What is it about advertising slogans that stick with us? “It’s the Real Thing.” “When EF Hutton talks, people listen.” ” Think different.” “Do it.” We know what company they’re for, and we get a sense of the company - if not their actual product - from the slogans they use. Slogans don’t just define the product in th emind of the consumer, they often define a point of view for the company itself.

Now I’m not here to talk about advertising slogans (even though I just did); I’m here to talk about the phrases - the buzzwords, if you will - that you use in your organization to define, focus, and motivate.

Consider this example, from the Round Lake Library. The library is in the heart of a small Victorian village that is also part of the larger town of Malta. The library will be expanding next year to include a branch in the Malta Community Center, and as they begin thinking about services and marketing, the phrase that is focusing their work is “Malta families.” Simple, yes. Obvious? Most likely. But having that phrase in their conversations and on their minds helps them focus on their plans. And it will be appealing to the very community the library is trying to reach.

The phrase that pays may come from your mission statement, but more likely it will come from conversations amongst members of your organization or with trusted clients. Listen to what is said. Notice when a phrase gives you pause. You don’t have to be a writer to find that phrase - you simply have to be open to noticing it.

And (here comes the caveat) be willing to change it. Just as Coke no longer uses “It’s the Real Thing”, the phrase that pays for you may change when those needs/attitudes/motivations change.  Being stuck in a rut, holding on to things that don’t work for your growing organization, doesn’t make any sense.

So be willing to listen to the words you hear and the words you say - and find the phrases that represent who you are.

I am taking a break from the word business to join in Blog Action Day and talk a bit about poverty.

This will be short - links, mostly, to sites that deal with the issue much more eloquently and completely than I can. However, I have to ask this: why is this still an issue? We have sent men to the moon. We have cured polio. We have built skyscrapers, broken the sound barriers, connected people all over the world via computers, saved endangered species, and made Paris Hilton an international celebrity. So why is that there are still between 350 and 400 million people chronically in poverty? Why do people go hungry in not just third world countries but even here in the United States? Why can we build an amusement park in Las Vegas but not feed and house the city’s homeless?

We have a problem. For too long we’ve been talking about poverty, and frankly, if this economic crisis devolves into a full-blown depression, there will be more poverty.

This has to stop. People need help. Not a handout, but a real, honest, workable system to help people get on their feet. This is the 21st Century - we should have eradicated poverty by now.

Enough ranting. For more, check out, for starters, the National Center for Children in Poverty and  one.org.

Shamelsss Self Promotion Time!

According to Carrie, who interviewed me, being a Word Alchemist is cool enough to be featured at the Cool Job blog!

Read the entire piece here, and then surf around and read about other people with cool jobs.

I’ve been thinking a lot about complexity - right now, the average person is looking for explanations about the current economic crisis, and while we get ten-word answers that include phrases like ’sub-prime’ and ‘empty investments’ they don’t explain enough of what really happened or what will happen. Ten-word answers are, of course, the currency of campaigns. There’s nothing like a short, easy-to-remember, easy-to-quote answer on Iraq, health care, education, and foreign policy. But they’re remarkably unsatisfying.

I’m reminded, not surprisingly, of a line from The West Wing. On the day of the debate between President Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen) and his opponent Rob Ritchie (played by James Brolin), the campaign staff is hunting for a ten-word answer on taxes. They can’t come up with a good one by the debate, but they have confidence.

At the debate, Ritchie comes out with his ten-word answer on taxes. Bartlet pauses, then responds:

That’s the ten-word answer my staff’s been looking for for two weeks. There it is. Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They’re the tip of the sword. Here’s my question: What are the next ten words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next ten words. How are we going to do it? Give me ten after that, I’ll drop out of the race right now. Every once in a while… every once in a while, there’s a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren’t very many unnuanced moments in leading a country that’s way too big for ten words.

What does this have to do with writing for your business, you ask? Why all this fake political mumbo-jumbo? The answer is simple: your business is way too big for ten words too. Sure, you have a slogan, a catchy phrase that sums up what you do. That’s helpful as an introduction. It’s great on an ad, as a banner. But what are yout next ten words, and the ten after that?

This is where style meets substance. Many marketing specialists will tell you the way to grab a potential client’s attention is to identify their problem and address their needs. How are you addressing their needs? Are you telling them about your services, or are you promising them the moon and stars? Are you providing solutions or are you providing a smokescreen?

Once a visitor to your site or a passerby who reads your brochure is sucked in by your first ten words, they want the next ten words to mean something. You want them to get it, to understand what you do, to see why and how you’re going to solve their problem.

Just as ”there aren’t very many unnuanced moments in leading a country that’s way too big for ten words”, there aren’t many unnuanced moments in running any business - they’re all way too big for ten words.

Everyone is writing about the financial crisis - trying to figure out how the proposed bailout helps them, how the crisis affects them. Small businesses are especially concerned - customers are staying home, credit lines are being reduced by the banks, layoffs and reductions in services are quickly becoming the only solution to the cash flow crisis.

I’m not a financial expert at all; I barely understand what happened and how this bailout is supposed to fix it. But what I do know is that your customers are looking for reassurance and commitment. The best way to do this? Through your words.

Consider putting out ads that assure them your services are still available. Consider offering deals to faithful customers, or discounts/sales. Let them know in confident tones if your hours or services shorten - that it’s temporary, but that they will still get the same great service they’ve come to expect.

Also consider beefing up your response time/ability. People are scared and they don’t have the patience to wait for you to get back to them. Make sure your online response forms work, make sure your employees check and respond to emails and phone calls in a timely manner. Attention to THEIR needs, even if you’re panicking on the inside, will go a long way toward keeping your client base comfortaed and satisfied.

Listen to their stories. Their words matter, and you can respond to them positively if you understand their concerns.

Make sure your website/brochures/ad copy is both sharp and reassuring. I suspect the last thing people want is to be sold, so give them something for their time. Give them a bit more information to make intelligent choices. Give them information and samples. When you give them something rather than sell them something, they’ll come back for more.

If you doubt that words matter right now, consider that some of the US Representatives who voted against the bailout suggested it was words from Speaker Nancy Pelosi that influenced their vote. Other representatives, including my own, voted no because they listened to the words of the people they represent. Banks like Wachovia, who was just bought out, has spent the last 24 hours reassuring their customers that they will experience no interruption in services. I don’t live anywhere near a Wachovia, yet I heard these words too and felt just a bit better.

Words matter. People are scared, and if you can assure your customers that you are still here to serve them, you’ll keep them - and your business.

Your site is beautiful - the buttons all work, the images are sharp, the logo is perfectly placed, and even your feedback form works like a dream. But still, visitors are spending less than 30 seconds on your site and you’re not generating any interest, no less any work. What’s wrong?

The fix could be as simple as paying a bit of attention to your text.

“Augh!” I hear you cry. I know, you hate writing, particularly for your own business. It’s the hardest thing we have do do, short of writing our resumes. But it’s okay - I’m here to help. There are ten very simple things you can do to improve your website, to keep your visitor’s attention, and get the leads you want.

1. Make sure your text tells your story. What do you do? What are you selling? Why is it important? How can it help your customers? Actual information trumps snazzy copy any day. There is a fine line between closing a sale and rolling your eyes, and too much flash without substance is a surefire way to lose the sale.

2. Present your information in small chunks. Long paragraphs are great in a book but are deadly in online text. In a study of how people read websites, researchers discovered that visitors scan in an F-pattern, unless they are absoutely committed to reading an article or blog post. By offering bulleted and numbered lists, as well as short paragraphs of no more than 2-3 sentences, you are less likely to bore, and more likely to retain, your visitors.

3. Avoid unnecessary repetition. Again, it’s a fine line. You want to repeat your company name, your product, and other key words for maximum hits; however, saying the same thing over and over again will bore your visitors.

4. Avoid too much jargon. Industry buzz words are fine, in moderation, and if your visitor is enticed to drill deeper to learn more, those in-depth articles are where the technical discussions should begin to happen. On your front pages, however, the language should be as layperson-friendly as possible. Be careful too about too many acronyms. Remember that an acronym like “RFQ” means one thing in one industry but something different in another. Spelling them out, at least initially, removes the jargon AND better informs potential customers.

5. Give enough information for visitors to make a decision. Potential customers want to know how it works, what it does, how much it costs. They want to see examples and samples. When they can’t get even the basic information, they are NOT likely to click on a button to request more information - they ARE likely to go back to Google and find someone else who sells it.

6. Read your site out loud. If it doesn’t flow naturally when you read it aloud, it won’t flow naturally to your visitors. Reading aloud also makes sure it sounds like ‘you’ - not how you sound in conversation, but how your company sounds. Are you a straightlaced, uber-professional firm? Your copy should be proper and authoritative. Are you more laid back and casual? Your copy should be correct, of course, but more conversational. This blog entry is fairly conversational, but with the voice of instructor. Contrast that with my last entry, which was much more casual. With practice, you can learn to write in the right voice without speaking it, but even I read text aloud to make sure it rolls off the tongue, has the right sound, and doesn’t trip up the reader.

7. Similarity is key. This is the other side of the repitition coin. While the words shouldn’t be repetitive, your tone should be. You shouldn’t sound like a lawyer on one page and a surfer on another; make sure that even if different people write different pages of your site, the text sounds like it came from one person. Use similar phrases, styles, and voice.

8. Talk TO your visitors, not ABOUT your visitors. Address them. “You will be amazed at how well this works” is more compelling and intriguing than “our customers are amazed at how well it works.” Use your editing eye to make sure you don’t shift between the inviting second person and the standoffish third person.

9. Proofread, proofread, proofread. Get three or four other people to proofread the text. You will be amazed at how many tiny errors, like stray punctuation marks, can go unnoticed by just one or two sets of eyes. And don’t expect that you can proofread your own work. I do this for a living, and I still have others proof my writing, because mistakes do happen. However, those mistakes are the difference between visitors staying and going - if the text has spelling and punctuation errors, visitors who may not even realize something is wrong will leave because ’something is wrong.’ It’s that uneasy feeling that makes them feel ‘meh’ rather than ‘yeah’.

10. Make sure all of your menus and links work. Visitors are easily frustrated when you link to an article, or another page on your site, and they can’t get there. They are similarly frustrated when the menus don’t work or change dramatically or don’t actually correlate. If you have an “about us” page, tell us about you. If you have a product page, don’t have the link mistakenly go to the directions. If you want us to read what an expert says, make sure the link is accurate. And in case you wonder why this is part of the editing, remember that there are entire departments in publishing houses that verify the accuracy of indexes, footnotes, and bibliographies. Your menus and links are your version of those very important mileposts.

If you still need help, consider hiring a freelance writer/editor!

What’s worse than the blank page?

The blank screen.

Why is it worse? First, there is temptation. Next to the blank screen is an icon to more exciting and interesting programs, or a link to an article you’ve been meaning to read, or solitaire, or worst of all, the off button. It’s tempting to look at the blank screen - that Word document or that empty ‘write post’ block -  and run away from it faster than you can say ‘wordpress’.

And then, of course, you can’t doodle or scribble on a screen; you can’t fill an empty page of paper with meaningless lines and circles while you wait for inspiration to come.

But mostly, it is that odd perception that we have of import - as though what we write on a computer screen automatically has to be fully formed and correct, and somehow more important than the scribbles on the page.

Strange, huh? One click of a delete button removes what you’ve written forever, while pen on paper is there for the record. Yet somehow - with its room for scratchouts and doodles, with the feel of the pen scratching the paper, with the knowledge that at any moment you can crumple it up and start again - writing on paper does seem less threatening.

I was watching an episode of The West Wing last night where communications director Toby Ziegler (played by Richard Schiff) hires Will Bailey (Joshua Malina) to help write the second innaugral address. We see two professional speech writers with yellow legal pads and pens, writing the most important speech of the year.

Pen and paper. Not a top-of-the-line laptop. Pen and paper.

Why do I bring all this up? I realized as I was facing the blank “write post” screen here that I was staring at three blog post drafts, wondering why none of them worked, why I couldn’t put two sentences together, and why I’m sitting staring at yet another blank screen. I began to beat myself up, certain I had run out of juice. Like Toby in The West Wing, I was certain the blood had stopped flowing.

I then caught that flash of yellow legal pad Toby held in his hand, filled with “a 500-word stanza on American leadership in a globally-interdependent age that moves beyond triumphalism” that was likely half-filled with scribbles and sections crossed out as Will found his voice. It was then that I realized have done my best writing on paper first, only afterwards transcribing my first draft to the computer for editing and fine-tuning. I remembered the feeling of free-flowing ink, crisp paper under my hand, and the comfort in knowing I could write “I have nothing to say” a thousand times in an effort to get some real words out.

I picked up a pad of paper, with tight grey lines, found a favorite blue rollerball pen, and set to work. Miracle of miracles, I’ve now written 487 words, and I’m not done.

Of course, I do have to transcribe the scribbles, and I’m not entirely certain I can read it all, but that’s okay too. More than likely I’ll have found some better words, a more poignant phrase, a more seamless transition. But the meat is here.

Now this isn’t just an accident. There is a strong connection between the brain and handwriting - obviously our brains direct our writing, but perhaps the act of writing frees up something in our brains to let ideas flow. I personally wonder if typing - often much faster or much slower than we hand write - is timed incorrectly, and our brains can’t properly form what we want to say. Handwriting allows just the right amount of time for our brain to turn ideas into fully-formed thoughts into sentences. The best part? If you go somewhere you don’t like, you can scratch it out. With delight, even. And you still have time to edit when it finally gets onto the screen.

So this is my advice today: if you’re stuck on what to write or how to say what you want to write, grab a good pen, a pad of paper, sit back, and start scribbling. Before you know it, the piece you need to write will begin to flow.