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A funny thing happened on the way to writing a recently published thought piece about jargon overload: I concluded that industry buzzwords actually serve a necessary purpose.
As the resident ex-journalist guy here, my natural inclination is to bury such terminology, not to praise it. Yet, as the prestigious Content Marketing Institute asked me to write again for its high-profile articles page, I spoke extensively to other accomplished content-marketing professionals and came to the realization that we all need jargon to effectively “speak” to the target audience.
But pick and choose your spots very selectively and carefully. Because you don’t want to lose your intended audience due to an abundance of obscure and/or overused and/or empty words and phrases. At our high tech PR firm, we’re constantly working with IT clients on creating impactful messaging which cuts through the buzzword clutter. (And we even had fun making a short, funny radio ad on the topic, a spot locally aired on WTOP.)
So how do you find the middle ground? What do you do if a brand’s executives insist upon this kind of messaging? Fortunately, my fellow marketing/content counterparts and I did our best to come up with answers to these and other questions. So please read about the pluses and pitfalls of industry jargon. And if our approach to brand content marketing sounds like a great fit for your company, we’d love to talk about it when you contact us.
@dmccaff
Dennis McCafferty is Director of Content for W2 Communications.