Over the weekend, I came across a blog post about whether our blogs are “Real People” friendly, and that got me to thinking. Yes, it’s important that our blogs are “real people” friendly… but so is everything that we use to communicate with present and potential customers and business contacts.
How often do you use industry-specific lingo when speaking with people not involved in your industry? Do you use a lot of technical jargon that may not make sense to the ordinary person?
The way you communicate can be a fine line to walk. On one hand, you don’t want to completely alienate people by assuming they know exactly what you are talking about, especially if there are a lot of industry-specific ideas and terms that they may not have come across before. On the other hand, you definitely don’t want to talk down to them, and imply that you think they don’t know anything about your products or services either. You can’t assume either, so how can you do this?
You probably want to lay off the technical jargon at the beginning. Once you start getting more in depth with educating someone about your products and services, you can start using technical phrases, but remember that anything only industry professionals use would use needs to be explained. How would you clarify what you mean for your spouse (if he/she doesn’t work in your industry)? Your parents? Neighbours? Think on that briefly before talking to potential customers and contacts about your products and services.