Beware of What Sounds Good

These feel good sayings have become quite popular these days.  While they sound good, many of them just aren’t true-even if they are said by a famous and well-respected celebrity like Dr. Seuss.  Beware that you don’t fall for them, and worse yet, communicate as if they are true.

Take this one for example.  Not everything you feel needs to be said.  Those who matter to you may, indeed, mind how you say them even if they don’t mind what you say.  And those who mind may not matter to you, but they matter to God.

How we say things are often even more important than what we say.  How we communicate with each other is important to God. He cautions us about the use of our mouth, words, lips and tongues all throughout the Bible.

Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” Colossians 4:6

My tip for this week: When you see quotes like these, make sure you read them…carefully before you accept them as truth and act accordingly.

NOTE: Don’t forget to submit your communication questions to jojo@artofeloquence.com for my monthly Ask JoJo section of my blog.  I’ll pick one question per month to answer right here on the blog!  You can ask anything related to communication skills from a tip on how not to be nervous making a speech to what games your kids can play that will help them hone their communication skills and even if your website or blog is clearly written!

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Support an Author Day

A most beloved author, Dr. Seuss,  died on this day in 1991.  As I reflected on how much joy this author brought to me and my children over the years even after his death, I found an obscure blog post by an author who dubbed a day back in August as Support an Author Day and asked everyone to like his Facebook Fan page.  That’s all it said, but it got me thinking.

Do you know an author?  I’ll bet you do. Even if he or she doesn’t have an agent or get paid for his or her work, you’ve seen them on Facebook and Twitter. These are folks who take the time to write up their own, unique insights into something, share their one-liners or memes and dare to send them out into the world.

Writing is a lonely profession.  It’s most often accomplished in between diaper changes, making dinner and doing the laundry or at 3am, after a long day of work necessary to provide for a family.  However, any way you cut it, most writers don’t get paid anywhere near the cost of the effort that’s put into it.  Mostly it’s a labour of love and dedication and purpose.  So how can you support an author?

1. Click “like” on Facebook

It only takes two seconds of your busy day.  Click like to show you care as you are passing by their note.  Find their fan page each day or once a week and give them a quick thumbs up.

2. Retweet them on Twitter

Retweets only take seconds now that Twitter has added that new feature.  Like something they said?  Retweet it and, if you’ve got a few extra seconds, hit reply and tell them what you liked about it.

3. Comment on their blogs or posts

In just a few seconds, you can make a real difference in the life of an author by posting a comment.  Let them know how much you liked their post.  Share your thoughts about their insights, how they have impacted you or even disagree with them.  Just knowing someone read their work and took the time to share their feedback is of great value to a writer.

4. Tell others about them

Share their website or book titles with friends and family, post their links on Facebook and Twitter.

5. Buy their books!

In order to get the word out, most authors give away a great deal of their writing for free: free articles, samples, excerpts and often provide personal one on one help via emails and Facebook PMs.  Consider purchasing their materials or giving their novel as a gift.

Authors live to know that their work is appreciated, their words resonate and their ideas have helped someone.  Please take a moment today to support an author you know.  Then come back here and share how you did that.

Are you an author who writes books, eBooks, devotionals, a blog?  Share how you feel when you receive a thumbs up, nice comment or when someone shares your work.

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Dr. SeUsS FuN

Today is Dr. Seuss’ birthday. He would have been 108 years old today.  We’ve been talking about Dr. Seuss, silly words, creative fun and humor all this week.  This week, I’d like to share a new movie coming out–today as a matter of fact: The Lorax.  Has anyone seen a preview of this movie?  It looks cute, colorful and fun, but I don’t happen to remember the story.  My kids are a bit old for Dr. Seuss.  Would love you to share your thoughts.

Sometimes the movies made from Dr. Seuss stories have a little twist to them I wasn’t expecting.  There was some controversy about Horton Hears a Who, which had a kangaroo who was “Pouch Schooled” which seemed to suggest the old socialization issue and perhaps an anti-Christian bias.  Please share your thoughts.

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It’s Dr. Seuss Week

Dr. Seuss’ birthday is this Friday.  He would have been 108 years old.  As many of us did, I grew up with Dr. Seuss books and so did my children.  They were a fun way for kids to want to learn to read.  They had two of the things kids love most: rhyme and nonsense.  Silly words with silly pictures, odd situations and strange creatures enticed us all.

This week on the Art of Eloquence Communication FUNdamental’s blog, we will be celebrating silliness and creative play that fosters better education (specifically communication) and remembering Dr. Seuss.

Part of the reason Dr. Seuss was so effective was because he included humor and creative play into the learning process, an idea Art of Eloquence incorporates into its communication studies.  Almost all of my articles use humor.  Some share how humor is important to communication.  One article shares how to use creative play to teach communication skills.  Check them out and have some fun learning the Communication FUNdamentals of the Art of Eloquence!

Join us on Facebook for even more Communication FUNdamentals throughout the week!

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The Type is Ripe with Hype!

It’s Dr. Seuss’ Birthday today!  To celebrate (and continue discussing “12 Deadly Communication Sins of Advertising“), let’s talk about how advertisers can sound a lot like Dr. Seuss wannabees!  It happens when marketing begins to hype it up.  Here’s the excerpt from the article on hype:

“Error #2. Hype it Up
Today’s consumer is very savvy! People can spot hype a mile away-unless it is their own! Too much glitz and glam can make your company, product or service sound too good to be true. Just as I began writing this article, I got a phone call from a salesman who told me that I had been chosen to win a free computer, $1000 shopping spree to some website I never heard of, a cell phone and a $500 something or other! lol I didn’t listen that closely as I replied “Yeah, sure!”. Nobody gets something for nothing and your customer’s mind will not let go of the feeling that you are going to take them for everything they’ve got. So …maybe you don’t call your customers and offer them a free $1000 worth of your products, but have you ever sent out an ad that made outlandish sounding claims? “Make $2000 your very first month!” “You will never need another ….” While these claims may be true and certainly do catch your customer’s attention, they do not lend credibility to your company and are dismissed immediately if not sooner.”

Some ads try to use as many keywords as possible and end up sounding like a bad Dr. Seuss imitation:

Eat your way to health. Weight loss you can believe in.  Weight loss pills, skinny pills, lose weight while you eat.  Why not lose weight the easy way? Weight loss, lose weight, pills take, but wait!”

Some ads aren’t quite as blatantly Seussical…

This free forex ap is a proven trading system. Nothing makes you rich like forex and nothing builds wealth like a good trading system.  Prosperity can be yours if only you take hold of this success principle of building personal riches.  Wealth building has never been easier with this forex trading wealth producing trading system that is used by the rich and famous.   Money making strategies that really work and none of the risks associated with trading.  Trade your way to wealth and prosperity in just minutes a day! ”

Some ads even have a list of nonsensical words at the bottom of the email:

“Instant wealth, wealth and money, money and time, money making, strategies, trading, trades, money in your sleep, sleep while you earn, earn while you learn, learn while you turn, profits and no loss, trading forex, forex trading, eat of the fruit of the forex tree, on your mark, get set, be free!”

Notice the use of hype language making it appear that the outcome will be so incredibly easy it’s just about guaranteed!  Now in this ad, you see not only hype words, but give you inflated numbers and try to tell you how much he was cautioned not to offer something this good.

My wife told me I was crazy to offer this to you, but I’m just such a nice guy!  Most of my colleagues would sell this widget for $1500 but I just have to make this available to everyone who needs it.  It’ll save your marriage, save you money and bring you wealth so how could you resist.  BUT I can only sell six of them at this low price!  I’m not going to sell you this widget for $1500.  Not even for $700 and not even for the extremely low price of $300, but I’m going to sell it to the first six people for the ridiculously low price of $37.97! ”

At this point you don’t even know what this widget really is or does and you have no clue who would value it at $1500 or why.  If he wants to make it available to all, why limit it to six people?

Dr. Seuss’ claim to fame was making fun sounding stories so that kids wanted to learn to read.  These hype marketers use fun sounding concepts to attempt to make people want their system.  However, Dr. Seuss was much more talented and his motives were much more noble. 

Have you ever been sent an ad that is ripe with hype?  How did that make you feel?  Doesn’t it make you suspect ANY ad you see that even remotely resembles a Seussical approach?  What say you?

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Dr. Seuss Meets the CPSIA!

I have been blogging about the Child Protection Safety Initiative Act for a few months now.  It went into effect under cover of darkness and was supposedly designed to protect our children from lead poisoning which was a real concern born out of the state of toy making in China.  It blossomed as UNTHINKING legislators threw law together with the intent only to make themselves look like they were actually doing something about the problem.

However, instead of requiring testing from toys coming from China or other foreign countries, the law requires every product manufactured for children 12 and under to go through rigorous and expensive testing in order to be compliant.  This included things that were never known to contain lead or other harmful elements like clothing and books.  In fact, originally, it required testing of each lot.  So if you were a used clothing store, you would have to test each individual garment in order to be compliant!

Fortunately, most THINKING people knew this was bad law which would put many small businesses OUT of business and they have been successful in getting many exceptions added to the law.  It is impossible for them to enforce anyway, but it may take several years before it is all ironed out.  You see, instead of just scrapping the bad law and rewriting it in a less confusing and restrictive way, they will do what most politicians do and throw lots more words at the law and hope that the good words will cancel out the bad words and,  in the end, the ones that stick will make sense!

The Lord put a great deal of creativity in the hearts of His children and when they are justifiably outraged, they can be quite creatively humorous.  Currently there are a few YouTube videos dealing with this issue.  One is of a Faux Senator who explains how difficult his job is NOT to read all the laws that come to him for his signature each week.

And then there is this adorable social commentary by Heather Idoni of Homeschooler’s Notebook.  She and a friend wrote Dr. Seuss Meets the CPSIA.  They have also issued a challenge to all you creative writers out there who love Dr. Seuss to come up with your own social commentary on a subject near and dear to you in the style of Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss).

If you want to try your hand here, please post a comment with a few Dr. Seuss-like lines.

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