In English, Please.

No matter what industry you are in, it is important to market yourself in a way the public will understand. Each blog, tweet, white paper, and email is a reflection of your brand. If your marketing materials use heavy corporate language, your audience won’t know what your company is asking of them.

Jar-gone

‘Jargon’ is helpful for communicating with people in the industry who understand the meaning of each acronym and phrase. However, that jargon should not be used outside the industry. When communicating with the public, the message should be as clear and concise as possible. The public is bombarded with so many advertisements and commercials each day on TV, the internet and social media. If they have to work to understand your meaning, they will just move on to the next one. (1)

140 or Less

Try applying the Twitter model of 140 characters or less to your next marketing message. Can you effectively communicate your message in such a short amount of text? This is a good test to see how well you understand your message, and how you can cut down the words to find the clearest form of your message.

Buzzword Buzzkill

Just like industry jargon can be confusing to the public, corporate buzzwords can be confusing to employees in a company. If your boss tells you to “be a visionary and predict the paradigm shift of influencers, and then circle back with him to discuss what you can pivot” you would probably go sit at your desk for the next four hours frantically trying to figure out what you are supposed to be doing. It would be much easier if your boss said “Can you research our current target audience, and determine if there are any groups we can add and remove from the target audience? We can talk about it at 2.” (2)

The clear and concise concept applies to companies internally as well. The first version of the question sounds more technical and “corporate” but the unnecessary terms can lead to misinterpretation and miscommunication.

Article 1: Is Your Corporate Language Hurting Your Brand?

Article 2: The 12 Most Overused Business Buzzwords