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No-No Expressions in Content Marketing

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Earlier this week, our Say It For You blog highlighted some very good tips Bruce Sanders offers in Financial Advisor Magazine to financial advisors about staying in touch with their clients. As a content marketing, I particularly appreciated Sanders’ advice concerning specific expressions advisors would do well to avoid in their communications.  “You might say something you consider witty or simply plain speaking, but your client might take it the wrong way”, he warns…

1.   You’re meeting with a client and the phone rings. You say “I can ignore that call”. Your intention was to show that the person in front of you is most important and that this meeting should not be interrupted. The client, Sanders cautions, might wonder if their call might get the same “brush-off” treatment when they need to talk to you.

2.   A client has learned that they cannot do something they wanted to do, either because of technology or other changes in policy. If you say “It’s firm policy”, that’s a turn-off – your client feels you should be arguing their case. See this from the client’s perspective. Show that you understand their frustration. Then show how the change will benefit the client in the long run, Sanders advises.

3.   “I want all your money”. Don’t offer an “all or nothing” scenario in which prospects must sever relationships with other vendors or professionals as a condition of dealing with you, Sanders warns.

“Powerful customer service phrases can help you improve client interactions by instilling trust, touchpoint.com explains. “Is there anything else I can assist you with?” shows that a service representative is eager to go above and beyond to ensure the customer’s satisfaction. If concerns arise, saying “Thanks for bringing this to our attention!”, or “I apologize for the inconvenience” can help maintain trust..

For content marketers, this advice applies to negative comments that readers sometimes make about a business, using social media. When those customer complaints and concerns are recognized and dealt with “in front of other people” (i.e. in the content available to all readers), it gives the “apology” more weight.  “Letting the client tell his/her story,” gives the owner or practitioner the chance to offer useful information to other readers and to explain any changes in policy that resulted from the situation. But, even when there haven’t been negative comments or outright complaints, we must engage readers and show them we understand the dilemmas they’re facing, going right to the heart of any fears or concerns they might have.

Getting everything “out on the table”, thereby building trust? Why, that may be one of the most valuable functions of content marketing!

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Are Errors Affecting the Effect of Your Content?

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“Six seconds is all it takes to catch a customer’s attention upon opening up your internet portal. Imagine if in that first six seconds, the first thing she notices are the spelling errors!” the Coggno Training Company cautions. When more than a thousand London social media users were surveyed, 42% of them reported that they would not buy goods and services from a business with misspellings in their ads.

“First impressions make or break a business,” JMK MarComm stresses,” and your written content is often the first impression potential customer have of your brand.”  “Quality grammar leads to quality writing,” Bryn Greenlhalgh, states in the Marriott Student Review at Brigham Young University.

As a content marketer at Say It For You, my favorite recommendation to both business owners and the content writers they hire to bring their message to customers is this: Marketing content in social media posts and blogs can be less formal  than website content, but they should never be sloppy. Unlike your sixth grade teacher, internet searchers won’t “correct your paper”. They may very well navigate away from your blog and find somewhere else to go!

In both romance and  content,, trouble often arises in “pairs”, such as the words “affect” and effect” which I used in the title of this post  Two other pairs I find are often confused  are  “who” and “that” (“Who” always refers to a person; “that”refers to a thing.) and “between” and “among” (“between” refers to the space or difference between two things or people, while: “among” refers to the difference among three or more things or people).

Sure, there’s always spell check software and now AI-generated content, but sometimes, the best remedy for bloopers is a “day away” from creating the content, so you can “see it with a fresh eye”. 

Don’t allow errors in  your content to affect the effect it has in winning over readers!

 

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In Marketing, Punctuation Matters — a Lot!

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The best punctuation goes entirely unnoticed, even if it means breaking some rules, Sigl Creative reminds writers of marketing copy. The site offers a birds-eye view:

  • Periods, exclamation points, and question marks symbols mark the end of a complete thought. Periods are used the most, and readers will barely notice them.
  • Questions are great, drawing in the readers, posing a problem the reader wants solved.
  • Exclamation points, not used in formal writing, are appropriate for copywriting. You’re excited about your business, and you want the reader to be, too. (Don’t use too many, and never two in a row.)
  • Fragments (“Just. Like. This.”) break up the flow of words.
  • Em dashes (which interrupt a sentence with an idea) can be visually exciting.
  • Ellipses (a series of three periods) add informality, mimicking human speech.

But do these details matter?  Oh, yes! “You don’t want to distract your readers from the message you’re trying to send,” Jessica Perkins of Agility PR Solutions writes. Without proper punctuation, you can produce run-on sentences, dangling modifiers, or sentence fragments.

It’s not hard to find websites listing funny examples of how punctuation can lead to total misunderstanding, as I pointed out five years ago in this Say It For You blog:

  • A woman without her man is nothing.
    A woman: without her, man is nothing.
  • Let’s eat Grandma.
    Let’s eat, Grandma!
  • I have only twenty-five dollar bills.
    I have only twenty five-dollar bills.
  • I’m sorry I love you.
    I’m sorry; I love you.
  • The author finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog.
    The author finds inspiration in cooking, her family, and her dog.

Anything that puzzles readers interferes with their interest and engagement, defeating the purpose of the content. In today’s competitive business world, content writing is a tool for “getting personal” and earning trust. As writers, we need to help our business owners express who and what they are, so that they come across as “real”. Being real, though, doesn’t mean being sloppy.

In marketing, punctuation matters – a lot!

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Oops! There Goes Another Misspelled Word

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The staff at my local grocery store obviously meant to convey the message that they don’t ACCEPT returns.  In fact, I found out later, the word “accept” did not make dictionaryscoop.com‘s list of 12 Most Common English Spelling Mistakes, which includes the words accommodate, apparent, acknowledgment, calendar, colleague, entrepreneur, led (past tense of “lead”), necessary, receive, successful, and withhold. CNBC adds conscientious, experience, guidance, occurrence, and fulfill.

“Spelling seems like such a minor thing,” Kathy and Ross Petras admit in the CNBC piece, “but It’s actually one of the most problematic issues we deal with in the business world.”  Bad spelling can put a dent in your professional reputation, the authors caution, citing a survey showing that 79% of recruiters and HR managers said spelling and grammatical mistakes “were the biggest deal breakers in job hunting.”

Along with spelling mistakes, grammar errors can make a content writer “look dumb”, as Brian Clark of Copyblogger emphasizes, pointing to your/you’re, it’s/its, there/their, and affect/effect.

“We’re all busy, and we all make mistakes,,” Clark admits, but if you want to be taken seriously, it’s important to get serious about grammar.

As a content marketer at Say It For You, my favorite recommendation to both business owners and the freelance blog content writers they hire to bring their message to customers is this:

Prevent blog content writing “wardrobe malfunctions”, including grammar errors, run-on sentences, and spelling errors. Blogs (as I’ve often taught) are more personal and more informal than formal letters or even home pages on websites, but they shouldn’t be sloppy.  Unlike your sixth grade teacher, internet searchers won’t “correct your paper”. They may very well navigate away from your blog and find somewhere else to go!

When it comes to common grammar mistakes, the pairs I find are most often confused are these:

Who/that

“Who” always refers to a person; “that” refers to a thing.

Between/among

“Between” refers to the space or difference between two things: “among” refers to the difference among three or more things.

Lay/Lie

“Lay” means to set something down; the verb “lie” means either to tell an untruth, or to assume a horizontal position.

Advise/Advice

“Advise” (with the “s” pronounced like a “z”) is a verb meaning you offer “advice” (counsel).

Allow the next spelling or grammar error to be something you find in someone’s else’s message, not your own!

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In Content Marketing, Hit Anything But the Ball Out of the Park

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“Cliches begin their lives as imaginative expressions and comparisons,” explains Richard Lederer in the Mensa Bulletin. But then, after repeated use, those phrases become trite, hackneyed, and lifeless, he explains.

For example, Lederer reminds content writers, you might hit:

  • the bulls-eye
  • the spot
  • the ball out of the park
  • the nail on the head

But your writing, he cautions, will turn out to be nothing more than “a yawn”. “Our hardworking English language means business,” Lederer reminds us, and we need to think about creating content that has impact without using expressions that are “dead as a doornail”.

Having devoted the last sixteen years of my life to wordsmithing blog posts at Say It For You, I know firsthand that variety can be the spice, not only of life in general, but of content.  Gray Matter, the Elevate blog, explains that the larger your vocabulary, the easier it becomes to break away from old thought patterns. We view our thoughts as shaping our words, but our words shape our thoughts, too. A large vocabulary isn’t for showing off – it should be used to expand your thinking – and that of your readers. There’s o much content out there – being boringly clichéd is a certain path to the bottom of the heap when it comes to engaging readers and converting them to buyers.

In addition to avoiding over-used expressions, content writers need to consider varying sentence length. Brandon Royal, author of The Little Red Writing Book, reminds us that not every sentence needs to be kept short.  Instead, Royal advises writers to weave in short sentences with longer ones. Every so often, he suggests, a “naked” (extremely short) sentence can add a dynamic touch.

“Using clichés is as easy as ABC, one-two-three, pie, falling off a log, and taking candy from a baby,” Lederer admits, but…don’t. It’d be all too simple for online visitors to click away. “The purpose of a blog is to create a more engaging website for your brand,” Indeed .com reminds business owners and candidates alike.

In content marketing, hit your target market, not the ball out of the park!

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