Is anyone else getting a bit frustrated with Facebook? Seems a lot of rules that limit socialization for a social media network. Facebook says it's trying to protect its users by ridding itself of anything that might possibly resemble SPAM. But it is taking the social right out of social media, don't you think? 1. You can't have more than 5000 friends. What if I'm popular? LOL I recently had a discussion with someone on Facebook who said that anyone who believes you can have that many friends doesn't understand what the word means. I don't believe Facebook is for people who are such good friends they'd do anything for each other. If Facebook were just for very close friends,...
Communication in its most simplistic form is the sharing of an idea in a way that allows the other party/parties to understand the message the way in which it was intended. It's a simple concept, but not an easy one to attain, especially in today's microwave society. For many years, communication was thought an important skill to teach each generation and it yielded incredible results. It allowed people of diverse cultures and world views to discuss things of great importance allowing consensus to be reached. It promoted grace and manners in the event that agreement was not found in order for citizens to live peaceably and agree to disagree. Not always, but mostly in polite society. But today,...
There is a new trend in advertising to sound as IF you are cursing, but aren’t actually using those words. This greatly bothers me. For example, here is a booking.com commercial. Here’s another one from Fresh and Easy Market: They can't think of a better creative way to market their products without using obvious substitutes for curse words? This commercial is on during family time. What is this teaching our children? Do they think they don’t get it? Shame on them! Now, I’m not one who says all words that take the place of swear words are bad. Most of those words don’t bring the image of swear words. They are creative and fun alternatives to saying whoops! Like oh...
Continuing this month with in-depth tips from my article, "12 Deadly Communication Sins of Advertising" is today's two-fold topic of being trite. Here are two closely related communication faux pas in advertising that results in most readers clicking the delete button or throwing away that flyer. Trite Right Nothing says blah like "Great!", "Fantastic!", "Superb!", "Marvelous!" and "FREE!" These words are so overused that they no longer hold any meaning for potential customers. Use unique words when you describe your products/services. Marvelous can mean almost anything! After all, one man's marvelous is another man's ho hum. These are typical sales words. They scream "I WANT TO SELL YOU SOMETHING!" Don't use them. SHOUTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Speaking of screaming, don't use all caps...
Liar, Liar Pants on Fire! I hope nobody reading this is making a practice of lying to their customers, but I have seen spam come through with subject lines like..."Knew you would appreciate this site!" and "How are you?" Anyone who knows me knows that I most certainly wouldn't appreciate a website that sells pornography so when I open an email to find this website link, I am a little miffed to say the least! This is an extreme example, but I have also seen subject lines that have nothing whatsoever to do with what they are selling. Most people find it offensive to open an email entitled..."re: your inquiry" only to find an ad for something that they had...
