Start Making Sense
by Ann Wylie

Jargon. Buzzwords. Corporatese. They’re things that make your reader say, “Huh?” And we need to remove them from our copy. These 15 techniques will help you get the jargon out:

1. Define your audience. If you’re writing to insiders—employees, investors and business-to-business (B2B) reporters, for instance—educate them about your language. Define terms in the text, compile glossaries and otherwise make it easy for readers to learn the language of the organization.

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Understanding the Whole: The Helecopter Snapshot
by Diane Gayeski, Ph.D.

Too often, we manage communication as a series of “one-off ” or individual projects. We scrutinize the new marketing brochures, we fund an internal training curriculum, or we try to figure out what to do at the next round of employee meetings. When I’m called in to solve communication and training problems, it’s unusual to find anything wrong with the individual interventions: Typically my clients have well-trained staff and agencies that produce quality products. However, when we step back and take the “helicopter view,” we may get a different and not so attractive picture. The following are questions to ask in order get this “helicopter view”:

• Does our current system facilitate the coordination and prioritization of key messages?
• Does the infrastructure support two-way communication and collaboration?
• Do we have and select the best information channels to provide targeted, quick, updated information to the right people?
• Do we leverage various information channels to help support key messages from each area (i.e., does training reinforce key marketing concepts from the ad campaigns)?

When we take a systems view of the infrastructure, we often uncover significant barriers to performance, innovation and commitment. Obstacles to effective corporate communication can be due to:

• Inadequate rules or policies about how information should be disseminated.
• Ineffective networks or outdated technologies.
• A management philosophy that does not support open communication.
• Too many links in the communication chain.
• Personnel who lack communication skills.
• A mismatch of corporate culture or management philosophy with communication strategies.
• Lack of knowledge about how best to address an organization’s various audiences’ needs and interests.

This article is an excerpt from Managing the Communication Function: A Blueprint for Organizational Success, Second Edition, by Diane Gayeski, Ph.D. Now available at http://iabcstore.com/eccommplanning/mngcommfun.htm. Member price: US$175, non-member price: US$230. PDF versions are also available.

The Corporate Weblog Manifesto
by Robert Scoble

Thinking of doing a weblog about your product or your company? Here are my ideas of things to consider before you start.

1. Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.
2. Post fast on good news or bad. Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it—before the second or third site does—and answer its claims as best you can. Same if something good comes out about you. It's all about building long-term trust. The trick to building trust is to show up! If people are saying things about your product and you don't answer them, that distrust builds. Plus, if people are saying good things about your product, why not help Google find those pages as well?
3. Use a human voice. Don't get corporate lawyers and PR professionals to cleanse your speech. We can tell, believe me. Plus, you'll be too slow. If you're the last one to post, the joke is on you!
4. Have a thick skin. Even if you have Bill Gates' favorite product people will say bad things about it. That's part of the process. Don't try to write a corporate weblog unless you can answer all questions—good and bad—professionally, quickly, and nicely.
5. If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast. And give us a plan for how you'll unscrew things. Then deliver on your promises.
6. Never change the URL of your weblog. I've done it once and I lost much of my readership and it took several months to build up the same reader patterns and trust.
7. If you don't have the answers, say so. Not having the answers is human. But, get them and exceed expectations. If you say you'll know by tomorrow afternoon, make sure you know in the morning.
8. Never hide information. Just like the space shuttle engineers, your information will get out and then you'll lose credibility.
9. If you have information that might get you in a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting, but do it fast. Speed is key here. If it takes you two weeks to answer what's going on in the marketplace because you're scared of what your legal hit will be, then you're screwed anyway. Your competitors will figure it out and outmaneuver you.
10. Be the authority on your product/company. You should know more about your product than anyone else alive, if you're writing a weblog about it. If there's someone alive who knows more, you damn well better have links to them (and you should send some goodies to them to thank them for being such great advocates).

Article Source: Adapted from Robert Scoble’s blog: Scobleizer.