Every industry is guilty of jargon. Hands up, the marketing, social media and tech worlds are up there with the key offenders.
The Cloud? Big Data? Both are topics being discussed a lot at the moment, but you’ll be hard pressed to find two people with identical definitions. Referencing buzzwords is fine when you’re talking to those in the know, but when it comes to reaching potential customers, it probably isn’t the right approach.
The truth is that your prospects are time-stretched and information-overloaded: can you risk demanding that they translate wording before getting to your key message? Chances are, they’ll click elsewhere at the first sniff of ‘blue sky thinking’.
Why do people use jargon?
Opinions on jargon remain divided. In the red corner stand the jargon-philes, willing to load their content marketing with enough buzzwords to make even a management consultant blush. In the blue corner stand the staunch anti-jargonists, insisting on proper command of the English language in order to convey clear messages.
As a journalist by trade, my heart leans towards the blue corner brigade. After all, what is the point of language if not to communicate clearly and effectively? Yet the content marketer within notices the ease with which I use the word ‘content’, which would surely have been considered jargon before the profileration of – let’s call a spade a spade – writing, images and the like distributed for marketing ends?
How to avoid jargon
Some might say that overuse of jargon indicates a lack of actual knowledge on a topic. After all, it’s far easier to churn out some standard clichés than to explain, in basic terms, what is being discussed.
A few starting points to avoid killing your content with jargon are:
1. Hire experienced writers to create content. Preferably, these will be experts in your niche who truly understand the sector. A good starting point is to scour bylines of relevant trade titles, the ones which your end client also reads.
2. Look to jargon-busting icons who have become leaders thanks, in some part, to their direct, accessible style of communicating. Encourage your marketing team to watch one of the late Steve Jobs’ talks on TED as an example.
3. Cut the jargon from meetings and daily working life. Think of the five examples of jargon you fall back on the most, and conjure up another way of saying the same thing in laymen’s terms. When you stop using jargon throughout the day, it will start to naturally disappear from marketing materials.
4. Keep the overall goal of your marketing efforts in mind with every piece of content produced. This might be to inform your audience to understand your product or service better, then to ultimately buy it. Then aim to drill down to this pinnacle, this core message, as clearly as possible.
Over to you
We’re all guilty of using jargon sometimes. Which buzzword are you most guilty of using and what piece of industry jargon really gets your goat?
