Thinking About Words: Part 1 "Snafu" and "Kudos"

Words can be fun. 

That sentiment sounds like the title of a 1960’s era elementary school textbook. 

But in fact, some of us consider it fun to contemplate word origin, usage and history of words. 

A previous blog post warned against “Blah Blah” words commonly found in marketing and there are plenty of those around in b-to-b marketing-speak.  Blah blah text sneaks into too much of my marketing copywriting like “leverage”, “world-class”, “industry leading” and other blah blah terms.

This time, though, the fun comes from thinking about the origin of words.  

For this first installment of the recurring “Thinking About Words” blog posting, let’s focus on two words, shall we? Snafu and Kudos…

Snafu

The word “Snafu” seems to occur regularly in my conversations in an average week.  I just heard it today at a meeting.  It’s a fun word to say, and most dictionaries define it as “chaotic or confused situation” or “in a state of confusion or chaos”. Snafu can also refer to a bad situation, mistake, or cause of trouble.

What might not be commonly known is that SNAFU is an acronym that stands for Situation Normal: All F***end up. Removing the foul word, it can also stand for Situation Normal All Fouled Up.

According to various online research, the acronym originated in the US Army during World War II.

Who knew?

Kudos

Kudos is another word one hears in a range of settings.  

Kudos is loosely based on a Greek word meaning "praise" or “good job” or even “well done”.  Online research from “Take Our Word” website notes the term entered English as university slang.  The first known recorded use of kudos comes from 1831. 

Interestingly, folks in the UK pronounce the word Kudos as "cue-doss" while in America it is "koo-doze". 

If taking a wild guess, I would have thought Kudos had its origins in Latin. Yet digging a bit deeper shows it is basically a co-opted American slang-word.

Looking for More?

As you undoubtedly agree after wading through this blog post, it can be fun (a time-waster, but fun nonetheless) thinking about words. 

Want to think some more? Then be sure to visit one of the web’s leading resources on all things words - Wordnik.

Wordnik bills itself as “a place for all the words, and everything known about them.” And they do a great job in that regard

Check out the “Word of the Day” just for fun. 

Wordnik goes to town with other word-related info.  For example, this page about the word “Kudos” features a chart detailing the number of occurrences of the word "kudos" per million words from the 1800’s to today.  How do they know this stuff?

Thank You MarketingSherpa, for Your Useful and Timely Wisdom

I’m never disappointed when I click over to MarketingSherpa.

Chances are, you’re familiar with this organization.  But if not, MarketingSherpa is an online community dedicated to providing useful marketing resources and research.

As they note on the About section of their website,  the name "Sherpa" refers to the Sherpas – or guides -- of Nepal who guide climbers up Mount Everest. The goal of this for-profit entity is to guide marketers through their tough climb toward great marketing results.  They do this by providing research on 'what works.' 

Chart of the Week

The chart of the week is especially interesting – there's a new one shared every Tuesday. The one posted above summarizes top objectives of email marketing, as gathered from one of their member research analysis.

Wisdom Report

Other content offers additional value. For instance,   I just stumbled upon a useful document entitled the 2011 Wisdom Report.  As always, it is a concise and succinct summary of shared wisdom related to direct marketing, list management, social media marketing, and online marketing.

Subtitled “Real Life Stories of Success & Lessons Learned from the MarketingSherpa Community”, the 32-page document is worth saving.

Please read it for yourself – it is available as a free download (not sure how long, the offer will be valid, though). 

In the interest of this blog posting, here are a few standout nuggets of wisdom.

Importance of  driving traffic to website

No matter the b-to-b marketing program, be it a press release, media coverage, guest blog posting, Tweet, LinkedIn update or banner ad, never minimize the importance of driving traffic to your website.  Embed links to your site, as many as you possible can. Of course, you must provide a clear “call to action” on your website once folks land there, but all programs should aim to drive traffic back to your own domain, not somebody else’s. The report shares the conventional wisdom other folks have learned about this important goal.

Social media marketing

I’ve covered this before in various blog postings, but this research reminds us that social media marketing needs to be “social” and focus on =connecting and engaging with folks relevant to the business.  Don’t just blast your message.  Engage, connect, pose questions, answer questions about the topics and industry trends that make sense for your company. Consistency is key.  A regular (daily) stream of postings goes a long way to communicate about a company’s brand.  

One especially useful nugget: “Successful social media marketing is about identifying the most influential members of your audience and leveraging them to achieve your key business goals.”

Pay attention to the horror story one company experienced – engaging with an agency to manage their social media marketing at a rate of $7500 pre month, only to garner a miserable ROI. 

The importance of communicating  "targeted content to segmented lists"

The more timely the message, the better the open rate and conversion rate (amount of people who take an action like download a report) when it comes to direct mail.  We’ve proved this time and again at various clients.  Open rates of messages improve when a subject line is tweaked to target the list segment of recipients. This research reminds us of this important fact.

Download the 2011 Wisdom Report today. Bookmark the MarketingSherpa website and visit it often!

Five New Year’s Resolutions for B-to-B Marketers

B-2-B marketers are a busy group of folks.  For many marketing departments, the to-do list seems never-ending. There’s always another marketing campaign to generate; tradeshow to plan and attend; eNewsletter to write and distribute; prospect database to build; Adword campaign to launch; and so on.

Before this first month of 2011 ends, it might be useful to commit to a set of resolutions as a way to give focus to efforts.  This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, just a way to place priorities.  Hope it is helpful as we start the New Year of business-to-business marketing. 

1) Test your marketing programs, when you can.  If you have a CRM solution, split direct email marketing messages into A/B groups and test one element at a time.  Test the placement of a download button; test a subject line for the best open rates; test design elements like photos; test headlines.  Use Google Optimizer tools to A/B test two pages of a website. See which message or page gets the largest open rate or conversion rate.  This approach is truly liberating and focuses effort on the optimized, best performing elements.

2) Ask somebody else outside of the organization to review your content.  This is a favorite subject, as my colleagues likely know.  Did you just write a web page, brochure or eNewsletter?  Let somebody outside the organization, who is in the same general industry, read the content and see if resonates or hits the mark.  Getting feedback from folks outside the organization is a low-cost, high impact strategy for improved marketing communications.

3) Make campaigns as relevant and timely as possible.  Here’s a resolution to put into place as much as possible.  Just yesterday President Obama signed a new food safety bill into law, and a Markit Strategies client sent a notice reminding our team of the news.  We quickly sent out a direct marketing message to food industry folks in the prospect database addressing how the client’s products help meet the new mandates.  The message was emailed that same afternoon (subject line: Food Safety Bill Signed Today. Now What?)   The timely nature of the subject line and content helped garner a nearly 8% open rate (that’s pretty good!) and very high conversions responding to the offer, plus a few direct calls right into the sales team.  The timely nature of the message was a big part of the success.  Let’s do that again!

4) Make measurements meaningful.  Measuring success in b-to-b marketing is critical, as long as you choose the most meaningful metric. In the case above, two measurements helped us gauge success: open rates -- the number of emails opened by recipients of the email; and conversion rates --- the percentage of email recipients who visited the website or downloaded a form by clicking on a link in the email.  Likewise, when measuring social media engagement on Twitter don’t concentrate on number of followers, but analyze the type of followers (do they fit a certain profile?), along with their level of engagement in terms of mentions or retweets.  Measuring engagement is pretty significant in terms of social media programs.

5) Keep learning! Try something new!  That means attending webinars, participating with professional groups like IABC Detroit, or attending conferences such as Usability Week conferences by Norman Nielsen Group to keep skills fresh.  Resolve to keep abreast of current thought about social media marketing, SEO and online marketing. Learn a new skill?  Try it out to see if it garners results.

Happy New Year, all! 

Meaningless Words and Blah Blah Text: Three Buzzwords to Avoid

“”When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’” L. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

As another year comes to a close, folks are taking stock of the year in buzzwords – especially pertaining to business-to-business marketing communications.

It can be fun reading posts about “PR Buzzwords” or “Overused Words in LinkedIn profiles” – but it can be painful, too. 

As a marketing communicator, I’ve written a fair share of content with words like  “Value Add,” Award-Winning,” “Industry-Leading,” “Mission Critical” and “Thought Leader.”

Beware the Blah Blah

Granted, these are useful concepts in PR or marketing communications.

Yet terms like these and others quickly become meaningless and instead of adding “more” they start to mean “less” as so aptly put by Humpty Dumpty in the quote above.

In fact, they become “blah blah” text, and are best deleted.

The Long and Short of It

Mark Twain once said about an essay or a letter he had written, “I am sorry this is so long. I didn't have time to make it shorter.”

It takes time to write concise and compelling text.  One must first capture the essence of the idea, write an initial draft, go back and reorganize, then return a third or fourth time to “slash and burn” meaningless blah blah that adds no value. 

Top 3 Offenders of 2010
In the spirit of “slash and burn,” here are my suggestions for the top 3 offending blah blah terms of 2010.

• Transformative – This isn’t a word.  Using the word in a proposal or marketing blurb does not make it so. Exactly what does "transformative" mean anyway?  This is a major blah-blah word. Best avoided 
• Deep Dive – I hate hearing this term in a meeting when it means, “to explore an issue or subject in-depth. "We should meet to do a deep dive on this issue." What’s the converse – a “shallow dive”? 
• Going Forward – This is “filler” and of no value.  It means “looking to the future” and can be deleted anytime you see or hear it, as in the following sentence:  "Going forward, we anticipate earnings improving in core industries, with even better results in the expanding diversified markets."   Simply remove “Going forward…” and the meaning of the sentence is not impacted.

Additional Resources

As for additional reading, here’s a suggestion for going forward. Visit these transformative websites to take a further “deep dive” into the subject:

BuzzWhack - demystifying business jargon & buzzwords - check out the funny warning on the home page! 

The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary - the most complete A-Z "blah blah" resource there is! 

Happy Buzzword-Free New Year!  

Mind Your Manners: 5 Basic Rules of Twitter Etiquette

Anybody with a keyboard and an Internet connection can connect to a group via social media,  whether through FaceBook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. 

For social media to be “social”, it’s a good idea to remember one’s manners. 

In the case of the micro-blogging site Twitter, it’s a place for business-to-business marketers to engage with customers, prospects, influencers, analysts, media and others. 

An effective business strategy is to use Twitter to share key industry topics, trends, regulations or other relevant and timely issues.

Twitter as a Reflection of Your Brand

I’d also like to suggest that Twitter is an expression of your brand.

A brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of your prospect. Thus if follows that your Tweet stream contributes to that perception.

So it’s wise to operate within the constructs of common courtesy to lock in positive branding. Your Tweets are a reflection of your brand!

5 Easy Rules: A Matter of Common Courtesy

Inspired by conventional wisdom from Emily Post, Miss Manners and other etiquette experts, these tried and true rules are relevant when engaging in “virtual conversation” – especially if Tweeting on behalf of a client.

1. Listen when people tweet. A great conversation stopper is when someone is not paying attention or looks everywhere else but at the speaker. Same holds true with Twitter – acknowledging a compelling Tweet or content is polite – it lets folks know you are listening.

2. Don't monopolize the Tweet Stream.
 Avoid a one-way series of “all about you” or “all about your client” messages. Retweet industry trends, link to expert blogs, business forecasts, or respond to a Tweet of interest.  Don’t broadcast or blast Tweets about the client. (this was a hard lesson for me when coordinating Tweets for a tech client– PR habits die hard!)

3. Tweet specific questions to show interest & go deeper.
 A classic conversation tip: nothing is as effective as the follow up question.

4. Watch your language. Good spelling, appropriate language, and a grasp of the English language all have a place even within the confines of 140 characters.

5. Please & thank you. Even in the virtual world, common courtesy never goes out of fashion.

A Success Story

It’s been a distinct pleasure to be at the helm of the Tweet stream for Plex Systems, a client under the auspices of Markit Strategies and PR. 

These rules noted above were assembled as a result of managing the program. By taking this approach, and using powerful tools like Twiangulate to link to relevant followers, here’s what has been accomplished.  

-  Relevant followers have grown by 60%.

-  Mentions and retweets by influential followers have grown 500%.

-  Results also include several new media placements as a result of Twitter connections.

It pays to connect on Twitter, while minding one’s manners. There’s still much to learn – but it pays to be polite. 

Thank You, Google Instant, For The Gift of Nearly One Full Hour

Remember the introduction of Google Instant? It was launched in early fall 2010.  As you recall,  Google Instant is a search enhancement that shows search results as you type.

I found it quite distracting at first, and now hardly notice it. In fact, it’s an expected feature.

The brainiacs at Google did study after study and found that on average, people take 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only milliseconds to glance at another part of the page.

They figured users scan search results page as they type. Heck, they figured correctly!

Don’t you find you often get the right content much faster than before because you have been “trained” not to finish typing a full search term, or even press “search?”

If I Could Turn Back Time

So by predicting my search and showing results before I finish typing, the Google smarty-pants assure me that Google Instant saves 2-5 seconds per search.

OK so here’s where math skills take over.

20 Average Searches Per Day

Between work-related, family and personal tasks, I guestimate I perform between 15 – 25 Google searches per day. Emphasis on the word “guestimate”….(Note:  this data is hard to find, so let’s just use this number. In fact I likely performed an over-average number of Google searches just searching for  “average number of searches one person performs in one day”)

Back to the math…(Thanks, Colleen of Sullivan Leh Designs, for checking me on this...) 

100 Seconds Saved Per Day

So if on average I perform about 20 searches a day, with a savings of 5 seconds per search with Google Instant, average daily savings total 100 seconds each day with Google Instant.

11.5 Minutes Saved Per Week

In a given week, that’s 700 seconds, or about 11.5 minutes saved.  

50 Minutes Saved Per Month

So last month, I saved a total of about 50 minutes.   (By golly, that’s 10 hours savings per year! Can’t wait for 2011!)

The Gift of Time

Sincere thanks to Google Instant for saving me about 1 hour last month, what a gift! 

Unfortunately that hour was wasted coming up with this blog posting. Ah, the irony. 

Button Button, Who’s Got the Button?

My colleagues and I have been chatting a lot about buttons this week. Yes, it’s been that kind of week. 

Can a seemingly insignificant web button make a difference in how a business to business website, direct marketing email, or newsletter generates leads? 

You betcha!

How a button is designed; colored; written and placed on a page makes a big impact in how prospects behave after opening up an email or visiting a website.

The “click to take an action” button comes in a range of varying shapes, sizes and styles. Conventional wisdom reminds us to consider the following.

            Text

            Design

            Operation

            Color

            Placement

---Text   Using images or icons on buttons makes them more useful, for sure. An icon makes it clearly obvious to the user as to what function the button provides. For instance, an arrow indicates that a button guides to the next or previous step or page.The text depicted on a button is also critical, and should be short, concise, and indicate what will happen when the button is clicked. Command verbs rule. (I.e. “Register Now” button takes the visitor to a registration page; “Download Free Paper” takes the prospect to a Resource Center 

--- Design  Buttons come in a variety of shapes – the highest performers are rounded and somewhat dimensional like a keyboard button. 

Again, wiser folks than I regularly perform A/B testing to see what design produces optimal results.  Their findings show that the highest performing buttons look clickable and clearly portray what will happen when clicked. Sticking with a recognizable standard (rounded corners) is likely a good strategy. 

--- Operation   The ‘hover state’ and ‘click state’ of a button can mimic the physical reality of clicking a key on a keyboard, complete with a clicking sound.  All these operational elements have been tested.  Again, the standard operations always perform best (a clicked button that looks “depressed” is what a user expects.)

--- Color  Once again, this is an area where user testing is critical. Lots of studies out there that concentrate on this one issue. I can’t imagine doing this for my day job, but there are many studies that show yellow is the highest performing button color, and can make a huge difference to an e-commerce site. Next time you browse eBay or Amazon, check out the button colors!

--- Placement  Much has been written and studied about button placement.  I can’t add too much of value here, other than to note that providing multiple buttons and calls to action on a website is proven to increase conversion rates and performance. 

Consider Your Buttons

If the goal of a website, direct email, or eNewsletter is to convince a prospect to take action, consider your buttons.  Making it easy for a user to find a button and take action will make all the difference in your programs.

And if you can, A/B test.  In the case of a direct mail, send out one message with one type of button; and the same exact message with a different button design.  See which one performs the best.