These blog posts are part of an ongoing column I write called, Content Critical. This column and others are available for wider distribution in newsletters and blogs. Please contact me at richard at lucidcontent dot com for more information.

Content Critical July 27, 2010

It’s a pretty safe bet that by now you have heard of Twitter. You may be using it avidly, or you may be trying to avoid it. Maybe you’re intrigued and need a bit more frosting on the cake before you bite. Well good news, this column is for you.

First, Let’s Dispel The Myth
Twitter is not about what someone had for lunch. Or breakfast. Do some people use it that way? Yes. Just like some people talk only about themselves at the dinner party. Here’s what you do. Ignore. Do not follow. It’s that simple.

A Whole New Way of Communicating
On the face of it, a “tweet” (the message that you send out via Twitter) with its 140-character limit, seems an awfully limited way to engage with other people. After all, what can you say in 140 characters? As it turns out, you can say a heck of a lot.

Here’s a recent tweet from the Wall Street Journal’s Small Business Section:

The Wall Street Journal Tweets About Small Business

Here’s a brief announcement pointing to something of value. The link takes you to a Wall Street Journal article that helps small business owners manage mountains of resumes. In less than 140 characters, at least two important business objectives were reached: 1) WSJ promoted published content and 2) WSJ informed the business community about something helpful to them. If that were all there was to Twitter, it would nice. Cool, even. But we’ve barely scratched the surface.

Customer Service Has Been Twitterized
There are some big, big names on Twitter. Dell. Comcast. JetBlue. Southwest Airlines. Whole Foods. Zappos. The list goes on forever. Here’s one simple reason why those companies are on Twitter. Their customers are on Twitter.

If your customers are on Twitter, and your marketing is sufficiently energized and resourced, then your organization should be there. Plus, the Twitter platform and even its limitations, make it ideal for quick and direct communications between individuals.

And don’t discount the power of negative or positive publicity. If someone on Twitter finds themselves very unhappy with Dell, or JetBlue, or Whole Foods, (or just about anyone) and decides to Tweet about it, lots and lots of people are going to hear about that, very, very quickly. And if you’re being taken to task, you can quickly address the problem. If you are present. Conversely, positive news can be “re-tweeted” and can also spread like wildfire.

Comcast in particular, in the person of ComCast employee, Frank Eliason, has earned a well-deserved customer service reputation by using Twitter (@comcastcares) to serve their customers in a very direct, very efficient way. Here’s an example below.

In this tweet, Mr. Eliason is asking a customer to send him a Direct Message (meaning not viewable by anyone other than the two people communicating) so he can help this customer.

The ways in which you or your organization can benefit from Twitter is simply too big for this space. But I hope I’ve given you a couple of things to think about. If you would like to learn more, here are two very well crafted articles on the business of Twitter.

TwitterforBusiness-1 by small business marketing guru John Jantsch
Twitter 101 for Business – A Special Guide by the folks at Twitter

Enjoy! Next week: The home page of your website is all wrong. Discuss. Follow me on Twitter – @lucidcontent

Should You Have a Blog?

To blog or not to blog? - Big question.

Just yesterday, a good client said to me, “We’ve got the website set up to include a blog. We need to sit down and talk about getting this blog thing up and running,” and before I had a chance to respond, he had to get off the phone.

Blogging, Facebook, Twitter and Newsletters – Oh My!

This is a client with three businesses with a website for each, a newsletter for each, a Facebook fan page for each, one blog, and three Twitter accounts. And he wants another blog.  I had no chance to tell him, “No, I don’t think you should have another blog.”

Blogs are all the rage. There are millions of new blogs being launched all the time. Some of them are quite good. Some bloggers have become rich and famous, like Julia Powell, whose blog became a book and the book became a hit Hollywood movie Julie and Julia.

There are many highly successful blogs in every area of life: marketing, politics, health, personal finance, food, the list goes on and on. But the reality is that many, many blogs lie stale and dormant – collecting dust like an old VCR in the basement that you don’t have the heart to toss out.

For small business people, or for any business people really, blogs seem attractive because they’re new and seem to be on the cutting edge. But blogs are tremendously demanding. The require time and expertise – time to write, time to research, time to develop ideas about what to blog about, time to understand how to blog effectively, etc, etc. Either you have to do all that, or you have to hire someone to do it for you.

And if you’re already doing a newsletter and other types of marketing, do you really need to add a blog?

So even though we have only just met, I’m hereby granting you permission to not have a blog. It’s doubtful that your business will live or die on this decision. However, if you must have a blog, and you’re a decent writer and you have interesting and useful things to say AND blogging fits into your overall marketing plan, then yes, please go for it.

Five reasons to have a blog:

Greater reach for your business.

A blog can build trust.

Brand awareness.

Instant feedback (if you have a decent readership).

Monitor your industry (if you have readers).

Five reasons not to have a blog:

Your customers and prospects don’t read them.

Time constraints.

Other marketing initiatives are more effective.

Too technically challenging.

Doesn’t make sense for your business.

The decision to have a blog or to not have one rests entirely on the nature of your business or organization, whether blogging is a good fit for your overall marketing efforts, whether you have the resources to blog consistently and most important of all, whether a blog will reach the people you need to reach.

Next post: Twitter for Business

Anyone who works with words for a living, lives for language that is powerful, true and indispensable. Primo Levi gave us that and more.

Primo Levi

-Primo Levi, If This Is A Man

What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate

Action Coach is a national executive and business coaching service. The company certainly looks successful – 1,000 offices in 26 countries, over $200 million in annual revenues.

Considering their size and success, you’d think that the ActionCOACH website would do a fantastic job of communicating their story out to the world. Not so much, as it turns out.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that the ActionCOACH website suggests that ActionCOACH doesn’t use language or written communications as well as it could or should.

In a thousand different ways, ActionCOACH depends deeply on language, on words, to convince potential franchisees, and other potential stakeholders to buy in. You could make the argument that the ActionCOACH core business is really very simple: it’s communication.

They communicate (often complex) ideas, knowledge and information to customers and prospects. How well they communicate will likely have some impact on how well their clients might perform.

This makes sense, right? The better they communicate, the better those on the receiving end can be expected to do.

So if ActionCOACH wants to improve their bottom line, and help their customers achieve their goals, then they really ought to consider improving their communications.

Here’s the home page headline.

7 Reasons Why Thousands of Business Owners Know You Need An ActionCOACH Business Coach or Executive Coach…

I think I have a glimmer of an understanding of what this headline is supposed to mean. I think they mean to say something like this: 7 Reasons Why Thousands of Business Owners Chose ActionCOACH And Why You Should Too. It still is a major clunker, plus, as I scan this headline, I can’t locate a benefit anywhere, nor any kind of emotional trigger. Can you?

Now let’s consider that ellipsis…I think it’s there because the writer thought that it would “pull” the reader along through the rest of the copy. But three dots at the end of your sentence suggests you’re reluctant to make a hard and fast statement. It’s not a clear, solid, boots on the ground kind of statement. It’s open ended and mushy. I’d lose that in a heartbeat.

Now, let’s take a look at the opening paragraph – this is the most important piece of real estate on the site.

1. Business Coaches and Executive Coaches Can Show You How to Get More Returns with Less Work

You’re working too many hours and pretty sure that if you left for a vacation or holiday, things wouldn’t operate anywhere near as effectively as they do now … put another way, you’re ready to work a whole lot less … Whatever you call it, small business coaching, executive coaching or just plain old business mentoring, ActionCOACH is the worlds #1 business coaching firm and executive coaching firm. In fact, in 1993 Brad Sugars and ActionCOACH started the business coaching industry and now with more than 1000+ offices in 26 countries, ActionCOACH has literally turned the old business consulting model into business coaching and executive coaching, a far more powerful, profitable and more affordable way for you as a business owner or as an executive to get the help and mentoring to grow your company..

This is the opening paragraph! I’m hoping Brad Sugars, the founder and CEO of ActionCOACH, didn’t pay a lot of money for this copy. The last sentence of that paragraph has, are you ready for this? 67 words. One sentence.

Pretty sure? Whatever you call it? Anywhere near as effectively? Things wouldn’t operate anywhere?

I’m sorry, but there are so many “things” wrong here, it would take me all weekend to unpack them and I don’t have that much time.

Part of what is going on here is a keyword stuffing exercise for seo purposes. There are 11 references to “business coaching” or “executive coaching” starting with the headline and in the first paragraph. But the rest of it is just sloppy, poorly crafted writing. What a shame.

From Brad Sugars’ bio page: “Perhaps due in part to his naivity at a relatively young age…” I think the word here is supposed to be “naivete.”

From: Why You Need an Action Coach

Every great performer, whether an elite athlete, business legend or performing superstar, is surrounded by coaches and advisors.

And, as the world of business moves faster and gets more competitive… it is difficult to keep up with both the changes in your industry and, the innovations in sales, marketing and management strategies as well. Having a Business Coach is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity.

On top of all this, it’s difficult to get a truly objective answer from yourself. A Business Coach is like a consultant, with years of successful experience that can provide valuable insight, help you develop long-term and short term goals and strategies, as well as improve your business in areas that you might have overlooked. (40 word sentence.) Don’t get me wrong, you can survive in business without the help of a Coach, but it’s almost impossible to thrive…

Again, with the ellipsis. But only two this time! Yay! On contractions: make a decision. Either use, “it is” or “it’s” but choose one and stick with it, don’t use both.

“Years of successful experience CANNOT provide valuable insight”

Get me rewrite! “A Business Coach is like a consultant, who, with years of successful business experience, is able to provide valuable insight…” Still awkward.

“…it’s difficult to get a truly objective answer from yourself.” Lord have mercy.

I recently met some folks from ActionCOACH. They were really very nice people and are doing some really good and useful work. Also, a good friend of mine in Canada, worked closely with an Action Coach and was thrilled with her coach and her experience.

So clearly, they have something important to offer their prospects and clients. But like all of us, there’s room for improvement.

Mr. Sugars, I can be reached at 503.621.2215 in the U.S. Look forward to chatting with you.

What's at Stake in Your Business?

I had a long, fascinating talk with a business coach yesterday. Which led to this little thought experiment.

Imagine that you make a mistake in the course of running your business and that mistake resulted in someone almost dying.

Example No. 1 “New Hope for Cancer South of the Border”

Let’s say a reputable magazine publishes a story about a breakthrough cancer treatment that’s happening at a clinic in Mexico. “New Hope for Pancreatic Cancer South of the Border”. Experts are cited. Patients are interviewed. Testimonials abound. Sick people flock south.

But there’s a little mistake. The research is flawed. The testimonials are fakes. This clinic is nothing more than a crew of negligent, incompetents intent on getting sick Americans to part with their greenbacks. Two people take a quick turn for the worse. The publisher, and the writer, have made a serious mistake and almost cost two people their lives.

Example No. 2 – The Unhappy Auto Mechanic
A car mechanic is seriously distracted by personal and financial woes and one fine day makes a big, bone headed mistake with someone’s brakes. His customer drives away and soon thereafter gets into a serious accident. Thankfully, in this thought experiment, no one gets hurt.

Now consider physicians and nurses, airline pilots, military people and all those other folks whose work can so often mean life or death. When those folks make mistakes, people can die. Lives are on the line.

Now think about your own business - what do you do everyday to keep your self happy and afloat? And, more important, what are the stakes for your customers?

For most of us, the stakes are not life or death. But if you think about it for a few more minutes, you’ll realize that the stakes are probably higher than you might realize. If I write a crummy headline, no one will die, but my client loses business, my own reputation suffers, and to stretch this further, I’m not exactly helping my profession, either. If you sell someone a mortgage they can’t afford, the stakes are very high. Sadly, we’ve seen this one play out, and it’s not over yet.

So this business coach said to me, “This is very serious for me. I take this so seriously because I’m dealing with people’s livelihoods, with mortgage payments and so on.” She went on to say that for her the work of coaching a business owner was a very, very big responsibility. And in all the important ways, I believed her.

For her, my livelihood, my ability to make mortgage payments, my ability to fulfill my professional potential along with her own professional reputation was at stake. How could I not hire someone like that?

So, what’s at stake in your business? Would love to hear from you.