Know Any Thought Followers? Why the ‘Thought Leader’ Classification Doesn’t Work (And What to Say Instead)

 BFC Blog, Case Studies, Confusing Content, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Social Media, Web Writing, Website Content, White Papers  2 Responses »
Sep 222011
 

The Hidden Dangers of Using Jargon, Example 4

Last week the Content Strategy Google Group (of which I’m a member) discussed the term “thought leadership.”

Everyone in the group (and most people reading this) pegged ‘Thought Leader’ as jargon. Even a client rejected it for a category header.

“My problem is everyone in my industry (other than us) seems to use that term, so my firm is rejecting that outright.”

So, what should they use instead?
Some group members proposed alternatives, like:

  • Knowledge Center
  • Reader Resources
  • [Subject] White Papers
  • Our Publications (I kind of like this one)

Then the conversation swung toward Thought Leadership’s underlying problem: The implications you make if you use the term ‘thought leader.’

Has Anyone Ever Done Business with a “Thought Follower”?

When used, Thought Leadership claims a hierarchical position. Namely, the top.

But nobody claims a “thought follower” position, do they? Of course not. No one would.

Well, we can’t ALL be Thought Leaders. What do we do?

“Thought Leader” as a jargon term tries to claim the high ground. Like everyone else. So the classification goes flat. Being a Thought Leader among thousands is kind of useless, isn’t it?

In the group discussion, one person pointed out that this whole thing is meaningless. Why? Because readers aren’t interested in these kinds of classifications.

At all.

They just want to find information on a specific topic.

Which is the only thing that really matters. Are you able to deliver information on that topic? If yes, then you don’t become a thought leader to the reader.
You become a resource.

Be a Resource Instead of a Thought Leader

If “Thought Leadership” implies a hierarchy that doesn’t really exist, how should we classify ourselves? What will the reader respond to?

If you have the information they’re looking for on a topic, you become a resource to them. So, aim for that!

Try being a resource instead. It’s more specific, and more valuable. For example, you could be:

“A resource for financial management software for HR consultancies.”

This fosters more of a collaborative space online, not an arbitrary hierarchy. Resources share information & audience attention with other resources, instead of competing for every last second.

One resource aids another. One website sends traffic to others. People find more and more information as they go – noting the businesses that PROVIDE those resources.

Readers don’t look for thought leaders. They look for specific resources.

Do YOU go looking for thought leaders? I don’t. I look for information from Kristina Halvorson (for Content Strategy), or John Jantsch (for B2B marketing), or Brian Clark (for Web writing techniques & Internet marketing strategies) or Steve Slaunwhite (for the business of copywriting).

Because these people have made resources of their websites. And by extension, their businesses. Last I checked, none of them are hurting either!

There’s no high ground in the term “thought leader.” Readers don’t care. They DO care about good resources. Look at social media – people share resources all the time, every day. Isn’t that a more powerful marketing approach than using jargon?

Look at your content. Ask yourself: “Is this something the reader can use? How? When?” If your content answers those questions, you have the makings of a resource.

What could your business be a resource for? A product you made? A specific audience? A region?

(DISCLAIMER: I wrote this post as a comment on the CS group discussion. These opinions are my own and are NOT intended as a reflection of the group. It was a great discussion!)

 Posted by at 1:19 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

How to Create Your Own BOGs

 BFC Blog, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Content Strategy, Persuasion Techniques, Web Writing, Website Content  No Responses »
Aug 252011
 

(And Why Your Company Needs Them)

Creating business guidelines unique to YOU makes your company trustworthy.

What evokes more trust: Content full of generalities, or content that explains precisely how you (and only you) work?

Last month I wrote a post about the term “best practices.” How too many businesses use it instead of detailing how they do things, expecting their readers to “just get it.”

I argued for writing out specific guidelines. If not for your industry, then at least for your company. Last week I created a name for them: Business Operating Guidelines.

BOGs for short.

I promised a how-to on creating your own BOGs. A set of guidelines on…how to make guidelines.

Now, these guidelines I’m recommending are what spur the beginnings of trust among your customers. They must reflect what you actually do–not what you imagine you do.

Don’t just dash off one-liners for each guideline and call them done. Roll these around in your workplace. Ask employees what they would say. Get feedback from customers.

Make sense? Okay, let’s go for it.

CAVEAT: This is a prototype document. It will change as time and business moves along. Bookmark it and check back.

 

Guidelines for Writing Guidelines: How to Create BOGs

  1. List out the industries, locations and sizes of your clients. Include prospects too (add buyer personas if you have them). All BOGs must address these people.
  2. Detail your “typical project.” Go step-by-step, from first contact to final billing. Be as specific as you can without naming (client) names.
  3. Write out exactly what you do in the event of a problem. Do this for the 3 problems that first come to mind.
  4. Identify which communication channels you prioritize (email? Phone? IM?). Then identify which ones your customers prioritize. Do they match? If not, why not?
  5. Write out your initial BOG ideas. THEN discuss them with employees. Ask questions, and let the conversation bring up more questions.
  6. Write down the things your customers ask for. Address all of the problems.
  7. Frame your BOGs in terms of a conversation with your audience about these topics. Don’t preach or rattle on. What frustrates them? Is there something you do that’s different from other companies? (Do the customers like that?)
  8. Include examples. Examples of your documentation, your procedures…the conversations you have. Things like:
    • Project Quote Documents
    • Names & Contact information for specific tasks (customer service, issues, department heads)
    • Your Interactions with Partners, or Vendors
  9. Examine competitors’ websites. Is there helpful content you could offer that they don’t? Write a BOG pointing this out.
  10. Post the BOGs prominently on your website. Include them in company documents. Make them easy to find.

P.S. – Always use Clear Content for BOGs. Simple, human language.

 

Now, what do we have after all of that? A bunch of specific, relevant content!

(This one activity could generate dozens of ideas for even more content, too.)

 

The BOG Advantage to Business: Differentiation

My bet is that BOGs will help you build authority in your industry.

You define how others see you with this content. Everyone else has to follow that.

“But we can’t define how our whole industry works! That’s rude!”

You don’t have to define BOGs for your industry. Just define your own guidelines. It can be a big differentiator for small businesses looking to garner a wider audience.

 

Specific Guidelines VS. “Best Practices”: Why BOGs Win Out

Posting guidelines on how you work helps you (the business owner/VP/manager) get information out of your head and in front of your audience. People who’d love to know how you work, before they do any business with you.

Instead of wondering what you mean by “best practices,” they have an idea of how you work right up front. Readers get the sense of, “Hey, these are human beings. We can build a good relationship.”

Let me give you a visual on BOG value.
Some of my clients are industrial manufacturers. They know their equipment and their parts inside & out.

But they almost never write out their procedures. It’s all ingrained; they don’t think to tell customers how their business works. They just expect us to trust them (in fairness, most of us do).

As a result, their sites are barren. BOGs give them a chance to beef up their site’s content. Explain what their customers get.

And the customers have that much more reason to trust them.

 

Want to write out your own BOGs? Tell me about it!

In a future post I’ll share a BOG set for my own business (content creation/editing). Watch for it!

In the meantime, what would you put into BOGs for a B2B Software Development Firm? Or an IT Security Vendor? (Or even a Web Writer?)

 

 Posted by at 11:20 am

What’s a “BOG” and How Does it Relate to Content Creation?

 Confusing Content, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Web Writing, Website Content  No Responses »
Aug 182011
 

I finally decided on what I want to call my “best practice alternative” concept.

I’ll call them Business Operating Guidelines. Or…

BOGs.

This is important because, for one, it’s an easy-to-recognize acronym. Two, it tweaks the brain a little bit.

Admit it, when you read “BOG” you thought of some large murky messy patch of land with lots of vegetation and mud that wants to eat you.

(Come to think of it, that’s a lot like the content on most websites.)

So, to poke a little fun at all the Confusing Content out there, I’m naming my Business Operating Guidelines concept BOGs.

BOGs are an alternative to this scenario:
1. Company puts the phrase “best practices” in their website content.
2. Company doesn’t bother adding details of how they actually work with customers.
3. Company wonders why people ask them how they operate. Over and over.

By creating your own BOGs, your own operating guidelines, you can differentiate yourself in your industry. And carve out the beginnings of trust with your audience.

Next week I’ll post a how-to on creating your own BOGs. And how to avoid getting BOGged down in the details.

(Sorry, had to.)

What do you think? Decent enough term to add to the business lexicon?

 

 Posted by at 12:17 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Why “Best Practices” Need to Go Away

 BFC Blog, Case Studies, Confusing Content, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Web Writing, Website Content, White Papers  1 Response »
Jul 142011
 

The Hidden Dangers of Using Jargon, Example 2

Early on in my copywriting career, I went to a meeting with a prospective new client. Small software firm. We talked project goals, audience, and so on.

Then my contact (the VP of sales) said, “And make sure to note that we conform to best practices.”

I stopped. “What do you mean?”

I honestly had no idea. I thought he’d explain.

Instead he replied, “Huh?”

I asked again. “What do you mean by ‘best practices?’ Can you describe some of them for me?”

Now I admit, I was fishing here. I didn’t even know what the phrase meant. Apparently, neither did they. He couldn’t give me an answer!

They just expected me to recognize and know the term “best practices.” Jargon alert!

The Danger in Using Best Practices: Assumption

Like this client, if you use “best practices” in your content, you’re assuming. Assuming the reader knows exactly what you mean. So you don’t have to specify your actual practices.

See why it’s a dangerous assumption? There’s no guarantee the reader will know what you mean. You’ve left a hole in their user experience.

What Does “Best Practices” Mean Anyway?

Exactly what ARE “best practices?” I still can’t find a clear example. Best I could locate was a series of infographics in Google. The most common ‘practices’ there were:

  • Find the medium between price, customer service and convenience
  • Stay on top of (our) industry
  • Confidence in our product
  • Make customers happy

News flash. EVERYONE wants to abide by *those* practices!

Nobody wants to have anything less than “best practices.” So why do we use the term? It’s become so universal it barely has meaning. Whatever meaning there was has been flooded away by its rampant overuse in business content.

My thought is that businesses only use it out of fear. Fear of someone out there thinking they’re NOT the best in ALL their practices! Gasp!

No. It’s just jargon now.

Time for an alternative.

The Alternative to Jargon: Clarify Your Actual Practices

Instead of sticking jargon like “best practices” into your content, try this:
Clarify your actual day-to-day practices. Split the whole idea out by industry.

You wouldn’t expect a software development firm to have the same practices as an auto parts manufacturer, would you?

A few industries do this already. Creating practices unique to their products and their standards. This Quora answer by Greg Lindahl is a good illustration of practices for software deployment.

I’d even suggest adopting a new, more specific term. Like, “X Industry Business Guidelines” or “X Corp. Operating Policies.”

That way you have to write things out. Be clear in what your readers (and clients) should expect.

Accountability, folks. It starts in your content. Not in jargon like “best practices.”

 

I’ll expand on this idea in a later post. Maybe write up a set of guidelines…for making guidelines. (Very meta, huh?)

What would be on your ‘industry business guidelines’ list?

 Posted by at 11:34 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

The Hidden Dangers of Using Jargon – Example 1

 BFC Blog, Confusing Content, Content Creation, Persuasion Techniques, Web Writing  No Responses »
Jun 302011
 

I saw this the other day:
How to Use Jargon and the Dangers of Doing So – Bedell Communications

Good list. Covers the basics nicely.

I thought about the terms for a little bit. You could pick any one of them out, ask ten people what it means, and get ten different answers. They seem designed to cause confusion.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Jargon Becomes Dangerous in the Reader’s Mind

Many jargon terms carry certain impressions. Impressions readers automatically call to mind when they see these terms.

Most of the time it’s subconscious. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. But either way, you have no control over their reaction.

Only over using the jargon.

With this in mind, I decided to write a post series on jargon. And these ‘hidden dangers’ brewing in readers’ minds.

Hopefully you’ll see enough reason to avoid using them in your content from now on.

(Before I give the first example, let me make a differentiation: I’m talking about ‘marketing jargon’ here. NOT ‘industry jargon’ – sometimes that can be very helpful! Remember, only talking ‘marketing jargon’ here.)

Example #1 – “Industry-Leading”

My first example will be the term “industry-leading.” You’ll usually see it in sentences like these:

* Our industry-leading product line gives you a whole new experience in buying software!
* XYZ Corp. has been an industry leader in plastics manufacturing for 12 years.

Problem number 1.

If you have to make this claim, you’re lying to the reader.

If you ARE the industry leader, you don’t need to say it. Others will say it for you – in mainstream media, in the blogosphere & in social media. Sit back and watch. (Once the customers are happy of course!)

If you AREN’T, and you use the term, this is the impression that forms in a reader’s mind:

“Who are they trying to convince here? Me or them? I don’t buy it.”

Your trust factor just took a hit.

From that point on, there’s a veil of suspicion floating between the screen and your readers’ eyes.

They might even call you out online. Then where are you? Stuck defending an indefensible position.

If you aren’t an industry leader (yet), try one of these approaches:

–Invent a new industry. Characterize your business as the first of a new type. (This takes work – lot of networking, lot of promotion, lot of patience. But it’s done all the time.)

–Go for the underdog position. People DO like rooting for underdogs. Works well for startups.

Think About the Readers’ Impressions

Remember, one purpose of content is to have a conversation with the reader. What kind of conversation are THEY seeing?

Back next time with more dangers hidden…in JARGON! (*Horror film music!*)

 Posted by at 2:13 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,
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