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Is Your Message Clear?

Is Your Message Clear?

Image from Unsplash by Tim Mossholder

 

I am discouraged by the fundamentals that underlie usage of obscure communications in business.

WWWHHHHAAATTT?

Yeah, that sentence is a perfect example of an obscure message.

The clear message? I’m sad that so many business people are more concerned with sounding intellectual than they are with communicating clearly.

Simplicity is the name of the game in getting your message across, and in the end, it’s not what you say that matters. What your customer, client, prospect, or employee hears is the critical factor.

Five Guidelines for Clear Messaging:

  1. Avoid words that require a dictionary for interpretation. Few people will bother to look them up.
  2. Use short sentences. Try to keep each sentence under 20 words. Break longer thoughts into multiple sentences.
  3. Make your message relevant. If what you say doesn’t matter to your intended audience, you will not be heard.
  4. Find a clear, concise message and stick with it.
  5. Do not assume your reader thinks and believes as you do.

In the end, language is a tool used to inform and enlighten. The simple choice between one word and another really does make a difference in how your message is understood.

As Dr. Frank Luntz says in his book Words that Work, we need to make people the center of our communication, not the target.

 

Mindful Social Media

Mindful Social Media

The longer I participate in Social Media, the more aware I become of the negative impact it has on my time, my energy, and my emotions.

I’ve begun to unfollow those whose posts are consistently religious or political, and the sports fans who post their assessment of every play in the game.  Just eliminating those posts from my feed (but not from my “friends” list) made a difference.

Then I realized that to really live a mindful life, I had to change how and what I post on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

I began by asking myself prior to each post, share, or comment: Would I call my mother, my best friends, and my family members on the phone to share this information?

If the answer is “NO” or even a “Probably Not,” why would I put it out on social media for the world to see? What value would it impart?

If the answer is “YES,” I was OK with posting it with some restraint, such as marking some posts only for family or close friends.

Still, there was something nagging at me.

If the play-by-play sports posts, the religio-political posts and the “my kid just had breakfast and my dog is so cute” posts make me want to cancel all my social media accounts, what sort of reactions are my own posts eliciting from those who follow me?

That’s when I became fully aware that mindful social media was more about how and what I choose to post for others to see than what I choose to see from them, so I dug deeper into the “share” box at the bottom right of the Facebook “what’s on your mind” box:

 

 

 

When I click on the down arrow and on the “more options” option, I come to the “custom” link, which allows me to be very targeted in who can or cannot see a specific post:

 

 

If I know certain people will want to see a specific post, add them to the “share this with” list. If I know some who won’t, I put them in the “don’t share this with” box. I can create a group of those I know will appreciate my posts about marketing a small business, my philosophy of life, or my latest book of poetry and fiction.

Yes, I know that asking you to do the same causes you to put in a bit more effort and to exercise some restraint. I also know this is somewhat contrary to the tell-all-to-all culture of social media.

But on the upside, it causes all of us to be mindful of what we share, and in that regard, considerate of the people we call “friends.”  Perhaps we’ll even gain back a bit of the time, energy, or emotional satisfaction we’ve lost in endless, uninspired scrolling.

Mindful Social Media. Will you make it a practice today?

Word Trivia 1/18/2023

Word Trivia 1/18/2023

Today’s Trivia:

Floccinaucinihilipilification

fläksēˌnäsēˌnihəlēˌpiləfəˈkāSH(ə)n/  (yeah, sure — that’s easy for you to say! — but for the rest of us, go HERE)

Noun: The action or habit of estimating something as worthless.

This is a mid-18th century term from Latin flocci, nauci, nihili, pili (words meaning ‘at little value’) + -fication. The Latin elements were listed in a well-known rule of the Eton Latin Grammar.