{!date dayname+0}, {!date long+0} Dear {!firstname_fix} It's been a busy week. As you read this I am at the annual convention of the Professional Speaking Association, where tonight I become the next President. That's an honour I am looking forward to, of course. But what I know will be really fantastic about this weekend conference is being with several leading speakers, learning from each other about our businesses and how we are trying to improve everything we do. I always learn a great deal about business and about speaking when I am at a Professional Speaking Association event. Are you a member of a professional body or an association for your industry? They are usually well-worth joining because if you take an active part, you learn more about your business than you could ever do on your own.
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED: What is an online style guide? One of the problems with many websites is lack of consistency. One moment they talk about their business in the third person, the next the website says "I do this". Or they refer to their business as "Widgets Inc." in one paragraph and then call themselves just plain old "Widgets" in the next. Whilst this may not seem that important - it is. Any change in terms, any variation in spellings or phrasing and you confuse your readers. That, in turn, means they process your page more slowly as they try to work out if one thing is actually the same as the other, or different. Good businesses have style guides. These are "rule books" which lay down the law as to how a company will be called, the spellings for certain items and so on. When everyone who works on your website uses the same rules, you become consistent and that makes it much easier for your readers to get through your material quickly. For example, on my website I always refer to "the internet" - NOT "the Internet". Capitalising the first letter of "internet" is not necessary from a grammatical point of view. But it doesn't matter whether you do, or your don't; what really matters is you are consistent. Equally, on my web pages I refer to numbers ten and below as words, such as "eight". But once they go above ten, they become figures, as in 11. This is to do with the ease with which we process numbers - we can easily miss "2" but less easily mistake "two". But again, it doesn't matter - what really matters is consistency, so that anyone using your website quickly sees "the rules" and can therefore read your pages more quickly. When the rules are not obvious - because they keep changing - people will find it more difficult to read your pages, they will process your material more slowly and that makes it less likely they will engage with it fully. Lack of consistency not only confuses, it also reduces the likelihood of purchasing because you confuse people. You can easily produce yourself a style guide - how you deal with certain words, numbers, phrases and so on. It doesn't need to be complex. However, if you want to see a truly comprehensive style guide, take a look at the Economist Style Guide. That is an excellent example of how a publication achieves consistency. Remember, you can always ask your question and get it answered in this newsletter by going to: http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/questions
WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK: Don't do bad things...! Have you been following the goings-on with "Chloe Victoria" or "Chloe Mafia" as she sometimes calls herself? She is a failed contestant on The X-Factor and has been plastered all over the tabloids after they uncovered her alleged former life as a prostitute. She is a 19-year-old single mum who works as a "party girl", entertaining people at parties. You can guess the rest. However, she suffered another blow this week when a hate campaign sprang up on Facebook, demanding that social services took her daughter into care. People alleged she was an unfit mother, following pictures in the Sunday newspapers of Chloe Victoria looking like she was taking drugs. Her local radio station, BBC Radio Leeds, invited me onto their breakfast show the other day to discuss the Facebook campaign and why so many people were prepared to go public and denounce Chloe Mafia. Prior to my live interview, there was a recorded interview with the girl herself, where she admitted she had done some bad things in the past. She was clearly very angry with the Facebook campaign. But then it struck me. She wouldn't be angry and that Facebook campaign would not have arisen if she hadn't done those "bad things" in the first place. There she is blaming Facebook, criticising the media and getting cross with people who think she is a poor mother, when actually, perhaps, she ought to look at her own behaviour first. She is, though, not unlike many businesses. They detest Twitter because of the negativity it wreaks upon their company. Or they want to ban groups on Facebook who say nasty things about them. But, if those businesses did not have poor customer service, for instance, or if their products worked first time, or if their manuals were not poorly translated, then they wouldn't get the negativity. Rather than blaming other people for criticising our businesses, maybe we shouldn't do the bad things in the first place. That's the best way to boost reputation - by only doing good stuff. If you want to check out what else I've been doing for the past week, you can always look at: http://www.grahamjones.co.uk/week
THIS WEEK'S "MUST BUY": New dates announced for "The Social Media Guys Tour"
This is so good, it is worth repeating...! I am one of "The Social Media Guys" - three of us who use social media effectively in our own businesses and who advise other companies on how to get the best out of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on. For several months we have been having successful "drop in" sessions where people have joined us for coffee and had a chat about using social media in their business. Now, we are going "on tour" - providing a three-hour seminar on social media for small business. We start in Swindon on 12th October and will be touring the UK over the coming year ahead. For instance, we are in Reading on 9th November and Bath on 14th December. The Social Media Guys are me, Nigel Morgan, who runs Morgan PR and Ant Hodges from ToInfinity, the online marketing agency. Tickets for the tour are now on sale for just £47. AND you get bonus extras of personal consultancy for your company and entry into our "members only" Social Media Lounge. So, sign up now for the Social Media Guys LIVE! You can buy your ticket at http://GJurl.com/smgtour So, that's it for this week - see you in seven days...! Kind Regards
Graham Jones Web: grahamjones.co.uk Tel: +44 118 336 9710 If you no longer wish to receive this newsletter than you can delete your name from the mailing list by clicking this link: {!remove_web} Affiliate Links: Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links providing me with a small commission when you purchase the item. However, I only use affiliate links for products which I personally value. |
