten in the Battle of Hastings the English language had a largely Germanic root thanks to the Angles and the Saxons who populated our island  from the east. Post 1066 William the Conqueror’s Norman buddies brought with them a whole new vocabulary rooted in French (itself rooted in Latin) and rather than supplanting the Anglo Saxon lexicon the two grew up alongside one another. And since then we’ve since added many other words borrowed from the various languages of our once huge Empire (from India bungalow, pajamas and  jodhpurs to list but a few).

This presents writers with a huge challenge: which word do we choose?

To fight or to battle that is the question

In his “we shall fight them on the beaches” speech Winston Churchill is said to have chosen the old word “fight” instead of the equally valid but newer word “battle” because he felt it would stir the British bulldog spirit more effectively. And you can’t argue with Churchill. So when you’re pondering which word to use, choose the one which conveys your meaning most precisely and which moves your reader most effectively. You don’t need to be spoiled for choice providing you choose well/select properly (delete/cross out as applicable).

Happy writing.

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AVOID CLICHÉS LIKE THE PLAGUE

So much writing (and speech for that matter) is lazy. People peck at their keyboards or open their mouths and let whatever comes to mind spill out. Which very often is cliché-laden, jargon-strewn nonsense. Take a look at “50 Office-Speak Phrases You Love to Hate” and you’ll see what I mean.

No excuses. Think before you write. Take Samuel Johnson’s advice. The 18th Century English writer of dictionary fame said: “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” Or Ernest Hemmingway’s. “The first draft of anything is shit.”

Avoid clichés like the plague. Don’t make your readers as sick as proverbial parrots. Please them with your well-crafted words. Let me show you how with one of my writing workshops.

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WORDS MATTER

Words matter. Well chosen they have the ability to move us to tears. Of sadness. Of joy. They can pluck our emotions as assuredly as a classical musician plucks the strings of a harp. Or, if you prefer, play our soul like Noel Gallagher tweaking his Telecaster. Written for the eye or spoken for the ear, words can transport us through time and space. Badly chosen words can move us too. Spark moral outrage and indignation. Provoke anger and frustration. Or, more likely, send us to sleep through a fog of I-really-can’t-be-arsed-to-read-this indifference.

Most of the time we choose the words we speak or write instinctively. We don’t, consciously at least, consider whether they’re the right words. And, as a consequence, sometimes they’re the wrong words. Which may not matter a whole lot if we’re talking to friends or writing to family. But which may matter heaps if we’re comunicating with a wider, possibly less tolerant, more critical audience.

Take the word communicating in the last sentence. It’s missing an m. And while that may not bother you there’ll be some readers fulminating at such a basic mistake. It would undermine my credibility as a communications coach and make selling my services to the angry reader an unlikely prospect. Yet every single day I receive letters and emails exhorting me to buy something that are littered with literals, or are simply (and often complicatedly) inelegant, ineffective, inept, inane. And occasionally insane.

Consider for a moment the poor soul at the NHS who wrote the letter sent to 8.5 million patients advising us that our healthcare records were about to be put onto the computerised Summary Care Record system and that we could opt out of the move if we wished. According to the Telegraph (June 17th 2010), just 15% of the letters were read which means 7.2 million letters were not. A remarkable reflection on our indifference or a sure sign that the letter was poorly written? If you’ve received such a letter let me know your view by posting a comment. Oh and if you’d like to learn how to write professionally and creatively (yes the two can go hand in hand) sign up for my creative and professional writing skills workshop.