Archive for category: the Say It For You blog

Loanwords are words adopted by speakers of one language from a different language.  There are many, many foreign words and phrases used in English, and often these have become so familiar that people use them every day without considering their foreign origin.

Some Scandinavian words that have become part of English are husband, kindle, lump, thrust, and scrub.  France gave us the words judge, noble, priest, lady, pork, and salmon, while the words tattoo and taboo each come from the Pacific islands.  From Australia we “borrowed” the words kangaroo and boomerang, while banana, banjo, and jitterbug come from Africa.

As a ghost blogger, I’m a wordsmith, and it occurs to me that the language of computers and of blogging includes many, many loanwords of its own.  These words come not from foreign languages, but from everyday English words given a slightly different meaning for Internet and computer use. When I compose my blog (“web log”), I navigate using my “desktop”. My information might be protected with a “firewall” against “viruses”.  When I look at a website, it might have “wallpaper”.  I “scroll” down to read the content and decide to “bookmark” it. I might email documents in a “zip file”. There’s no end to computerspeak using loanwords! 

Professor Suzanne Kemmer of Rice University explains that a loanword can also be called a borrowing. “Loan” and “borrowing”, she hastens to add, are metaphors, because there is no transfer from one language to another, and no “returning” words to the source language!

With literally trillions of words being added daily to the World Wide Web, the Internet has become the largest repository of information in human history. Blogging activity has become a rapidly growing part of this information swell, and (inadvertently or on purpose) there’s undoubtedly a lot of “borrowing” going on. My college students are taught to avoid plagiarism by properly attributing statements to their proper authors. 
The blogging equivalent of citations is links.  Even if you’re putting a unique twist on a topic, it’s good practice to link to websites from which you got the original news or idea (the link in the first paragraph of this blog post is an example of that).

Not only is the practice of attributing “loans” to their sources, as Alfred P. Doolittle of My Fair Lady might say, “the right and proper thing to do, there are actually rewards to be gained. Electronic links enhance search engine rankings for your blog by creating back-and-forth online "traffic".

Daniel Finley, advising financial planners on managing their practice, poses the question: "What’s your purpose?"

According to Finley, one thing that holds many advisers back from increasing their business strength is their business belief systems, which he defines as "what you believe about yourself, your abilities, the market, your firm, or anything else that affects your business." The important thing about belief systems, he stresses, is that they affect business activities.

Finley’s words ring very true to me. As a professional ghost blogger, I become part of a business’ marketing team. Too often, I find, business owners are so anxious to embark on blogging, they don’t devote adequate thought to how the blogging will fit into their overall marketing system. 
Blogs are tools, and like other tools, may be used for different purposes.  A company can use blogging to build goodwill, attract new business, improve customer relations, enhance the brand, recruit employees, or weather a crisis. According to blog experts Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos, one kind of blog you should never launch is the "Let’s-launch-a-blog" blog, just because everybody else is doing it!

Fellow blogger Luke Houghton agrees with that idea. In his blog post "Say Exactly What You Want When You Ask For Something", Houghton mentions the "stinging disappointment of loss" you feel when you’ve paid for something that turns out to be different from what you expected. Houghton emphasizes that "the question comes first, then the answer."

When working with business owners to arrive at the right tone and the right emphasis for their business blogs, I begin by challenging the owner of the business or professional practice with the following question: "If you had only eight to ten words to describe why you’re passionate about what you sell, what you know, and what you do, what would those words be?"

In short, when it comes to blogging for business, Luke Houghton’s "spot on" about the question needing to precede the answer.  For eager-beaver business blogger newbies, a reminder:  in the dictionary, the word "belief" comes before "blog", and (significantly, I think), "planning" comes before "posting"!