“Content marketing is more efficient when you use the same vocabulary your audience would use”
Welcome to Tuesday! I found this inspiration and as usual… I have a problem with a word. You’d think I’d be able to just use the nice quote!
But the word efficient bugs me. I mean, what is efficient about content marketing… I like “effective”. So that’s what I’m going to use.
And the funny thing is… on my Facebook this AM there was a cute little video sketch by a local news reporter in Minneapolis that interviewed Super Bowl fans. The reporter asked each person try pronouncing the cities around our state.
Most people pronounced them incorrectly — or is it that Minnesotans pronounce them incorrectly and we just are used to the way we do it? Yep. That’s probably it… but it’s also a “thing” in Minnesota that you MUST be able to give the correct pronunciation to our city names.
Now this isn’t a new thing. Growing up, many a newscaster didn’t last long when they mispronounced the city names and just “couldn’t get it right”. There was even an episode of 90210 that was ridiculed by the University of Minnesota newspaper for their inaccurate pronunciations of our cities. As a Minnesotan, the article was hilarious. To the rest of the world… the article would not have made sense.
So what does this mean?
When creating your content it’s important to use the words that your end reader uses. This is the same concept as pronouncing the cities correctly. When you use the wrong term you cause a disconnect in your reader’s mind and you lose a little credibility – or at least a little time as they work their way around your word choice.
Here’s an example of what I mean. The boating industry gets very tricky because we’re global, however, it’s word choice is very localized. In Minnesota we have docks but on the ocean you have a pier. In Minnesota we have boats, but at the coasts you have yachts. I was talking with colleagues in Florida last fall and I said so what’s the largest boat you store? Yeah, not the right word. Their yachts are over 175’… we store boats under 40′. Therefore, you’d create a ginormous disconnect with your reader in certain areas of the coasts if you wrote, “Come to our dock and and we will pump your gas in your boat”! The reverse is true and you’d sound mighty lame writing to our customers, “Call ahead for yacht fueling at our pier”.
The problem with a “disconnect” is your goal in content creation is to build social proof. If you get a word wrong it really affects your social proof. The other side of this debate is when people worry about alienating other readers. My advice is communicate for your targeted user. The one that will give you money. The rest of the people will “catch up”.
Remember, to be effective you need to learn the language of your customer. While you may be speaking or writing in the same language it doesn’t mean you’re being efficient… or is it effective?
Big Money Small Change Success
Character + Content/Consistency + Goals/Motivation + Customers =
Infinity Marketing Machine
PS: thanks for reading! I really appreciate you being here. Make sure to “like” this post… and follow me! (and please do me a favor… if you want more great ideas like the one in this post, just fill out this form and I’ll send them to you… start here
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Action Steps
1- What are the keywords in your industry that are different for “insiders” – make sure you keep a list so all of your ads and correspondence that’s outsourced follows the right guidelines.
2- Install my free app! (SmallBusinessClubApp.com)
Podcast:
Listen to Episode #309 of the Two Minute Commute audio blog Podcast
