Silicon “Valleyspeak” is alive and well — and eroding the language

This post appeared April26 in The Write Stuff, the jargon-free blog of Write Angle – Silicon Valley’s premiere technology writing and content agency for the IT industry.

Now in our third decade of technology marketing in Silicon Valley, we’ve been exposed to our unfair share of linguistically challenged content and mind numbing jargon. So you’d think we’d be de-sensitized by now. But a recent email containing some truly cringe-worthy terminology, even by Valley standards, really gagged us. It read like a Saturday Night Live lampoon of techies.

No matter how many times we call it out, tortured business language continues to pollute even the simplest communications.  Like ivy and acronyms, it keeps coming back.

Must have been the use of “onboarding” that set us off.  Not exactly a new term but does the English language we really need another ham-handed concept to convey “a systematic and comprehensive approach to orienting a new employee to help them ‘get on board’”?  What happened to “hiring” or “orientation”?

We’re comforted in the knowledge that we are not alone in our disdain for “jargon-slingers”.  And props to Christopher Steiner for coining that term.  Steiner authored  The Most Annoying Business Jargon , an astute and witty article that takes the business world to task for “cutting its anchors to the English language.” Recommended reading.

We’ve all heard this lingo in meetings and winced. We read it on websites, press releases, and been helplessly subjected to it in conference presentations. But accept it? No way. At least not at Write Angle.

To quote Steiner, “Let the jargon slinger know that you know who they are:  a vapid, message-clouding, English-avoiding, communications nightmare.” We couldn’t have said it better.

What SV-speak do you hear around your cubes or watering holes these days that cause you to cringe? What do you do to stamp it out?

When he’s not ranting on this site, Stan DeVaughn blogs on The Write Stuff with his agency partner, Peter Davé.

The five worst practices in B2B technology-content marketing

© Sailorman 2

This post appeared today on The Write Stuff, the blog of Write Angle — Silicon Valley’s premiere marketing-content creator and writers for the IT industry.

1.  Shove a datasheet into a prospect’s face right after you introduce yourself.

When a qualified prospect on a fact-finding mission enters your tradeshow booth, you introduce yourself and inquire about their business and their familiarity with you (read: you qualify them). What you do not do is dive right into a spec-sheet monologue. It’s the same with content. Just as your marketing material should be calibrated (and designated) according to the prospect’s stage-of-purchase, it must be sequenced accordingly.  In the same way, the best “family” of content begins at the primary level and gradually moves up to more advanced material.  Caveat: don’t always assume that a relatively well informed prospect won’t find use for introductory materials. Stuff you think they already know. Savvy shoppers will contrast and compare competitors every step of the way and cross-check competing claims. Hint: vendors showing the most proof-points with the most relevance to the reader usually win.

2.  Emphasize your features and benefits rather than their problems and issues.

A variant of #1 above, it’s no secret that content with user themes earn the most favor with users. But you must go further. Don’t talk about your offering per se so much as the solution it represents to problems vexing the customer. There are nuances to being perceived by a customer as “one of us”, rather than being seen as just another vendor.  You want them to receive you as a partner rather than a supplier. Your content will either validate one perception, or the other.

3.  Assume they believe you have no competition

If you think this is a no-brainer, then why is so much vapid marketing content floating around? The first step in breaking away from the pack is to acknowledge that it’s there. Customers understand you only in terms that they’ve already come to understand–by virtue of what they’ve learned and continue to find out about alternative offerings.  Besides, if you’re the only solution, how can a viable market exist? The worst impression you can create is that you don’t know your competitors as well as your prospects do.

4.  Presume everything you slap a logo on makes it inherently “must-see TV”

Happens all the time to product managers who look at a user through the lens of their product when they should be looking at their product through the eyes of the user. It’s no coincidence that so many marketers of this persuasion tend to be hyper-competitive, obsessing on how the competition is marketing, what it’s saying, doing and achieving. Make your customers’ issues your issues and your content will naturally reflect a customer-centered POV.

5.  Believe that everything is as good, or as bad, as Sales says it is.

Snarky, maybe, but this old saying has been around too long to dismiss it out of hand. Your sales force is inherently focused on the deals and crises of the moment. At least, is better be. This means perceptions can become quickly and easily distorted in the heat of the transaction process. It’s only human to project what we want to see and hear from our prospects and customers, rather than take a breath, stand back and understand a situation for what it really is. Look at large pattern of data points, not just the ones you’re infatuated with, or most alarmed by, at any moment. Which, after all, is fundamental to the marketing mission and the marketing content it depends on.

So what are your content-marketing practices?  How do you ensure a customer-and-market focus?

When he’s not ranting on this site, Stan DeVaughn holds forth along with comrade-in-communications Peter Davé on The Write Stuff.

You Won’t Learn Anything Useful About Your Content From Anyone Who’s Not a Customer

We’ve all seen them.  Those click-bait posts that pop up everywhere:  “What (fill in the blank) can teach us about (fill in the blank).”   Saw one today that inspires what you’re reading now. It had to do with teenagers and marketing.  This was right after seeing another one about what the “Olympics can teach about product development”, or something equally absurd.  We suppose these things must work for somebody, or else there wouldn’t be so many of them, right?  And in the interest of full disclosure we’ll admit to clicking on them from time to time.

The teenager theme, however, reminds us of something said by Don Draper, uber-cool ad exec in an early episode of “Mad Men.”  Young people, Draper observed back in the day when agencies were enthralled by the youth market (nothing’s changed!), can’t teach anybody anything for the simple that “they don’t know anything.”  Succinctly put.  We’ll go a step further and declare that no one other than your customers can teach you anything you need to know about how to use content to acquire more customers. If your web site fails to pull the visitors you’re targeting you need find out why.  If your calls to action fall short of the action you’re calling for, you need a more compelling proposition.  If the visitors you desire fail to see anything compelling and relevant, you need to ask why and find out how to improve it.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Commencement speech I’m never invited to give

Below, the 2012 edition of “the speech”: 

Congratulations, graduates of the class of ’12!

You now depart campus and enter the world of your chosen profession.  Please accept my best wishes for finding a job there.   But, I digress.  These remarks are supposed to give inspiration to you, not indigestion to your parents.

Right around this time of year, there’s usually talk about the failure of institutions of higher learning to instill the attitudes and training necessary for success in the working world.  I take issue with this assertion.  In my judgement,  this has never been nor should it ever be the purpose of a college degree.  As far as the attitudes necessary for success in life, to my way of thinking they were supposed to have been instilled in you many years before you arrived on campus as a wide-eyed freshman.

This instillation should have happened at home as you were growing up, not in a classroom or lecture hall as young adults. What I’m talking about is the guidance your mother and father presumably gave you at every turn.  Especially mom.  And it would have gone something like this:

Share with others.  Yes, mom was probably referring to toys and ice cream, but think about it.  Leadership and success have a lot to do with the sharing of ideas, information, tips, suggestions, enthusiasm, energy, goodwill and inspiration.  Esprit de corps.  Departments and groups and organizations that share amongst themselves, especially the credit for jobs well done, tend to be more spirited, better focused and more productive.  This is what is meant by the effective organization.

Plan ahead. Most moms I’ve known frowned on procrastination.  They also wanted you to think about the consequences of your actions.  Mothers don’t like aimless drifting.  Same thing goes for life as an adult.  Most good things don’t just happen to us by a random act of the universe. They are the result of specific actions we’ve taken to make them happen. We fail to make good things happen to the extent that we fail to plan for them.  “If you fail to plan you’re planning to fail” might sound corny but, boy, is it true.

Remember the Golden Rule. What goes around, especially in business, comes around.  Make a habit of being respectful to your customers, friends, employees, colleagues, bosses, clients, retail clerks, ticket agents, hotel maids, bus drivers, and everybody else with whom you transact on any level. It will, most often, be returned to you. It’s good business. In every transaction, no matter how trivial it may seem, ask yourself: How would I like to be treated if I were on the other side of this?

Stay in touch.  Your mom never failed to let you know when too much time had passed between calls or texts. She wants to hear from you.  So, too, never ignore your colleagues, bosses, customers, prospects, clients and partners. The people who matter in your world. Stay in contact. Reach out.  Connect.  Let people know you there and care.

Reserve the right to be smarter tomorrow than you are today.   I’ll bet your mom encouraged you to be accepting of others who may have been different. To include them.  In the same way, being open to new ideas and trends is fundamental to creativity, innovation and adaptation in a changing world.  This happens to be a typical trait of the most admired companies in America, too. For obvious reasons.

Be alert:  Where mom might remind you to look both ways before crossing the street, the business equivalent of this admonition would be to stay up-to-date with current events.  This is how you stay on top of trends and developments. It’s key to making better decisions, especially ones having to do with technology and planning.  Understanding what’s happening in your market will make you a more intelligent practitioner of whatever you do. The better informed you are, the better decisions you’ll make and the more effective you’ll be.

Tell the truth. Your mom was a stickler here, with zero tolerance. In the business world or anywhere else, even half-truths can be as corrosive as outright lies.  Whatever misleads and undermines spells doom, sooner or later, for the instigator.  Particularly in this increasingly online world, transparency is key to sustained success because trust is currency.  If you don’t have it, you won’t survive. In the office, untruthful is another word for “uncool”.

Admit mistakes and, above all, don’t cover up. You’ve heard it said that the cover-up is worse than the misdeed?  This became a truism for good reason.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. Parents, especially moms, are notorious for encouragement.  It’s in their job description.  But it’s absolutely true that sooner or later you will fail.  If you don’t, shame on you. You haven’t reached far enough, haven’t stretched yourself and you will not grow.  Failure is not in failing to succeed.  It’s in failing to try.  And try again and again.

One last thing.  It’s not about going out into the world to find yourself.  You won’t.  What you must do is invent yourself.  And, if need be, re-invent yourself throughout your career.  And, no, there is no app for that. 

Congratulations!  Especially to your parents.

 

Small IT errors cause huge security breaches

 

We do a lot of work for IT security clients. And the numbers we hear numb the brain. Security researcher Ponemon Institute LLC, (not a client) says that almost nine out of ten U.S. companies have suffered at least one security breach.  Many don’t even know if or when they’ve been hit.  The cost to businesses of exposing data like Social Security and credit-card numbers climbed seven percent between 2010 and 2011 to an average of more than $7 million per incident, according to a study of victim companies.  The most expensive attack of 2010 cost an unidentified company $35.3 million, an increase of 15 percent from the costliest breach a year earlier.  It was so bad the name of the company remains confidential so as not to alarm customers. While government agencies must be notified, attacks on and losses by many large corporations are never publicly revealed.  Costs rise as more states pass laws requiring companies to disclose whenever customers’ personal information is exposed. As of 2011, 46 U.S. states passed such measures, with varying definitions of a breach, deadlines for notifying customers and punishments for failing to comply.  Still, the attacks and the cost of fending them off grow unabated. What’s going on here?

Happily for our clients, business is brisk. Still, one of them admits that the seemingly low return on corporate America’s security dollar is being seen with growing frustration and alarm at the board level.  “Companies who question their return on the millions of dollars they’ve invested in IT defenses have every right to be angry,” he said. Of course, our clients have a vested interest in encouraging the upgrade of aging defenses so easily overcome by cyber-criminals today.

We can’t help noticing the irony here. Computer security is a multi-billion industry employing some of the most brilliant technologists on the planet.  They labor hard to stay a step ahead of the bad guys who, just like terrorists, only have to be successful once, while techno-sleuths and defenders must succeed 100% of the time.  Yet, as found by Verizon and reported yesterday in Network World , in 97% of breaches last year, attackers used remarkably simple methods to break in.  In other words, many organizations are overlooking basic precautions even as their security systems grow more complex. In four out of five attacks on businesses last year, bad guys preyed on so-called victims of opportunity.  Like muggers who look for an unsuspecting or distracted target in crimes of opportunity, cyber-attackers scan for companies who may not be properly utilizing the defenses they have or whose passwords fail the tough-to-guess test.

To us in the business of marketing some truly amazing preventive technology, Verizon’s findings are a real eye-opener.  Here’s hoping they can open more corporate-security eyes as well.  The chain around the company’s digital assets is only as strong as the weakest link.  And the bad guys are experts in finding them.

 

(An earlier version of his post appeared April 11 on The Write Stuff, my blog at Write Angle.)

Great marketing has always been “social”

Harvey Firestone sold a lot tires to Henry Ford (who sold a lot of cars).

No great revelation that the rise of Facebook, Twitter and other social media forever changed the practice of marketing.  The principles and best practices, however, are steadfast.

For the really great brands and merchants who have always done well by their customers, the tenets of great marketing and selling remain intact: treat people with the utmost respect, offer a product that delivers great value, follow up with great service and never take your customer for granted. This has been cornerstone of success from time immemorial. The so-called best practices of social media today–cultivation of one-on-one relationships, transparency, conversation, etc.–were at work when Harvey Firestone was selling tires to Henry Ford and the pharmacist at the corner drugstore had personal concern for his neighborhood’s family health.

Autodesk changed the practice of architecture but the principles of structural engineering didn’t change.  And the principles of effective marketing are same in the era of Zuckerberg as they were in the time of Gutenberg.

How marketers can make their words sell their products

If you can’t get excited about what you’re selling, you cannot sell it

There’s nothing mysterious or magical about good writing for marketing and sales.  The bad news is that it’s hard work.  The good news is that just about anyone who is literate (and has the time) can do it — providing that what they write contains three essential ingredients:

1.  Above all, a product or service that delivers measurable value.

2. A passionate and palpable belief in the benefits your product or service delivers.

3. A no-less passionate belief in what you’re saying.

If this sounds like the secrets of successful selling, it’s because it is.  Writing for marketing and sales is nothing more or less than marketing and salesmanship in print. Or in pixels.  A sales professional who is less than excited about the product will never cut it.  Ditto for marketing people assigned to a product  in which they have no belief.  If you are genuinely excited about your offer and what it represents to customers, the excitement will shine through. It cannot help but breathe life into your words and inspire the interest of the people reading them.  And you can hold the exclamation points.

(This post appeared here earlier today.)

Make your content fit your customer’s frame of mind

Tom Pisello’s thoughts on content marketing and the “buyer’s journey” reminds us, again, that great customer knowledge is the cornerstone of great content for customers. Great content marketing, in other words.

There’s a specific category of content for suspects and prospects that call for careful sorting of the content to present to each at various points along their decision path.  It may not necessarily accelerate the buyer’s journey from kicking the tires to writing the check, but it ensures a better ROI for each individual piece of content. What you make available to each group can effectively nudge them along their way.

In a world where skepticism and frugality reign supreme, knowing which stage your prospect is in will determine whether your carefully crafted content is useful or irrelevant. It can make the difference between material the prospect considers valuable or useless.  As with most things in life, timing is everything.  Note that there is always overlap in groups such as those described below, but Pisello’s rule-of-thumb still applies:

1. Think of the first stage of the journey as the discovery period.  Here, buyers are in fact-gathering mode.  They may have made the decision to purchase something, but not necessarily your thing.  This is the group to which white papers, webcasts, events and diagnostic assessment tools are most useful.

2. In the consideration stage, the buyer is looking to justify the purchase.  This is the decision-making time when specific vendors are put on a short list and their offerings more closely scrutinized and screened.  In this phase the prospect (no longer a “suspect”) may be particularly influenced by your solution case studies, video testimonials and white papers that are less theoretical and more solution-minded.

3. Finally, it’s decision time when the buyer will be most influenced by content that demonstrates the rightness of your value proposition.  They want a compelling answer to the question, “Why is this the right decision for me?”  Any content that reveals ROI will be most appropriate at this stage: interactive business-case tools, feature-function comparisons, value-oriented white papers and total-cost-of-ownership comparison tools.

There are horses for courses.  And there is specific content for specific mindsets.

What the class of ’11 didn’t hear from this year’s speakers

Read something the other day I thought would make a great graduation speech.  Too bad so many commencement speakers are so full of themselves that they can’t bear to deliver remarks like this.  So I’ll take a whack at it.  Call it my Speech to the Class of ’11 in Absentia:

Congratulations, graduates.  You now depart campus and enter the world of your chosen profession.  Assuming, of course, you can find a job there.  But, I digress.  These remarks are supposed to give inspiration to you, not indigestion to your parents.

Anyway, there’s some talk today that colleges are failing to instill the attitudes and training necessary for success in the working world.  At least according to an Op-Ed in the New York Times recently.  And we hear this regularly today elsewhere. Nonsense, I say.  This has never been, nor should it be, the purpose of higher education. As far as the attitudes necessary for success in life, I say that they were supposed to have been instilled in you long before you arrived on campus.  Long before you even took your SAT.

This instillation should have happened at home as you were growing up, not during some indoctrination as a young adult. It was the guidance your mother and father gave you at every turn.  Especially mom.  It would have gone something like this:

Share with others.  Yes, mom was probably referring to toys and ice cream, but think about it.  Leadership and success have a lot to do with the sharing of ideas, information, tips, suggestions, and all that creates enthusiasm, positive energy, goodwill and inspiration.  Esprit de corps.  Departments and groups and organizations that share stuff amongst themselves, especially the credit for jobs well done, tend to be more spirited, better focused and more productive.  This is what is meant by the effective organization.

Plan ahead. Most moms I’ve known frowned on procrastination.  They also wanted you to think about the consequences of your actions.  Moms don’t like aimless drifting.  Same thing goes for life as an adult.  Most good things don’t just happen to us by a random act of the universe. They are the result of specific actions we’ve taken to make them happen. We fail to make good things happen to the extent that we fail to plan for them.  “If you fail to plan you’re planning to fail” might sound corny but, boy, is it true.

Remember the Golden Rule. If there is a key to well-being it is this.  Make a habit of being respectful to your customers, friends, employees, colleagues, bosses, clients, retail clerks, roommates, lovers, ticket agents, hotel maids, bus drivers, and everybody else with whom you transact and it will inevitably be returned to you most of the time. It’s good business. In every transaction, no matter how trivial it may seem, ask yourself: How would I like to be treated if I were on the other side of this?

Stay in touch.  Your mom never failed to let you know when too much time had passed between calls or texts. She wants to hear from you.  So, too, never ignore your colleagues, your superiors, your customers, clients and partners. The people who matter in your world. Stay in contact. Reach out.  Connect.  Let your people know you care.

Reserve the right to be smarter tomorrow than you are today.   I’ll bet your mom encouraged you to be open-minded and tolerant of others who may have been different.  In the same way, being open to new ideas and trends is fundamental to creativity, innovation and adaptation in world of perpetual, not to mention accelerating, change.  It’s also the trait that most clearly differentiates the best run organizations from the other kind.

Stay up-to-date with current events.  This is how you stay on top of trends and developments. It’s key to making better decisions, especially ones having to do with planning.  Understanding what’s currently happening in your field will make you a more intelligent practitioner of whatever you do. The better informed you are, the more effective you are as an employee or a citizen.

Tell the truth. Your mom was a stickler here, with zero tolerance. In the business world or anywhere else, even half-truths can be as corrosive as lies themselves.  Whatever misleads and undermines spells ultimate doom, sooner or later, for the deceiver.  Particularly in this increasingly online world, transparency is key to sustained success. In that world, trust is currency.  If you don’t have it, you won’t survive. Untruthful is the essence of uncool.

Admit mistakes.  Above all, don’t cover up. We’ve all heard the truism, “The coverup was worse than the crime”.  Why do you think it became a truism?

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. Parents, especially moms, are notorious for encouragement.  It’s right in the job description.  But it’s absolutely, positively, almost mystically true: you will fail.  If you don’t, you haven’t stretched yourself and you will not grow.  Failure is not in failing to succeed.  It’s in failing to try.  And try again.  And again and again.

Good luck.  And congratulations to your parents!

Getting maximum return on your website’s content (ROC) starts with your blog.

When it comes to websites, findable beats lovable.

You know about ROI.  What about ROC?

Return on content (ROC) is fundamental to a website. It is the ROI of the site. Too bad so few marketing people have even heard of the concept, much less how to achieve it.

It’s not complicated. Here’s how to get started:

1. Create a blog. You miss a huge opportunity to drive more traffic if your site does not feature an active blog.  This is more than just fundamental to a good ROC, it is central to making your site findable in the first place. And getting found is what online marketing is all about. Web analytics prove this beyond all doubt. Blogging is a great way to reach your target audience with your thoughts, opinions, and offerings on relevant topics.  If you are not blogging, your site is not working nearly as hard or as smart as it should. It’s an easy fix: but you have to start blogging.  What you’re shooting for is growth in the traffic you attract and the number (and quality) of links that point at you.

2.  Post as often as possible. Infatuation with your cool graphics, typography and imagery is understandable. Problem is, they aren’t the key driver(s) of the high-quality prospects that convert into customers and clients.  Your content, specifically your blog, is. So, what you post on it becomes the de facto voice of your site–and your business.  It is also the one place where you can most quickly and easily update and refresh the content that grows the number and quality of links pointing at it.

3.  Grow your “indexed pages”. These are the pages on your site that are stored by search engines. Web crawlers for the major search engines will visit your website periodically and look for new content to index.  New content such as new blog posts relevant to your prospects’ searches. The more pages found on your site by search engines, the better.

Coming up: Optimizing your content for max ROC.