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Are you a leading provider of innovative, cost-effective solutions with world-class service and a unique portfolio of robust products? Are you pleased to announce a next-generation partnership to become an industry leader in quality assurance to optimise customer satisfaction? Are you focused on flexibility, scalability and high-performance outcomes? I hope not. I really hope not.

Caught in the Clutches of Gobbledygook
You may be wondering why I’m less than thrilled with the preceding descriptions. There’s nothing offensive or negative about them. Chances are, you might even like the sound of them. But guess what? Nearly every word in those sentences is gobbledygook. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines gobbledygook as slang, “pompous, wordy, usually meaningless talk or writing”.

Why are these words considered gobbledygook? From a business perspective, they’re so overused they’ve ceased to have meaning. The Dow Jones and David Meerman Scott analysed over 700,000 press releases to identify “gobbledygook, jargon, clichés and over-used, hype-filled words”. They came up with a list of 325 words and phrases.

Not so “innovative” and hardly “unique”
The number one offender, “innovative” got over 51,000 mentions in press releases published in 2008. I’m not sure about you, but I just haven’t seen that much innovation around. Another big offender, coming in at over 40,000 occurrences is “unique”. Do you really think there’s that much stuff around unlike anything else? I don’t.

As a copywriter, my eye is trained to recognise gobbledygook. I spend my day trying to create original content devoid of overused, bombastic language for my clients. It isn’t easy. But here’s the thing. When I read a document containing these common phrases, my brain turns off. I quit reading. I start skimming. Pretty soon, my eyes glaze over and I’m not processing what I’m reading. In a very short time – less than 30 seconds – I move on to something else. With the internet providing so many opportunities to read, I’m not going to spend more than a couple of seconds on something that’s boring. Your prospects and clients won’t either.

Ungooking the Gobbledy
First, I recommend you hire a professional writer to develop your marketing documents. (But I would say that, wouldn’t I?) In all seriousness, a competent copywriter will be able to produce content saying exactly what you want and appealing to your target audience. A small investment in a professional writing service is going to save you hours of your own time and achieve better results. In lieu of hiring a writer, take advantage of Hubspot’s Marketing Grader. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to inject jargon (and boredom) into your writing.

What words or phrases make you glaze over and switch off?

Last week I posted an article on Bloggertone titled 8 Reasons it makes CENTS to give your content away. As a content marketing practitioner and enthusiast, I promoted the practice of unlocking the content on your website – making it available to anyone who wants to read it. The idea behind this is you will get more benefit by freely sharing your knowledge than protecting it and charging for the privilege of your expertise.

Social Media vs. RSS
This week I’ve been thinking about ways to make your content even more pervasive. Social media is one of the 3 components of content marketing and my preferred method for driving traffic to my website. I was speaking about this to Ryan Briggs and he asked me how I was utilising the RSS (really simple syndicate) feed on my site. I admitted, sheepishly, that I probably wasn’t making the best use of it. I know it feeds into the Perth Web Industry News Digest but hadn’t used it anywhere else. He suggested an RSS feed is a perfect content marketing tool because it gives content legs. He also said not enough people are embracing RSS and are missing valuable opportunities to increase their online footprint.

Here are the reasons Ryan recommends every website needs an RSS feed:

• Subscribing to an RSS feed allows you to get real time web content updates from your favourite sites, usually used for news, blogs & events.
• Most browsers allow users to add RSS feed tabs on toolbars for easy access
• Google reader and other such utilities allow you to subscribe to all your favourite sites in one place, which allows you to get the latest feeds from multiple sites at once.

That was all I needed to hear to start exploiting my own RSS feed. I immediately went back to work and registered my website in 3 different places.

• Technorati

www.technorati.com

• Wotnews

www.wotnews.com.au

• Facebook

www.facebook.com 

After only a couple of days, I’m hooked on the possibilities of RSS. Some of the benefits include:

• Publishing to multiple audiences without any additional effort
• Real-time updates
• News, blog posts and events can all be included in an RSS feed
• Depending on where your RSS feed is registered, the content on your website becomes mingled with official news sources from around the world

Are you using an RSS feed to promote your blog, news, or events? Where have you registered your RSS feed?

How are you doing on your content marketing strategy? Not sure what content marketing is? New research from the Junta42 website says if you don’t know what it is, you’d better find out. The graph below shows a comparison between 2009 and 2010 in the different areas of content marketing.

Here’s the good news, content marketing products and strategies are not limited to big corporates. In fact, small businesses just may derive more benefit from their content. 1) It’s easier for a small business to target their audience than a large corporation. 2) It’s a lot easier for a small business to engage their prospects using social media. 3) Making modifications to the company website is done more quickly and without committee approvals often attached to corporate environments.

If you want more information on marketing your small business and you’re located in the Melbourne area, register for The Woo’s Small Business Marketing Day being held on 30 March.

The line-up of presenters is impressive including Debra Templar and Jonathan Crossfield. I’ll be giving a talk on content marketing, and the rest of the program deals with all things related to marketing a small business; creating a marketing strategy using Social networking, advertising, publicity, promotions and branding in one very full day.

Now it’s time for me to get back to work on my own marketing strategy. I’ve got a white paper I’m working on and I’m thinking about how I can incorporate a video on my website. What ideas do you have for your small business?

Have you experienced an increase in LinkedIn traffic? I’ve been hit with a spate of “join my network” invitations lately. Frankly, I don’t like it. While LinkedIn is a social media tool, it’s not designed for open networking. Mostly, I don’t know the people contacting me. Depending on my mood, I’ll just click on the “I don’t know this person” button. More often, I’ll write to the sender explaining my reasons for refusing the invitation. Last week I got a snide reply back accusing me of not understanding how to network. I think it’s time to explain my position on LinkedIn more clearly.

First of all, this is what LinkedIn advises about connecting with people:

Only accept an invitation if you know the sender and want them in your network.
Accept invitations when:

• You want to stay in touch with the inviter
• You know and trust their judgment and expertise
• You’ve worked with them and would recommend them
• They know your work and can represent your potential

Do not accept invitations when:

You don’t know the sender well
(consider replying or deciding later)

If you don’t know the sender at all, click on the “I don’t know” button or “Report as spam”

Sensible advice, don’t you think? I follow it. My LinkedIn network consists of people I know personally. I’ve worked with most of them. I feel an obligation to protect the integrity of my network as much for their sake as mine. To that end, these are the reasons why I’m going to refuse an invitation:

1) LinkedIn is a professional network, not a social network. My connections span many industries and locations. It was built through hard work and a lot of sweat equity.

2) I have an obligation to the people in my network. When I add another person, it’s a tacit endorsement of his or her credentials.

3) LinkedIn is not a popularity contest involving who has the most fans or followers. It’s meant to represent a trusted group of people personal to me and my experiences.

4) The LinkedIn Groups provide an opportunity for open networking. I’m active in the groups and accept communication from other members. It doesn’t mean, however, I’m going to be comfortable including all those people into my personal network. It does happen once in awhile, but not often.

5) If the invitation doesn’t have any specific information as to why you want to connect with me AND I don’t know you, I will refuse the connection every time. When I extend invitations, I always write at least one sentence explaining my motivation for the connection.

6) I’m not looking for a job, I’m not looking to hire anyone and I don’t want to purchase a property so Real Estate Agents, Recruiters, and H.R. people are not going to have success inviting me to join their network.

As with any list of rules, there are exceptions to accepting invitations from people I don’t know.

1) I’m always open to potential business opportunities as long as they’re qualified. I do have a couple of people whom I have never worked with, but it’s only because the right opportunity hasn’t presented itself yet.

2) I have met people in other social media channels and included them in my LinkedIn network even though I’ve never met them in person. If I’ve been communicating with someone in a different medium, over time I will definitely consider adding them to my LinkedIn network.

LinkedIn is my professional network, anchored by my curriculum vitae (resume). I’m not interested in helping total strangers grow their own network on the back of my hard work. If you don’t know me and we have no potential business dealings, I’m the wrong person to invite to your LinkedIn party. I’m not about to be snide to people, but I’m not going to feel pressured to open my network, either.

What rules do you have about LinkedIn connections?

I attended the Media140, exploring the future of the Real-Time Social Web conference in Perth on Thursday, 25 February. Billed as “Brands, Marketing & Communications in the Real-Time Social Web”, I booked an early-bird ticket without really knowing what to expect. I know I wasn’t the only one. I was extremely interested to hear experiences of how other people were using social media. I was also looking forward to meeting the faces behind the avatars I’ve been communicating with for over a year, mostly on Twitter. Held at the Perth Town Hall, the long day ended with nearly all the attendees still in their seats. The content of the conference clearly outweighed the physical discomfort created by packing over 300 people and 20 speakers into the second floor of the old building on what turned out to be a sweltering day.

The Reviews are In
By now, Media140 Perth has been reviewed, tweeted and blogged about. The consensus seems to be it was a great opportunity to network, and I’m in total agreement with that. The organisers, Via Appia Networking WA, impressed everyone with their ability to manage a big event and make it fun at the same time. My hat is off to Rebecca Cole (@rebeccaco) and Bree Mitchelson (@bmitc), two dynamic young women on the brink of major success. The founder of Media140, charismatic Andrew Gregson (@andegregson), chaired the day and conveyed a slightly bewildered attitude to the international success of his conference, originally developed as a one-off event in London. The other, overriding sentiment about the conference was that nothing new was introduced and much of what was said has all been said before. That’s where I have to disagree.

Fascinating Insight
I’m not sure what people expected. As I said earlier, I wasn’t sure what I expected. In many respects, the speakers were preaching to the choir. The seats were filled with social media enthusiasts, early adopters of what business is still grappling to understand. I found the panel discussion on transforming organisations with social media to be the most fascinating. In particular, Jared Woods (@jaredw78), Communications Manager from Sinclair Knight Merz engineering firm (now Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.), delivered the most insightful content of the day. I spent 18 years in a multi-national corporate environment so maybe that coloured my opinion.

Wild Thing
SKM has grappled with how to implement an employee policy on social media. While it’s easy to define expectations of your employees when they’re at work and operating under corporate resources, it’s not always easy to define a social media policy for out-of-hours activity. Jared gave some real life examples of how employees had inadvertently caused potential commercial damage to SKM with social media, prompting complaints from customers. In what I consider to be an encouragingly liberal approach, SKM has adopted a policy that states if an employee associates themselves with SKM in their social media profiles, then they must respect the rules of acceptable employee conduct when they’re using social media tools outside of working hours. Honestly, companies have been instilling the same constraints on employees for years with things like morals clauses in employee agreements.

You Make My Heart Sing
The example that really got me thinking, though, was where a potential employee filed a complaint after perceived harassment in a job interview. While the commercial value of one disgruntled interview candidate was significantly less than losing a valued customer, what was revealed was a known problem with the employee conducting the interview. With behaviour geared towards the rough-and-tumble mining environment, previous complaints had been dismissed and a rogue employee had been allowed to develop working habits not in keeping with a professional business environment. With the advent of social media, SKM had no choice but to manage the rogue employee to avoid embarrassment. My heart sings at this news.

You Make Everything Groovy
We’ve all worked in places where inadequate people are protected. I know of few women who haven’t been harassed in the course of a career. Old-boy networks have long shielded incompetent employees. The Peter Principle is entrenched in the global corporate world and no one benefits from it except the inept person in question. Whether it is full-blown uselessness, personality disorder, racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia or any other unsavoury trait, Jared Woods is the first person I’ve ever heard discuss how social media can truly transform the workplace. If social media is going to expose our lack of authenticity and transparency – and everyone agreed about its power to do so – then it’s also going to improve our workplaces and make excellence easier to achieve. Ethics in the workplace are about to change for the better.

Wild Thing I Think I Love You
We are at the advent of a new way of doing business, and corporations will figure this out just as they did voice mail, email, the internet and intranet solitaire. Social media has the ability to humanise corporations as we learned with Westpac’s “oh so very over it” tweet last week. It also has the ability to remove the spin from government as spinmeister Barack Obama learned when he honestly expressed his opinion about Kanye West’s antics at the Video Music Awards. We’re all going to take a few knocks along the way, but I predict we’ll come out better because of it.

How has your workplace been transformed by social media?