Stop Using Words That Sound Good But Say Nothing!

If you write or speak like the above, your messaging is in trouble. Big trouble.

Yeah, you say, but everyone talks like that.

So they do. And that’s the problem. Pretentious language. Bewildering jargon. Annoying acronyms. Numbing wordiness.

It’s become the corporate lingo of the land. It’s almost expected. And granted, it may sound good.

But nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about!

Billions are squandered daily on communications that produce little more than contorted facial expressions.

But not yours. Not anymore.

Welcome to “Business Blather: How to Cure God-Awful Bad Messaging.”

In this icon-shattering free newsletter—subscribe now to receive periodic tips—I cite numerous examples of the incomprehensible babble businesses are spouting, each followed by an eminently better way to express it.

You’ll learn how to create clear, concise, kickass communications: LinkedIn profiles, websites, email messages, social media posts, ads, press releases, resumes, presentations, brochures, white papers, interoffice correspondence…what did I miss?

Tips are incisive and blunt (I pull no punches). Easily remembered. And immediately useful. Like this inaugural tip:

Enough with the Platitudes. Please!

God-awful bad messaging is plagued by litanies of clichés and banalities writers believe exude a corporate luster simply because virtually every corporation exudes them.

Not a good reason to lard your work with unedifying copycat puffery, the communications equivalent of processed foods with zero fiber.

It has no staying power for a simple reason:

You are not something simply because you say you are.

Prove it. Illustrate it. Validate it.

Unsupported off-the-shelf pronouncements are ubiquitous—and lazy—as many bloated corporate documents attest to.

Here is a compendium of some of the more bankrupt expressions a company might gush, followed by the opportunities they missed to say something that sticks:

BUSINESS BLATHER: Our products are in a class by themselves.

Is that so? What products? What class?

BETTER: We offer the only electric mowers with mulching, rear collection and side discharge options.

That’s more like it. Put it right out there, up top. Then there’s:

BUSINESS BLATHER: We adhere to the most exacting standards.

Whose standards? Yours? Ed’s? The lady down the street’s?

BETTER: All of our precision components comply with ISO 9001:2015 quality management system requirements.?

Even if the reader doesn’t know exactly what that is, validation from a respected source is way more convincing than none at all.

BUSINESS BLATHER: Our customer service is second to none.

True or not (mostly not), every company makes this claim in one form or another. To preempt the snickering, show proof:

BETTER: We won the Middlebury Merchants Association Customer Service Award five straight years.

This BS promise is also everywhere:

BUSINESS BLATHER: We become your partner, treating your business as if it were our own.

Really? You want to be my partner? Great. Cosign my business loans. Share in my losses. Help pay my taxes.

BETTER: We assign to you a team of experts, dedicated to achieving your sales and marketing objectives.

You get the idea. Replace those threadbare boasts with real substance, solid evidence, credible endorsements.

Subscribe now to receive a free weekly tip on how to write like your career depends on it. (Because it does.)

? 2024 Jerry McTigue

Jerry McTigue is an industry-honored copywriter who is the author of seven books and a member of the American Society of Journalists & Authors (ASJA).

Based on the book Business Blather: Stop Using Words That Sound Good But Say Nothing! Available on amazon.com in both print and Kindle editions.