sf-admin

An occasional celebration of words and writing worth reading.  Or best avoided.

Word love – Words to savour

Lugubrious.  I mean, what’s not to love? Rolls around the mouth, sounds decadent, dangerous, even.  But actually it just means gloomy.  Thanks to my ten-year-old son for this one. Who knew Just William would offer up so much more than jolly japes and scrapes. 

Agitprop.  I should probably have known this one, but that goes for many things.  Not an easy one to sneak into conversation, but I’ll give it a go.  In case you’re wondering: political propaganda often in art or literature.

Asmr.  Did you know there’s a word for the tingly feeling that fills your brain and body when you hear repeated soft, calming sounds like whispering or crinkling?  (Susurration is a brilliantly onomatopoeic word for the sounds themselves.)  More an acronym masquerading as a word, but even so.  It’s got its own branch of marketing too. 

Acme.  Not a misspelling of teenage misery, but a pinnacle, an apex, a zenith.  Surely one I can weave into work.

Word less – Words we could do without

Transformational.  Writing about new technologies involves a lot of transformation.  And almost as much revolution, power harnessing and unlocking.  The potential for artificial intelligence and the like to do boring, time-consuming things better is pretty amazing, but the challenge of boiling down what makes your version of it special without resorting to the same words as everyone else is a tough one.

Space.  Neither stellar nor scenic, in the world of corporate jargon, this one occupies more of itself than it should.  A bugbear I can’t fully explain but nonetheless always, always makes me shudder.

Words in context – Words worth a read or listen

Robert Macfarlane’s Underworld is taking my breath away.  How does he write so lyrically, so evocatively that I’m hooked on dirt, caves and fungus?  So many sentences I have to re-read to admire their mastery.

The poetry pharmacy.  Poetry is not a form I usually find easy to engage with, but William Sieghart’s The Poetry Pharmacy feeds my soul. Prescribing poems as medicine for a particular ailment gives my reading of them context and focus.  He’s good at sticking to excerpts and short ones too.   

Lincoln in the Bardo.  Utterly unique style of writing.  Initially I baulked. Hard work to keep track, no flow, so many voices.  But days later I’m still there at the graveyard with sweary Betsy and Eddie and the eternally damned Reverend.

Long-form ads.  An idle rifle through D&AD’s The Copy Book offers many examples of long-form story-based advertising I rarely see in the world at large – Jack Daniels London Underground ads are the only ones that come to mind.  Has the form disappeared along with attention spans?  This recent piece in The Creative Review made me laugh in recognition at what has replaced it.  But as the author points out, perhaps the new oldest ad agency in London is here to shake things up.  

Being your own client can be a tough gig.  I learnt that lesson rebranding my own business and launching a new website last year.  Now I’m the other side, I can see I learned other valuable lessons too..

Lesson 1: Know your limits

At the start, all I knew was that my years-old website and generic company name did a poor job of showcasing what I do and where I wanted my business to go. 

A new name that felt authentic, interesting and would last was anyone’s guess, and applying the creative idea process to myself by myself was hard.  I enjoy how two minds riff off each other and explore ideas more fully by testing them from different perspectives.  Objectivity also helps keep those minds open, something I couldn’t have as my own client.  As for a logo and web design, my initial foray into DIY did not impress.  Yes, there are lots of apps for creating logos and websites, but as someone without a confident design eye, would I really be able to create a brand and site that said good things about my business before you even read a word on the page?

I decided I needed help.  A naming brainstorm over a bike ride and a beer with the lovely Katie from Supafrank followed (could a meeting get any better?).  As we explored Katie’s initial thoughts on routes we could take, a light started to flicker.

Lesson 2: Get your brand right and your voice will follow

Our brainstorm ping-ponged from butter (ideas worth spreading) to nettles (difficult topics handled), threads (unravelling a tangled story) and more, but the word I kept coming back to was ‘fathom’.  A few iterations and domain name checks later and we arrived somewhere interesting.

A brand name that had meaning instantly set a new tone for the business – more purposeful, more confident.  When it came to life as a logo and web design, it made me look at the web copy I had so carefully drafted with fresh eyes. 

Rewriting the words took far less time with the brand identity as my guide.  Qualifiers felt too hesitant (‘in some cases’, ‘potentially’), sentences condensed, descriptions disappeared.   A fun, confident design needed words and tone to match.

Lesson 3: Make time your friend. Or phone a friend

It also helped that weeks had elapsed between writing the first draft of the website copy and coming back to it with the new brand.  Time gave me distance and objectivity.  I could appraise what I had written without feeling emotionally invested. 

Even so, a second, more objective, pair of eyes was invaluable.  By asking questions and playing back what she heard, Katie helped take the corners off the copy for a much stronger end product.

Lesson 4: You decide

That said, I also learned that ultimately the decisions are mine – which name to choose, which logo, which colours, which web design, which words.  Others can offer opinions and advise on possible implications, but only I decide.  At first this felt daunting, but in the end I love the fact that the brand and voice were chosen by me to best articulate my business’ personality and purpose.

Lesson 5: Design and words are like strawberries and cream

As a words person, I love how picture people’s brains work.  Going through my own rebrand process showed me just how well the two work together.

A brand identity starts with an idea.  Mine started with ‘Exploring the creative journey to unravel a juicy story.’  Those words inspired Katie’s dynamic and playful visual design.

But words also spring from design, as I mentioned at the start of this post.  Once we had the punchy pink banners at the top of each web page, for example, I knew I needed punchy words to do them justice.

I often find that people are more comfortable with either words or visuals.  Some may not be confident with either.  Reality is, each needs to enhance the other for the strongest impact.  I know my limits, and I’m glad I got such good help with the visual side.

Lesson 6: You get what you pay for

There are many inexpensive or free online services and DIY options that could have helped me create a logo and website that were better than what I had before.  But I felt that none of them would have set my brand apart.  I chose to invest in an experienced and talented creative expert and a specialist WordPress developer to get a brand and website I felt would take my business forward.  What I also got was guidance, an objective perspective, and the confidence to make brave decisions.  I’m delighted with the results.

Like public speaking, writing for a business can feel exposing, and people often put a mask on their writing to cope.

What does that mask look like?  If someone wants to sound impressive, authoritative, and trustworthy, they often start with formality and distance.  That’s the traditional corporate tone, and it often involves three styles of writing:

In the third person – It was a problem to be solved

Using abstract nouns instead of verbs – The automation of the process enabled…

Or using a passive voice – The test was passed, and the product continued into development.

Given our cultural shift away from the suited and booted, business writing can also swing towards overly casual:

hey!  guess what… we passed the test!

C’mon in, we’re all ears 🙂

The best business writing, like the best public speakers, resonates far more than either of these extremes.  It sounds authentic.

So how can you ensure your writing sounds genuine, whether ‘you’ are a huge global business or a one-woman band?

Golden rule #1: Speak their language

‘Their’ being your audience, and their language being their needs, goals, worries, interests – the real things they care about. 

Will this help me get promoted?

Will this make or save me money?

Will this make a difference / nail the board meeting / get me home early enough to see the kids / make my job less stressful?

Think of a presentation to introduce a senior leader whose support for your product could be make or break.  In the first thirty seconds you have to show you know what matters to them and that you and your product can deliver it. 

We help you get in the door of new clients and sell more of your services to clients you already have.  We are doing it for part of your business already, but we believe there is potential to grow your revenue further.

Now take the same product and introduce it to managers who will be using it every day. 

We give you the information you need in real time so you know where your tasks might slip and how to stop that happening so your project stays on track and you and your team get home on time.

Tailoring is hardly rocket science, but that doesn’t make it any less important.  It’s really easy to just bang out a ‘this is what is happening’ or ‘this is what we do’ message – working inside-out rather than outside-in. 

Starting with the audience helps every form of business writing hit the mark – from advertising headlines right through to employee process or system notifications.

More than emotional language

But speaking their language isn’t only about connecting with your audience as human beings, it’s also about the language of their work. 

I read a LinkedIn article about AI last week, a topic I’ve spent some time with so I’m familiar with the lingo.  Even so, after every few sentences came one that made no sense to me.  There was so much assumed technical knowledge that only a narrow set of people would understand the piece.  Which is absolutely fine if that’s your intention. 

Jargon is a fine line to walk. In some cases you need to use the accepted terminology to be credible.  In others, plain English keeps your reader reading on.  Drowning your message in double speak is a no-no in both – the jargon has to sit within sentences that mean something.

Golden rule #2: Find your voice

An entrepreneur told me recently that she tried using an agency to write content for her investment businesses, but the tone just wasn’t right – she’d never say what they had written in the way they wrote it.  I’m glad she stopped using them, as how she writes is both distinctive and impactful.  You can tell she writes from experience of her field and her customers.

That authenticity is increasingly important.  When it’s so easy to find content, we only bother reading stuff that resonates.  Tone is a big part of that, along with a feeling of value being exchanged – you are making me think, laugh or be inspired and I am giving your writing my time and attention. 

Big brands, whether corporate, consumer, public sector or charity will usually have well-defined voices, and clear guidelines on applying them across different media.  It may not make it to every touch point every time, but writing in a consistent, authentic style makes a difference to how their brand is perceived, especially when they talk about things their target audience care about.    

If you’re a smaller company, or just starting out, it can be hard to know what voice to use, or how to break down what voice means.  My advice is to do a bit of thinking first: about your audience and what matters to them; about what your brand stands for, what you want to achieve with it, and how that translates to how you write and what you write about. 

If you have time, look at what others are doing and what they achieve in terms of shares, likes, profile.  Analyse your own response to different styles of writing and which feel authentic to you. 

Gather all that input into an idea of the style you think will work and test it.  See what response you get and refine from there.  Wherever your voice ends up, don’t forget the other golden rule.  Their power is how they work together.

Have you noticed how hot women and money are right now?  From money magazines entreating us to be ‘financially fabulous’ to investment firms eyeing up our market potential, the female financial star is definitely rising.

It’s about time, of course.  Half the population, just saying.

But the way some financial firms are writing for women makes me wonder – is it as simple as feeding our shopping habit, softening the language or stoking up ra-ra feminist fist-raising?

Maybe it is for some.  But I reckon there’s more to the job of getting women interested and engaged in making their money work harder.   So here are my top 6 tips for writing about finance so women listen, along with some examples of organisations I think are getting it right.

Tip 1: Banish lazy stereotypes

Starling Bank’s Make Money Equal campaign highlights astounding bias in how the media talks to men and women when it comes to money. 

It’s an easy trap to fall into, from language to images to underlying messages and stories that propagate unnuanced views on what women think, feel and do. 

“You’re young? Great, let’s see how you can cut back so you have more to shop with!

Middle aged?  Ah, well we can help you save for the kids and manage your household budget.

Older?  Just give me your husband’s number.”

As for pensions, insurance and investing, well, those are just too complicated, too boring or too risky for women at any age.

While there may be kernels of truth in some of the stereotypes, if you’re going to build your message around attitudes, needs or behaviours specific to women, my advice is to be careful.  Build your narrative around ideas that empower and recognise positive female experiences or traits rather than a generic stereotype.  Even better, turn stereotypes on their head like Sport England’s brilliant ‘This Girl Can’ campaign is doing for women getting active.

Research as much as you can afford to so your profiles are evidence-based rather than relying on received wisdom or views of women in your team who may not be your target audience.   And finally, give your writing a good kick to loosen any false generalisations or assumptions, preferably with the help of women like those you want to reach. 

Tip 2: Keep it simple

Not simple as in finance for dummies, but simple as in straightforward.  Stick it to jargon big time – we really don’t have time to translate meaningless words into something to care about (I’m fairly sure most men don’t either). 

Being more human is an excellent place for many finance firms to start.  Do the work to simplify your message so it’s relatable and understandable.  Then write it as if you were talking to them in person, only better. 

Legal & General’s beginner guide to investing gets this right for me.  Simple, straightforward language in a conversational tone that isn’t annoyingly casual or patronising, it just tells it like it is.  Great for everyone, no gender excluded.  Financial opinion and advice website Boringmoney.com also does this well, as do challenger banks such as Monzo.  To be fair, most of our high street banks aren’t bad either – even the letters have started to make sense most of the time.

Tip 3: Assume we’re capable

Just because we don’t spend much time investing doesn’t mean we can’t.  We’re just not choosing to.  If your tone implies we’re fully capable of making sound financial decisions when firms like yours work with us and for us, I think you’ll find many more women listening, from millennials to baby boomers. 

I like the Savvywoman website for this.  It covers every aspect of money with informative wide-ranging articles.   There’s no sense that some topics are for women and others not – it covers topics from types of investment to pet insurance, all written in a straightforward, factual tone that neither dumbs down nor over complicates.  Which brings me to tip 4.

Tip 4: Beware the perilous trio: the Shoulds, the Judgy and the Patronising

Who honestly needs more shoulds in their life.  It’s exhausting to be told constantly what you should or shouldn’t be doing – with money as with anything else.  To avoid it think carefully before using dictatorial-sounding commands like ‘do this’, ‘think that’, or ‘feel this way’.  Instead, try a softer tone (‘many women feel’), lead with evidence (‘21% of women tell us that’) and generally focus on what getting more engaged with my money will do for me – make me want the good stuff and help me see what I’m missing out on (see tip 5).

As for being judgy, it’s easy to sound like you’re judging what women do or how they feel.  

“If women worried less about risk, they’d have more income for the long-term.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being cautious about risk, which more women are than men according to research, nor indeed about asking questions to feel informed before making important decisions.  In fact, a more cautious approach can be more successful, as George Soros puts so well.  

“If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.” George Soros

The key, then, is to acknowledge behaviours and the likely reasons behind them in a neutral tone before offering explanations or solutions.  The above example on risk could be more like this:

“Women tell us they don’t invest because it feels too risky.  It’s true that all investments carry risk that their value goes down as well as up, but there are many investment options with lower risk that will still grow your savings more than keeping them as cash.”

Legal and General’s investing guide is an example of covering risk well – it informs the reader in a balanced, neutral way and guides them through possible solutions.

Now we get to the big-ticket hackle-raiser: talking down to us.  Well, I say try it and let the she-verse show you what we think.  Ellevest founder, Sallie Krawchek, covers this one brilliantly in this great piece on Fast Company.

Avoiding a patronising tone is something even good work can struggle with.  Take Visa’s excellent multi-year Money is Changing campaign to break the last taboo of talking about money. 

The messaging and ‘we’re in it with you’ tone work well in general, but phrases in the research report such as ‘view some survey tidbits below’ jarred with me.  Do findings have to be ‘tidbits’ for women to want to engage?    How about just ‘see some survey highlights below’ or ‘see what our survey uncovered below’?

Tip 5: Fire us up with facts   

Particularly ones that make us think.  Like more of us living to 100 with more chance we have less put away for that longer retirement than our lovely man-friends.  And how we’re missing out on loads of extra savings by not investing, even if we don’t have loads of money in the first place.  Oh, and how about that we’re actually pretty good at investing when we do have a go?

A great example of doing this well is Ellevest, an online investing platform for women in the U.S..  Their pitch on why they’re ‘for women’ is built on facts that show simply and clearly why women taking ownership of their financial future matters.  Boringmoney.com gets this right too, with facts prominent on the page and within the copy.

Tip 6:  Men are not the enemy

Avoiding man-bashing can be a tricky one to pull off, as talk of gender pay gaps, investing gaps and all the other gaps inevitably pits women against men.  Yes, we’re still breaking centuries of patriarchy to create a world where women and men have equal financial access and agency.  But there are many men who believe that is wrong, and many who are just as put off by alpha male stereotyping in financial services as women.  I don’t believe men are the enemy – we need men and women to work on this together so it’s better for all of us.

For me, this is where facts and evidence are crucial, coupled with a positive, balanced tone that explains the gaps but doesn’t come off as anti-men.  In my experience working on campaigns for women, this one sits alongside talking down and shoulds: all three need to be robustly tested every step of the way.  

So, there you have it – six tips I’d love a future me not to need.  Here’s hoping that future isn’t science-fiction.