I have received more than my share of “critical feedback” suggesting that my blog posts are often a little too long. The feedback has come first, from my teenage daughters (I am glad for their candidness!). Unfortunately, there is a risk that this post may also not be “short”.
But then, for this, I have to blame Mrs. Hansotia. Who Mrs. Hansotia? Oh, she was my English teacher from class VI to X. And like most English schools, ours too suffered from the now-exasperating British legacy of being extremely verbose.
Till today’s teenagers do not go and completely take over all English language teaching in schools, we may still suffer this excess for some more time. The rest of us have too much of a hangover from our school times, and end up being flowery length by default!
Then there is the radio legacy.
Back when live TV had not come, we had to depend on the adjectives of our poetic commentators (think Suresh Saraiya, for example) to visualize how the ground was, and how exquisitely Vishwanath had cut the ball to the cover fence for four (before getting out the next ball), and things of that nature.
Live television came, and we did not need to be “told” many of these things, as we could see them. And yet, our commentators, brought up in radio days, continued to tell us what we could plainly see!
So you get the point? I am talking about the long, long text that we write and speak. Instead of cutting to the chase. And instead of sometimes, cutting out the crap!
My grouse is not just about the longer blog post or the verbal diarrhea of our commentators, but in general, about the legacy to write too many words, and which even shows up on Facebook at times. Thankfully, Twitter does not give you that option at all.
At a recent event where I was a speaker, the topic of my talk was ‘How to be relevant to your audience in 140 characters’.
Before the event, once the organizers announced the topic, there was a whole lot of interest seen in Twitter, etc. I have not seen so much buzz around a speech topic. While part of this may be attributed to the organizers promoting the talk and the event, that the topic fascinated and intrigued a lot of people, was undeniable. In fact, there was a lot of questions post the talk and many of the folks also came and chatted individually, later.
So where are the real challenges in our habits, and especially in context of social media updates for brands?
You want to make a product update.
You have written brochures of web content for the product before this.
You are greedy. You want to get all of your details out, in that one update itself!
You want to use the opportunity of having to make a Facebook post about the product, to cover more or less everything about the product!
So your post could well read like:
“This exciting new <product> from <brand>, model number <abc> comes with it’s own remote control and a child proof lock as well. Made of stainless steel, you could see your own reflection on the <product>, and it is lightweight as well. So you can enjoy your day, with this <product> even as you bask in the sunshine.”
Or words of this kind.
This is clearly brochure-ware, and not good for a Facebook post.
If I had to constrain the writer to write the same post for Twitter, she’d find a way, wouldn’t she?
She’d probably write this as “Our new <product> <model> has a child proof lock, so your kid will not get accidentally hurt. Check it out at bit.ly/abc.”
Why could this not have been done on Facebook as well? Just because Facebook gave her more characters to post, she let her flowery language loose?
Here’s another example from recent times.
I had this really weird experience at a recent pitch where 6-7 people from the client’s end were sitting and my colleague was presenting. And at a point where he was explaining a point in depth, the client (almost) rudely interrupted him and said, “Yes, we get it. It’s a good idea. Now let’s move on!”
Whoa! That took us by surprise, although the client meant well.
We are all busy. Our attention spans are low. So get to the point. And get there fast. ANY word that does not add real value ought not to be present. If I can say it in one word, I don’t want to use two.
In a twitter conversation, often a single word tweet can have impact, e.g. “Epic!” or “OMG”. And if you want to give the liberty of an additional word, then there could be “Life sucks!”, or “Go Federer..”, etc. The story is told. In those 1-2 words!
So guys, as the title to the post suggests, “Cut the crap. And cut to the chase!”
Here’s an ad, that drives home the point..