…wrote Shakespeare in Hamlet. Only most of us aren’t brief.

You have pressing information, a delicious new product or a life-altering service that benefits the world! You believe in it, which is essential for success. It propels you and keeps you going even on the worst days.

The problem is, you don’t connect to your potential fans through belief alone. A mass of information sits between you and them—the ones who will really get you and like what you offer.

Unfortunately, your potential fans have limited time and patience to listen even to you.

Despair not. A thriving brand can employ many tactics. Shorter copy is one.

You are more likely to delight, inspire, humor, motivate or activate with less copy.

But short doesn’t mean simple, hyped, incomplete or inconsistent with your brand. The goal is better words in a better order—resulting in shorter copy. Overdo the editing and you sacrifice the gratifying threads that hold key ideas together. But overediting is rare.

Why does shorter copy delight, inspire, humor, motivate or activate?

Because it gets and keeps the reader’s attention.

Below are common writing problems that reduce reader attention, and can also cause people to lose confidence and trust in your brand.

“Ly” adverbs: “Ly” adverbs weaken verbs. Replace the adverb/weak verb pair with one vivid verb to enrich your message. (One of my favorite tools for finding synonyms is Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus or ye old’ Roget’s.)

We will quickly and effortlessly install your new network.

Better: We excel in fast, flawless installation. (Sexy and confident, no?)

Redundant words or expressions: Terms like “a sum of 80 trees” or “fully 300 of our followers” add words and sound suspicious.

We’ve been in business for a total of 10 years.

Better: We’ve been in business for 10 years. (Then explain how that benefits your customer in tangible ways.)

Passive voice: It takes more words to describe an action being done to someone or something. In active sentences, the real subject is doing the acting and your message is more confident and credible. People love that.

All ages of people are welcome to attend.

Better: We welcome all ages.

The better sentence also humanizes the writing. People want to connect with you.

It was determined by the board that the findings were inconclusive. (hmmm)

Better: The board determined the findings were inconclusive.

You can also raise suspicion with passive voice even if you don’t intend to hide information. Organizations, but also many businesses, avoid brevity and clarity. Most often their brand lacks a strong foundation. This makes for fence-sitting and trying to reach everyone, which doesn’t sound confident.

Another reason is political. If you must avoid ruffling feathers use passive voice. But is it necessary, or an unquestioned default mode?

Sloppy word order: Free your sentences of excess noise and make the signal stronger. This is an easy and satisfying fix.

We collect only the best beans from the top of the mountain.

Better: We collect only the best mountain-top beans.

Master these and you invite people to connect with you in a more powerful way…now that they’re paying attention.

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(Image credit: Flickr/kanelstrand)

If there’s one thing you can do to activate your brand image, it’s to improve your writing.

Better writing connects with your customers or prospects.

People feel connected if, when reading your copy, they feel like you have considered their desires, fears or needs.

And people who feel that way want more of what you’re selling. This goes for selling a plumbing service, getting people to read your annual report or attracting new members.

One thing that prevents this connection from happening is a focus on features, often masquerading as benefits.

A feature is usually a dry fact, while a benefit satisfies an emotion. (Follow the tips in this post about communicating features over benefits.)

In a brochure for a craft guild, the lackluster visual effort for a group of artisans surprised me. But it was the member benefits that caught my eye: Monthly Meetings, Publications, Library, Workshops, Events and Website. All features, whose descriptions even read like features instead of benefits.

The benefits of Monthly Meetings are gaining support and increasing skills when you gather with like minds. Should those benefits be obvious? Maybe. But people are busy, tired, confused and skeptical, and they have to sift through many such messages.

Your words should be a flashlight.

People need help to see in the dark. You know how your 10-year experience selling houses benefits your prospects; they don’t. Ten years are a feature. Your deep understanding of how scary it is to buy a house and why your clients can’t wait to buy another after working with you is a benefit.

Friend and author Jen Violi describes her upcoming writing workshop almost entirely in benefit-rich copy. She can do this, not because she’s a writer, but because she understands the motivations and fears behind writing a book. And she knows she’s more likely to attract attendees who feel understood.

Why benefit-rich copywriting better is easier than you think:

• You don’t need fancy words. You just need plain language.

• You don’t need to hire a marketing research company. You just need to put yourself in your prospects’ shoes.

• You don’t need to write more. You need to write less.

• You don’t need to cut features. You just need to change the focus.

• You don’t need to be dishonest. You just need to unearth the true benefits.

You should let a professional create a rich foundation (core elements of your brand) in which your marketing message can flourish. But times have changed; you craft your business message every day on blogs, in Facebook, on Twitter and the like. The ongoing messagecrafting is in your hands, right where it should be.

You can let people stumble on another business on the way to finding you. Or you can illuminate a direct path to your door.

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(Image credit: Flicker / Creative Commons / Hana Lara Lait)

You’re hiring a designer or marketing person and can’t wait for the process to unfold.

Or…maybe not.

Most likely you have some uncertainty. You don’t know how to choose a consultant. You’ve never been through the process. You don’t know which questions to ask. You don’t speak the same language. You’re worried about money. You have a committee to please. You’ve got your other work to do.

Oof.

Maybe you can relate to one or all these feelings. If so, a few things can happen:

• You turn over the process to fate, ignoring the costs of backing up and redoing things later.

• You put all your trust into your consultant who, though prepared to deliver, might be set up to fail.

When vital engagement is missing, it’s easy to focus on stylistic details like wanting the color to be red instead of blue even if you can’t say why. Or requiring all your text to remain, even if it doesn’t fit or is muddying your message.

That’s not being demanding.

What does it mean to be demanding?

Demanding is…

…staying really engaged in the process.

…articulating a clear and concise vision.

…fearlessly marrying your wisdom and expertise with that of the consultant.

…asking, “help me understand how this process works.”

…supplying answers that create a strong foundation out of which great work comes.

…caring more about the big picture than the stylistic details (but details do matter).

…knowing who matters most to your efforts and encouraging good solutions that reach these people.

…knowing who and how to hire the best person for the job.

Good designers and marketers don’t shy away from demanding clients. In fact, we prefer clients like this because we can do good work when you set a high bar — a high bar of what really matters. You don’t need to be an expert about design, branding or marketing. You only need to be an expert about you.

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(Image: Flickr / Creative Commons License / Felicito Rustique)

Last year I wrote about sorbets, including rhubarb and rhubarb in general with a recipe for a galette.

I’ve pretty much exhausted the subject, so this is just a gentle reminder to get yourself some rhubarb
while the getting is good. Okay, I have one thing left to say. Because rhubarb is tangy, it crosses over the savory and sweet range. Most people think of dessert but rhubarb, much like cherries or mangos for example, can be made into a sauce or salsa to liven up pork, chicken or fish.

For example, the galette below is great topped with goat cheese and served alongside a salad, much like you would quiche or a sandwich. (Then you can have another for dessert.)

You can download the sorbet and galette recipes below. Both are easy to make. And they’ll impress your guests. But why share?

You can make these with only rhubarb or add strawberries. I prefer to let the rhubarb stand on its own, and strawberries won’t be out for some time yet.

The galette dough, by the way, can be a base for endless sweet or savory concoctions from roasted beet to caramelized onion to blueberry. It takes just minutes to make the dough. Enjoy!

Filed under: Culinaria, Local Goodness ]]> http://enoughgood.com/2012/05/02/rhubarb-a-licious/feed/ 2 janepell rhubarb recipes Download the sorbet recipe Download the galette recipe http://enoughgood.com/2012/04/26/elegance-the-forgotten-small-stuff/ http://enoughgood.com/2012/04/26/elegance-the-forgotten-small-stuff/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:16:16 +0000 Jane Pellicciotto http://enoughgood.com/?p=2376 ]]> In any project or effort, there is big vision, small details and everything in between. It all matters, but it’s the details that are most noticed by the end user.

Well, not so much noticed as felt. This is an important distinction.

What is felt is delight…or annoyance. Clarity…or confusion. Satisfaction…or stupidity.

It would be one thing if the customer intellectualized what didn’t work. But most often, they feel lazy, tired or stupid. In The Design of Everyday Things, author Donald Norman explains that people tend to blame themselves when something doesn’t work, even if the flaw is in the design.

In this great TED talk, ad guru Rory Sutherland describes with humor the bad decisions businesses and organizations foist on unsuspecting customers.

He says organizations ignore what we know about basic human behavior. Big decisionmakers think the need to feel delighted or satisfied instead of confused is too simple to be important. So these decisionmakers overlook the details that, in the end, really matter.

He uses the example of Heathrow airport’s yellow signage that points to trains. You’d expect to see another yellow train sign later. Instead, you find a blue sign that reads, “Heathrow Express,” the proper name of the train. Someone in the process forgot to consider consistency, and that not everyone will know the name of the train.

It’s not that companies insist on bad decisions. It’s that good ones aren’t deliberately made or no one cares enough to walk a mile in the end-user’s shoes.

You’ve probably experienced…

The water pitcher that spills out the sides when you pour. (Was the pitcher tested before it went to market?)

The door that looks like it should be pulled but must be pushed. (Did the architect want to design a cool handle?)

The redundant, over-wordy text in a report that you can’t plow through. (Was an editor spared to save money or time?)

The website with confusing navigation or hard-to find contact information. (Did someone hire the secretary’s nephew?)

The generous and helpful pre-sale experience, followed by bad customer service upon return. (Did anyone design a complete system?)

Decisionmakers often disappear once the project gets going, or they don’t empower the people who will sweat the small stuff.

But the small stuff is the big stuff. The small stuff confuses us, slows us down, bores us to tears—making us not want to stay, return or recommend the experience to others.

And where does elegance fit in?

Sutherland asked for a word to describe this missing component to most business efforts, suggesting that organizations appoint a Director of Details. Several commentors suggested the word elegance. It’s a perfect word; developers often use this to describe well-crafted code.

Elegance is more than simple, clear or clean. Elegance throws in a little beauty for good measure.

Elegance is generous and considerate. Elegance understands. Elegance delights.

Entrust someone as Chief of Elegance, especially if you can’t tend to the small stuff yourself.

Have you ever found yourself saying this as you start a project?

Have you ever imposed this criteria on a hired consultant or firm?

Taking this well-worn path is understandable. It’s a great way to breeze through a project without the inconvenience of tripping over new ideas, or asking for permission from a boss who just wants the project done. The boss wants the project “just done,” not because she doesn’t care how it turns out, but because she’s removed herself from the process of knowing how awesome it could be.

Most often, you hear this phrase from large organizations that don’t empower their people to make something they’re proud of. It takes a certain pride of ownership to want to do a recurring project, for example, not by rote but, by asking questions that no one has asked in a while…or ever.

• Is this project really necessary? (Really. Or is it just being done because no one has questioned otherwise?)

• Who is reading this? (Is it getting to the people who matter most to you?)

• Are they required to read it, or are they hungry for this information? (Is it the message they want, or the one you want to tell?)

• Can we make their job or decisionmaking easier by how we approach this project? (Builds good will you can bank on later.)

• How will we know if we’ve been successful? (Isn’t this what you base your budget and future decisions on, and how you know you’ve reached your goals? Speaking of which, what are those goals?)

The irony is, “This is how we’ve always done it” assumes that those ancient decisions were good ones, made by thoughtful and smart people who gave a damn. These could have been people in your organization or a hired gun whose creation was approved and set in stone, no matter what it looked like.

A cousin to this phrase is ___________ (fill-in-the-blank type of person) don’t need it to look good because ______________ (fill-in-the-blank excuse.)

Beyond types, we are all human. We respond to order, contrast, cleverness, triumph, harmony, beauty, story, inspiration, memorability or legibility in roughly the same way. Yes, even scientists, even engineers.

Different audiences require appropriate versions of the above if you want to be seen and heard.

But to abandon those qualities in favor of walking that same path over and over is to say, “I just don’t care enough to expect this to be great.”

There’s no risk in asking a few questions. You can always go back to the way it’s always been done. But once the bug of thoughtful questions bites you, there’s no turning back.

(Image: Flickr/Soylentgreen23 under a Creative Commons license.)

Recently I walked into a favorite local plant nursery. They had compost tea on special, there was an edible gardening workshop, new plants had just arrived, and, best of all, they had free cookies and coffee. The place was a swarm of goodness and I wanted people to know about it.

Because I like to give good businesses a mention (I feel less guilty about owning an iPhone), I asked an employee if they were on Twitter or Facebook so I could refer to them in an update. A look of fright and overwhelm spread across her face. She said, “If someone were sitting at a computer all day, there wouldn’t be enough people to help on the floor!”

I’d seen that look of dread before. I’d heard that tone hopelessness. It said, “I know we should be doing social media. We’re behind the times. We just can’t deal with it.”

(For some good social media marketing information, start here, here or here.)

For those who feel like the plant nursery employee, take comfort in the fact that timeless marketing methods still work. Technology has just made it easier and mostly free. Social media marketing demands us to be like being a good friend: listen, remember birthdays, be entertaining, inspiring and useful, show up, be consistent.

Start planting the seeds now because social media marketing is like a long, slow conversation. The benefits are reaped slowly, but surely (which is why this type of marketing doesn’t replace other approaches; it works in tandem with them.)

I’m all for planning but it’s important to take a first step sometimes. You do need to educate yourself at some point about which platforms are best for your business. But the principles below cut across all the platforms:

• Start conversations: Unlike with traditional marketing and advertising, you have an opportunity to connect via replies, comments, follows, likes and direct messages. In the old days, you shouted your message from a billboard. Today, you can stand in the same “room” every day with potential customers or clients. Imagine that! (Ex.: The plant nursery invites followers to post photos of their tomato harvest or name their favorite plant.)

• Share what interests you: Instead of directly promoting your product or service, share what inspires you. Followers get a more complex picture of who you are and, by extension, feel more connected to you. (Ex.: The plant nursery posts a TED video on how gardens have changed people’s lives.)

• Mix it up: A fun, interesting friend sings more than one tune. (Ex.: The plant nursery, over the course of a week or two promotes new seed arrivals, posts an inspirational gardening quote, runs a “guess this plant” contest for a free jug of compost tea, asks what people are doing differently in their gardens this year.)

• Be consistent: Worse than not being there is being there and not saying anything. Figure out a schedule that works for you. It doesn’t have to be every day, but a Facebook post takes mere minutes (see next tip). Being consistent also means being on message: is your tone and style consistent across your other marketing mediums?

• Don’t take yourself too seriously: Be appropriately light sometimes. Also, don’t worry about tying every update to a possible sale. This is an organic, indirect process; results might come in unexpected ways.

• Make it easy: Keep a list going. Every time you have a thought, a customer asks a question or you read something interesting, jot a note. Soon you’ll have more ideas for tweets or Facebook and LinkedIn updates than you can imagine. (Ex.: The plant nursery knows the frequently asked questions of customers, has made lists of these and every so often, posts updates that speak to those questions. Customers walk in the door more confident and knowledgeable.)

• Use what you know about people: People like to be heard, to show their stuff, to get discounted stuff, to be connected to a community, to know someone feels their pain (slugs eating their plants), to be invited, to have fun, to be empowered. It’s (almost) as simple as that.

Social media allows you to create conversation and community around you and your business in a non-pressuring way. Over time, you position yourself as a trusted person, maybe not because you’re the best or the most innovative, but because you showed up, you played, you listened, you informed.

There’s a pleasing harmony to these single- or multi-author collections. And the viewer goes back and forth between the books’ unifying elements and their unique imagery. You’re able to pay more attention to the books’ art because of the common visual thread running across the individual titles.

Alma Classics is a UK publishing house whose mission is “publishing not only the greatest recognized masterpieces of all time, from every literature and genre, but trying to redefine and enrich the classics canon by promoting unjustly neglected works of enduring significance.”

The translucent band hinges the books together just enough to stand as a solid unit, while not overpowering the book’s unique image.

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Of Penguin’s Great Loves series, designer David Pearson says, “Design for books on this subject can often appear cliché-ridden and hackneyed so we decided on a more abstract, symbolic approach, using botany as the chief source of inspiration.”

You can read more from the designer and see a work in progress here.

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Barnes and Noble has its own Classics — a large and handsome collection that looks like a rich tapestry when the books are seen together.

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This gorgeous collection (see more here) of F. Scott Fitzgerald books was designed by Coralie-Bickford-Smith, a senior book cover designer at Penguin. Explore her site for other delicious work like this Great Food series of covers below.

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This Neversink Library of books, under Melville House publishers in New York, “champions books from around the world that have been overlooked, underappreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored.”

Art Director Christopher King, who designed the charming series in 2010 and continues to do so said, “the design was inspired by a whole soup of historic sources, but probably the most salient influences are Victorian cut-paper silhouettes and early- to mid-20th century American printmaking, in particular the posters produced by the artists of the WPA.”

Are there any collections you particularly like? If so, share a link.

…said American naturalist and essayist John Burroughs.

Too often, we hold ourselves back, so whenever anyone takes a leap, I feel energized. Of course, one person’s big leap is another’s small. But that’s the beauty of leaps; they’re personal and meaningful only to the leaper.

People can encourage you to leap but the leap comes from you only when you’re ready to leap. Notice I didn’t say “want to.” Most of us want to leap, but often we’re not ready till we just can’t stand it anymore.

You have to beware the naysayers, those who want to hold you back or infuse doubt into your plan. Prudence is all well and good, but warnings usually come from a place of fear or envy, cloaked as wisdom.

The reason the net will appear?

Because you bothered to take the leap. In other words, there’s always a positive outcome from any change. It’s a law of the universe. That’s why waiting till there’s a net before you leap is unnecessary (barring, of course, financial ruin as a result of a really dumb decision).

One scoop at a time: One old friend swapped his t-square for an ice cream scooper. Architect-turned-ice-cream-store owner, he is finally able to deliver happiness, something he thought he could do with his skills and talents as an architect, but couldn’t.

Sticking to it: A friend dove into making an almost-daily series of collages after long avoiding unleashing her creative potential. Creatives are the worst at indulging in their creativity, so afraid they are to produce crap work. But it’s often the really talented ones who withhold their gifts from the rest of us. (Subscribe for a daily dose of art.)

Lasting words: A woman I met on a business networking phone call launched The Cheerful Word, capturing and telling stories of the elderly in book form. Her business was suddenly launched when a lovely old woman asked, “Honey, what would you do with your time if you had limitless time and money?” It turns out she didn’t need limitless time or money, just the will to pursue what was so obvious she couldn’t see it.

Lovin’ spoonfuls: A friend left a sexy industrial design career to do what she loved most: feed people. She did it in a bad economy in a town with a zillion restaurants. Her business has taken many forms since the beginning; she seized opportunities along the way, not planned in advance.

A new lens: Another friend left a job without having a back-up plan except to pursue all the good things her job wasn’t leaving her energy to pursue like her new interest in storytelling through video. Sometimes you have to leave the safety of a job in order to create something new and potentially more lucrative. (See related post on closing doors).

Stranger in a strange land: My sister left a lucrative career and lovely house in D.C. to join the Peace Corps and is now living in a remote village in central Mexico, and was partly inspired to go for it after the untimely death of our cousin Johnny Copp,

For the love of art: A friend is about to launch an art business, a 180-degree career move, because he’s realizing that life is too short. “If not now, when,” he said.

So what do these examples boil down to?

• You can only put off your true nature or suppress your passions for so long.

• Start small; tweak it as you go. Opportunities have a funny way of showing up after you start, not before.

• Listen to what people tell you you’re good at.

• Look around at how other people have taken risks.

• Security and comfort is overrated.

• Size doesn’t matter; leaps come in different forms.

• Surround yourself with people doing interesting things.

• You don’t need to know what the net looks like or where it is.

• You can always change your mind later.

• You almost always have most or all the tools you need, at least for a first step.

I’m about to take a leap of my own, merging my life with someone I met far away only a short time ago. I’m sure the net is there somewhere.

(Image credit: Flickr / Arty Smokes, under a creative commons license.)