Entries from October 2007 ↓

If you’re marketing a business, service or product, then it helps to have a positioning statement. This is a summary of how you wish to be perceived. It serves as the basis for defining who you are.

You can create one by answering the following seven questions:

1. Who are you?
2. What business are you in?
3. Who do you serve?
4. What are the special needs of the people you serve?
5. Who are you competing with?
6. What makes you different to those competitors?
7. What unique benefit does a client derive from your service?

Once you’ve answered these, hone them down into a single sentence if you can, one that summarises who you are and the service you offer.

It may not be something to set the world on fire as far as an advertising slogan goes, but it helps to keep your marketing efforts on track, by defining what is special about the business service or product in question.

Grammar fascists are a bore it’s true. But bad grammar makes you look foolish. That’s fine if you’re 17, but if you’re writing and publishing a blog, e-book or anything else for that matter, basic good grammar will create a much better impression.

One of the most common mistakes I see on the web is the use of ‘your’ when the writer means ‘you’re’. It’s a real howler. But I’ve seen it from people who write really well, clearly, with virtually no other grammar faults. They’re clearly well educated and smart people but they seem to have a blind spot here.

There’s obviously some confusion out there, but the difference between the two is really quite simple to grasp.

‘Your’ is possessive: my apple, your apple, their apple, our apple.

You’re is the shortened form of ‘you are’: I am blogging, you are blogging, they are blogging, we are blogging.

This becomes: I’m blogging, you’re blogging, they’re blogging, we’re blogging.

Communication is all about the right mindset. And that means embracing the idea that there’s no such thing as a failure of understanding, only a failure to communicate effectively.

Of course, this may not always be totally true in all circumstances. But as a general rule of thumb for communicators of all kinds, it works just fine.

If you’re writing, explaining something, teaching, then you need to make sure that you get the message across in a way that your audience can understand. If they don’t get it, it’s your fault, not theirs.

This is true when talking to a stranger at a party or addressing a hall full of people.

It’s something most copywriters would understand instinctively (or at least, you’ld hope they would). It’s something most effective communicators would never really need to be told. It’s probably second nature to them.

But it’s also true that huge numbers of people just don’t get this. Those people who write instructions for mobile phones, perhaps.
The arrogant guy in the bar pontificating at people who are too slow to follow his argument. The impatient business exec sniping at the temp who’s had no training.

The IT guy who doesn’t explain how to use his software, or even why, just gives you a list of changes made since the last version.
The bottom line is that if you want to communicate then the onus is on you to get it right. Make an effort to explain, rather than expecting people to understand.

This is especially true in mass communications, be it journalism, writing a blog or creating your own marketing materials. It’s so much better for one person to make the effort to explain things clearly than for dozens, hundreds, thousands to have to wade though poorly written copy. Especially as they can always stop reading, and move on.