Presentation Note Taking

This morning I co-presented a workshop on social media for real estate agents with Andy Ciordia and Beth Griffiths.  The Broker In Charge asked us to provide the presentation in advance so that she could print it out for everyone to  take notes on.

This is what people ask you to do because they’re accustomed to death by PowerPoint. In such a death, the speaker lards the presentation with bullet points and basically reads them to the audience (like a first grade teacher at story time).

We don’t subject people to so-called presentations of this ilk.

Our presentations lend visual interest to what’s being said and reinforce the points.

Responding to the request

What did we do? We devised a handout for “guided note taking” that gave our audience questions and prompts to go with the slides.  For example, Stop thinking about “creating” traffic. With social media, it’s about “getting in front” of it. What are you doing to use web-based sites and tools to get people to notice you?

Try this technique next time and be sure to wind it down with a solid question like these:

• How many homes would I have to sell each month to pay for this service?
• How many more homes could I list/sell if I were doing this?

In case you’ve never seen this video on the proper use of PowerPoint (or any multimedia during a presentation) be sure to watch it here.

March Book Lust

Big news: I’m writing a book with Matt Davio called Tradeoffs: Leveraging the Longs & Shorts of Life. We’ll use the language and practices of those who trade for a living to frame life’s tradeoffs: time for money,  freedom for convention,  risk for reward, and money for goods and services.

In a post-meltdown world where so many people feel the stakes are higher and the margin for error more narrow than ever before, Tradeoffs will introduce a general interest reader to how traders view “scalp,” “swing,” “directional,” “fade” or “breakout” trading setups, how they mitigate risk, and how they live with the outcomes of their trades.

We have a book agent who’s excited about the project and will help us get the proposal in tip-top shape by the end of April so he can hit the road with it.  Stay tuned!

Trading From Your Gut: How To Use Right Brain Instinct & Left Brain Smarts To Become a Master Trader

by Curtis Faith

Reviewed by Dasan: Legendary trader Richard Dennis believed that trading was so simple that anyone with the right training and psychology could do it successfully. After making millions for himself in the commodity, stock, and FOREX markets, he trained complete novices how to trade in 2 weeks. He called them the “turtles.” He was right – a large number of the “turtles” went on to become very successful traders in their own right. Curtis Faith, the author of this book, was one of best of the turtles.

In “Trading From Your Gut” Curtis Faith’s discusses a central aspect of trading success: Intuition. While most mediocre traders let emotions drive their trading, better traders use primarily rational thought. The best traders of all, the master traders, use a balance of intuition and rational thought. Like the experienced poker player that just knows what the other player has, these master traders can identify trend reversals simply by “gut feel” which comes from a combination of experience and underlying rational thought.

This is an excellent book for the intermediate level investor. The author does give a basic explanation of a rudimentary swing trade system, but it is just enough knowledge to be dangerous. I would not recommend this book for a rank novice. However, if you have some experience trading stocks or commodities already, this book is extremely valuable. For me as an experienced hedge fund investor, I found his concepts mainly affirmed in a concise way what has taken me years to learn. In this way, this book could make a moderately experienced trader more successful very quickly.

The main thesis of the book is the importance of intuition in trading, especially by experienced traders who already have mastered their emotions. He says it like this: “A balance between left-brain analysis and right-brain intuition is critical for optimal trading.” He quotes many experts in this book, which adds a lot of value; for example, he quotes Barry Ritholz’s idea that “wisdom is the capability to have `strong opinions, weakly held.’” Faith emphasizes the importance for a master trader to think independently. He writes “If you want to be a master trader, you need to develop your own reasons for making trades.” He illustrates the concept of waiting for the right trade by comparing it to surfing at the beach, waiting for the right wave. The book is full of detailed examples like this, which illustrate his trading concepts. Faith wraps up the book with a discussion on ways to limit risk by being flexible, having a plan “B” and sizing positions properly to avoid overcommitment of your capital.

This book is valuable to any serious trader or investor looking to raise the level of their game. Novice investors have other volumes to read first.

Here’s my co-author Matt  interviewing author Curtis Faith:

The Back Channel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever

by Cliff Atkinson

Reviewed by yours truly:  This book caught my eye because it grasped a phenomenon I’ve observed at events where the audience gives more eyeball time to their netbooks and smart phones than to the presenter. I figured someday I’d figure out how to harness the power of this behavior, and author Cliff Atkinson beat me to it. Mr Atkinson is THE authority to write on the matter. In addition to writing Beyond Bullet Points,  he designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict in the nation’s first Vioxx trial in 2005. Fortune magazine called the presentations “frighteningly powerful.”

For those new to the back channel and the ways of Twitter, never fear. The book starts there, not with boring  exposition, but with a real-life event where panelist Guy Kawasaki noticed a critical tweet (Twitter update) about him and asked the tweep (person who tweeted) to step up and explain the remark.  After setting the context for Twitter and the back channel with this case study, Mr Atkinson goes into the mechanics of Twitter and other technological means for sustaining an official back channel.

The part of the book that everyone presenting can use (with or without a back channel) describes how to be an editor, curator and taste-maker to your audience. Thinking of yourself in these ways makes it 100% easier to craft a presentation.

Mr Atkinson outlines a strategy for JOINING the back channel’s conversation, including how to manage a “conversational presentation.”  Presenters with and without a back channel should follow this advice

You can no longer get away with putting up a slide that lists Agenda or Introduction at the start of your presentation. Nor can you get away with kicking off your presentation with too many details or a list of your accomplishments. In a world in which your audience is accustomed to high-quality media at their fingertips, you need to capture their attention out of the gate. You must engage your audience within the first five slides or at least the first five minutes of your presentation.

The book offers a chapter on how to handle the positive and negative feedback from the back channel.  Particularly helpful is the advice that speakers should practice scenarios that put them in a range of difficult situations.  He gives five scenarios to practice: “You’re not listening to us;” Your Facts are wrong or misleading;” “Your material is a mismatch for us;” “Your material is boring;” and “You made me mad.”

Finally, relying on an excellent case study from a conference gone snarky via the backchannel, Mr Atkinson shows how Chris Brogan (author of Trust Agents) turned the situation around. Here’s the 10-point checklist for managing an unruly back channel:

1. Establish a reputation
2. Listen and collect stories
3. Dispense with pretense
4. Talk to the elephant in the room (if there is one)
5. Make it you, you, you instead of me, me, me
6. Check in with the audience early and often
7. Improvise
8. Stay grounded
9. Ignore the small stuff
10. Keep things in perspective

This slim volume is worth the $34.99 list price and includes a free 45-day searchable online edition. Both of my thumbs are way up.

Why We Make Mistakes: How we look without seeing, forget things in seconds, and are all pretty sure we are way above average

by Joseph T. Hallinan

Publishers Weekly review: Pulitzer winner for his stories on Indiana’s medical malpractice system, Hallinan has made himself an expert on the snafus of human psychology and perception used regularly (by politicians, marketers, and our own subconscious) to confuse, misinform, manipulate and equivocate. In breezy chapters, Hallinan examines 13 pitfalls that make us vulnerable to mistakes: “we look but don’t always see,” “we like things tidy” and “we don’t constrain ourselves” among them. Each chapter takes on a different drawback, packing in an impressive range of intriguing and practical real-world examples; the chapter on overconfidence looks at horse-racing handicappers, Warren Buffet’s worst deal and the secret weapon of credit card companies. He also looks at the serious consequences of multitasking and data overload on what is at best a two- or three-track mind, from deciding the best course of cancer treatment to ignoring the real factors of our unhappiness (often by focusing on minor but more easily understood details). Quizzes and puzzles give readers a sense of their own capacity for self-deception and/or delusion. A lesson in humility as much as human behavior, Hallinan’s study should help readers understand their limitations and how to work with them.

Genius on the Edge : The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted

by Gerald Imber

Intro to a Fresh Air interview with the author:  In the second half of the 19th century, New York City’s population swelled from several hundred thousand to just over 2 million people. Conditions were not pleasant: Sewers were virtually nonexistent; piles of manure sat several inches high on sidewalks; and the city was overrun by disease.

Medical practices of the time were crude, at best: If surgical procedures were performed, they were done without sterilizing the equipment or the operating room, and typically ended with the patient losing an entire limb, if not his life.

It was in this environment that Dr. William Halsted began his surgical career. Halsted, who began the nation’s first residency program, pioneered techniques ranging from blood transfusions to sterilizing operating rooms. He also developed the radical mastectomy — also known as the Halsted mastectomy — reducing the local recurrence of breast cancer in patients nearly 50 percent. When Johns Hopkins Hospital opened its Department of Surgery in 1889, Halsted was named its first supervisor.

Though his legacy suggests a medical pioneer who made surgery safer and more precise, Halsted’s life was frequently messy.

That dual life is examined in Gerald Imber’s new biography of the doctor, Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted.

Imber traces Halsted’s journey from a young Columbia-trained medical student to a successful surgeon who secretly suffered from several narcotic addictions. Imber, himself a plastic surgeon, says that while Halsted was a “rigid perfectionist in some portions of his life, [he was] totally negligent and forgetful in others. He could leave a patient in a hospital bed for weeks on end and forget to operate on them.”

Imber talks to Fresh Air about Halsted’s dual lives and about 19th century American medicine. Imber is an internationally known plastic surgeon who specializes in facial rejuvenation and noninvasive surgical techniques.

Please tell me if you have a book to recommend or review for April’s post.

Home Office Design Tips — From a Financial Advisor?

In my occasional series of crappy newsletters, here’s another, sent by a financial planner.

The only professional I want to get office design tips from is an interior designer or furniture vendor.

With financial reform and the worldwide economic meltdown on most everyone’s mind, sending a newsletter with fluff like this makes me question whether this advisor is in the loop or out to lunch. C’mon, talk to me about something you’re a credentialed expert in!

Oh, the money saving tips? Crap I could get from Reader’s Digest like take your lunch to work instead of eating out and get DVDs free at the public library instead of renting them. You must be kidding.

This is another fine example of sending something for the sake of sending something. This advisor needs an editorial calendar. Big Time.

Oh, and the last straw? She actually PAID a vendor to give her a proverbial communications black eye.

If your boilerplate requires you to disclaim giving financial advice, at least print some material that verges on the topic!

Sheesh.

The Triumph of Snail Mail?

Although I write a lot about e-newsletters and social media communications I’m always on the lookout for merging them with old school direct mail. I was prepared to skip this WSJ article on direct mail because at first glance it pertained to retailers.  Then the article told of an insurance broker using humorous postcards (including the one above) to great effect and I stopped skimming. The broker told the WSJ that when he stopped sending postcards clients complained — many of them collected the cards  as “cubical art.” When he resumed his postcard campaign, he scored a $270,000 new account.

This reminds me of the days when computers replaced handwritten correspondence and press-on labels — I opened the printed envelopes first. But now the novelty of a handwritten address gets my attention. Same with email — the novelty has worn off and most of us are filtering, unsubscribing and otherwise purging senders from our busy lives.

The article offered this as best practice for snail mail:

The idea is to send something that’s more appealing than “junk” mail and potentially more noticeable than an email message, says Eric Anderson, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. That allows business owners “to offer a personal touch the larger firms may not be able to have,” he says.

How well do you know your tribe?

I’m all for using whatever works for your audience, your tribe. I recently read Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk, known to many as the Wine Library TV guy. He’s crushing it on social media, especially video, and shares both his philosophy and tactics in the book. I picked up a thing or two from Gary myself (once I slim down I might even try some video!).

On the other end of the spectrum, one of my clients’ tribe is not web savvy, so she takes extra pains to label hot spots on her website (“click here”) instead of relying on them to mouse over without a prompt.  She recently discontinued her printed newsletter, started a blog and sends an email with each blog post.  I, on the other hand, don’t want to clog my subscribers’ inboxes with each blog update — a monthly newsletter with links to the past month’s posts works for my tribe.

Let’s start a productive conversation. I shared my content recycling strategy here – what’s yours? Here’s a little something on email’s dominance over social media – is this the case for your business? Please share your experience combining any and all forms of business communications/channels/media.

PIMCO’s Ring of Fire

Scroll down for writing prompts, bloggers & newsletter writers.

In my occasional series of publicly (and respectfully) editing business writing, this time I offer unsolicited advice to PIMCO, a leading global investment management firm, which publishes respected and widely-read newsletters.

Today I read  The Ring of Fire, written Mr William H. Gross, a founder of PIMCO who oversees the management of more than $800b of fixed income securities (among many other things). It started off well enough with a personal reflection on his long and distinguished career and the careers of others, but I’d have shortened this part by a couple of paragraphs.

Then the segue:

There have been numerous changeups and curveballs in the financial markets over the past 15 months or so. Liquidation, reliquidation and the substituting of the government wallet for the invisible hand of the private sector describe the events from 30,000 feet. Now that a semblance of stability has been imparted to the economy and its markets, the attempted detoxification and deleveraging of the private sector is underway.  Having survived due to a steady two-trillion-dollar-plus dose of government “Red Bull,” Adderal or simply black coffee, the global private sector is now expected by some to detox and resume a normal cyclical schedule where animal spirits and the willingness to take risk move front and center. But there is a problem. While corporations may be heading in that direction due to steep yield curves and government check writing that have partially repaired their balance sheets, their consumer customers remain fully levered and undercapitalized with little hope of escaping rehab as long as unemployment is at 10-20% levels worldwide. “Build it and they will come” is an old saw more applicable to Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams than today’s economy. “Say’s Law” proclaiming that supply creates its own demand is hardly applicable to a modern day credit-oriented society where credit cards are maxed out, 25% of homes are underwater, and job and income creation are nearly invisible.

OK, before you look at my table of edits below, ask yourself “What does he want me to know? What should I expect next?” Myself, I didn’t predict that he’d head into a global economic analysis since the segue focused exclusively on America. This isn’t fiction, or even narrative nonfiction,  Mr Gross, this is business writing. Point the headlights where you intend to steer the vehicle.

Surgical edits to what WAS written

I’ll say this, the article is full of writing prompts

My editing scalpel safely retired to the autoclave, I took some points from Mr Gross’ article to help bloggers and newsletter writers in search of a juicy topic.

• The PIMCO Ring of Fire includes the US, Japan and six European countries whose public debt is most likely to reach 90% of GDP (with an ensuing 1% fall in growth). If you look at the graph (a nice one) you’ll see that the countries identified as less likely than those in the Ring of Fire to stumble are Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Australia. Mr Gross says these countries are “considered to be most conservative and potentially more solvent, with the potential for higher growth.” If you’re a Forex trader advisor or investor, does this have any bearing on your recommendations or holdings?

• Mr Gross argues for tilting growth-focused (and currency) assets toward countries like China, India and Brazil. What’s your position and why, advisors and investors?
  

• If you want to avoid developing economies, Mr Gross says look north to Canada, our more conservative neighbor (I wrote about this here). He also says to avoid the UK. How does this inform your investment strategy?
  

• Last year Denmark (one of the countries farthest from the Ring of Fire) was named “The happiest country on Earth” by social scientists at Blue Zones Project . ABC ‘s 20/20 story homed in on the social egalitarianism of Danes, who don’t derive great personal status from their job choices. “Denmark is what is called a ‘post consumerist’ society. People have nice things, but shopping and consuming is not a top priority. Even the advertising is often understated. Along with less emphasis on ‘stuff,’ and a strong social fabric, Danes also display an amazing level of trust in each other, and their government.”  Comment on what this might foretell about the path of American deleveraging– do the Danes lead you to believe the deleveraging Mr Gross describes might not be all that bad after all?

• While we’re on the subject, Danes pay some of the highest taxes in the world — between 50 percent and 70 percent of their incomes. In exchange, the government covers all health care and education, and spends more on children and the elderly than any country in the world per capita. What say ye about health insurance reform, Americans?

• In the most recent study of happiness, directed by University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart and administered from Stockholm, “the survey found that freedom of choice, gender equality, and increased tolerance are responsible for a considerable rise in overall world happiness. The results shatter the more simplistic and traditionally accepted notion that wealth is the determining factor, says Inglehart.”  Is it possible that we Americans can learn to see ourselves — and each other — differently after this shared economic hardship?

Where’s the News in Your Newsletter?

My inbox is clogged with so-called newsletters from people who must have made a resolution to “communicate more” or “do more marketing” in 2010.

Most of them are, in a word, crap.

In two words, self serving.

In three words, not worth reading.

Win a lifetime gift certificate for my services

If you can find the “news” in this “newsletter” I’ll work for you for the rest of my life for free!

(Redacted) brings proven, practical solutions to business challenges with a clear focus on the bottom line. We represent (verbal diahrrea). Our Practice Areas include:

CONSULTING and TRAINING (8 bullets)

COACHING (4 bullets)

If you’ve read this far you’re one in a million.

CAREER TRANSITION (2 bullets)

SALES PERFORMANCE AND REVENUE GROWTH (5 bullets)

(Redacted) mission is to assist organizations in developing and sustaining inclusive environments where all employees can do their best work (blah blah blah).

We work with organizations (yada yada yada).

If you’ve read this far you’re one in a billion.

An advertisement lodged into a newsletter template

This is  best described as an awful ad or an internal document designed to remind the staff who they are and what they do. Releasing it to the public is a sure way to lose subscribers or gain a reputation with your service provider as a spammer.

Not sure what to write about?

Afraid you’ll run afoul of federal CAN-SPAM regs?

Anything I can do to help? 704-907-2811

Best advice: ask yourself, “Would I read this if it came from someone else?” The sender of this advertisement would surely have to answer “No.”

Editing the Fed

I’ve been so bold as to edit Prince Charles and the pope, so why not the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank?

Consider the Fed’s analysis of Canadian vs. American housing and lending trends.

Why Canada might be “a country that got things right”

The report led off well enough:

Housing markets in the United States and Canada are similar in many respects, but each has fared quite differently since the onset of the financial crisis. A comparison of the two markets suggests that relaxed lending standards likely played a critical role in the U.S. housing bust.

It’s written in easily-understood prose and comes to a succinct conclusion. But if you read the report (and re-read once or twice), you’ll agree that my re-write would have been a better approach, not just by virtue of the writing, but also by virtue of the more comprehensive (and candid) conclusion:

Unlike the U.S., Canada has not experienced a dramatic increase in mortgage defaults, nor has any Canadian bank required a government bailout. This article explores the differences between the two countries’ monetary policies, financial services structure and regulation, and the kinds of mortgage products offered. While the primary culprit behind the American financial services crisis was the rise in subprime loans,  those products, and indeed the housing bubble itself, were enabled by monetary policy and financial services regulation.

Conclusions drive structure

An introduction like this would have led to an entirely different STRUCTURE of the paper, as well.  As written, the Fed meandered through data on housing prices, loan-to-value stats, delinquency rates, central bank target rates, and benchmark mortgage interest rates before getting around to contextualizing them. Most readers’ eyes were glazed over by then.

I would have taken the inverse approach, noting the differences in subprime booms between the countries (and the American bust) and then comparing and contrasting the factors that DROVE those differences, including monetary policy and regulation.  I would also have quoted sociologists on the differences in risk tolerance between us and our “neighbors to the north” as we so often call them.

The Fed is not apolitical, so I guess I should give a nod to the possibility that it was motivated to obfuscate.  Alas, these are the times in which we live.

Burned by Boilerplate

As we hurtle towards 2010 some financial advisors and life insurance agents keep communicating like it’s 1999.

The boilerplate communications racket

In the past week I got two identical Thanksgiving e-cards from different reps of the same general agency. Uh oh. It started with an email inviting me to “click here and view the card on a secured site…” which launched a browser, inside of which played a little flash file of autumnal photos — an animated version of the cheesiest Hallmark card ever printed. It was “customized” with the name of its sender.

Awash in meaninglessness

This week I got this email from a rep that said:  “Every few months, I try to keep my clients and friends up-to-date with current financial issues or critical concerns…” and once again I was invited to view this important update by linking to a secured site.

She set my expectations right up front by promising “up-to-date with current financial issues or critical trends.” I don’t know about you, but I thought  “financial issues or critical trends” might include  something like financial services reform and how this rep is going to go above and beyond the  regs to assure my confidence. Or perhaps a report on how how certain classes of annuities performed… How naive of me.

I clicked the link and got a flash-powered thingy that looked like a PowerPoint deck. The lead screen made the further promise “Providing valuable information of particular interest to you.” Wow, to me!

I then learned that (gasp) “Most people are frustrated by the amount of income tax they’re paying.” Really?

Next came a little lesson on the miracle of compounding interest. Be still my beating heart.

At the end I learned that there was a difference between tax-deferred and taxable income. A targeted message if ever there was one.

And what was the conclusion?  “There could be ways to reduce your tax liability and optimize growth!“  You’re kidding!  Somebody thought of that?

Then there was the lame call to action “Please provide information.” Clicking through I faced a comment box and the warning that I should allow 48 hours for a representative to get back to me. 48 hours? No one in 2009 is going to be that patient. If they want a product they could already buy it online in 48 hours.

You need to stop this. Right now!

I know you work under compliance regs and some companies and agencies are tougher than others.

I also know that these boilerplate services cut deals with the companies and agencies.

Still, there’s no excuse for sending out crap, absolute crap. If your compliance department won’t allow anything besides this boilerplate pablum, abstain altogether.

If your company has an approval process for customized communications, get on the stick! If not, pick the phone off  its cradle and call your clients to wish them a happy new year. THAT will get their attention.

Authenticity can’t be bought, but is priceless

If you’re doing a mass customization communications campaign, do the job properly. For clues of where this boilerplate went into the ditch, look for my snarky comments above in blue.

If this all sounds like work, you’re right. Tell you what, give me a copy of your compliance requirements and I’ll devise a compliant communications strategy.

Devising your Editorial Calendar

Exhortations to “publish, publish, publish” forget the most important advice: publish something worthwhile. To communicate in a meaningful way build an editorial calendar and stock your content pantry.

Building blocks for an editorial calendar

Seasonality. The US tax season drives business to accountants, but also  drives a spike in calls to financial advisors and some attorneys. Surely there is seasonality in your business, too. What seasonal issues do your clients face? Can you come up with one for each month of the year?

Key Messages. One of my clients is a JD-CPA who specializes in estate and succession planning. His newsletter’s target audience are accountants and financial planners. He writes about triggering events in their clients’ lives that might cause them to consult with an estate planning professional, making liberal use of case studies. What are the top ten things your clients need to know? What are the top five mistakes your clients made before working with you? What are the three most expensive errors your clients make when trying to go it alone?

Political calendar. Here in the States, 2010 is an election year, so candidates will be talking about change. Seize the momentum and prepare a series of articles or posts on topics likely to get news coverage. If you play your cards right (or hire a public relations pro) you might have the good fortune of being quoted by mainstream media.

The 24×7 news cycle. You can’t plan ahead for all breaking news, but you can capitalize on it. Once you know your key messages you’ll be surprised how often something in the news prompts you for a blog post or newsletter article.

Build a content pantry of key messages

Back in ye olde days (before 1980 or so!) people stocked “staples” in their kitchens/pantries including flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, herbs, spices…you get the idea. This made it easy to whip up a myriad of dishes with the addition of items that can’t sit on the shelf as long.

Think of your key messages as a “content pantry.” One of my clients, a mortgage planner, has this in his content pantry:

• A written mortgage planning philosophy
• Case studies of how people in various phases of life can apply his philosophy
• A recommended process for people to find and finance the right house
• Case studies of refinancing strategies gone well and gone badly
• Some mortgage planning tools like a Household Blended Debt Rate calculator
• A list of mistakes people often make when house/mortgage shopping

Add a seasonal calendar

The mortgage planner’s calendar includes:

• First Quarter:
  • Good financial/budgeting hygiene
  • Planning ahead to making deposits on colleges (refi may be in order)
  • Tax season
• Second Quarter:
  • People start thinking about selling their home
  • Get a mortgage plan before falling in love with a house
  • Local stats on home values, appreciation,  school boundary changes & other things of interest to shoppers
• Third Quarter:
  • Basic financial advice (evergreen topics)
  • Reminders to come in for an annual mortgage review
  • Looking ahead at funding college
• Fourth Quarter:
  • September is Life Insurance Awareness month; he talks about the role of insurance in an overall mortgage strategy
  • Year-end/first-of-year planning topics (might include refi)

Ready to publish

This client is basically ready to go. When something hits the news, he already has key messages from which to base commentary. How’d he get to this point? I helped.

You can do this, too. What are you waiting for?

Low-Jargon Financial Blogs & Newsletters

I write blogs and newsletters for attorneys, advisors and accountants. These professionals often need to provide complex information without making their clients’ eyes glaze over.

Professionals  with compliance/malpractice concerns  too often navigate the middle of the road where nothing meaningful is communicated. Some admit they hope readers will pick up the phone and call for clarification “on the clock.” Bad strategy.

Everyone faces this challenge of writing thorough-yet-understandable communications  from time to time. Here are writing tips for newsletter or blog writers who aspire to communicate without using jargon on one hand, or dumbing down the message on the other.

It’s a conversation, not a treatise

• Provide links to jargon, technical definitions and 50-cent SAT words like “treatise.” This way, everyone can get as much info as they need on their own and your writing doesn’t bog down
• Don’t mistake your articles for term papers!
  • Use headers, bolds and links to enable (gasp) skimming
  • Avoid passive voice; use active voice
  • Write to the appropriate reading level of your audience
    • Run your copy through a fog index calculator (tells the number of years of education needed to understand what you’ve written)
    • If you use Google Docs, click Tools>Word Count and find the analysis at the bottom
• You’re not a professor
  • Don’t try to tell everything you know about the subject. Pare it down to the essentials
  • For weighty topics, write a series of short articles
  • Provide an intro to the topic in your newsletter and link to your blog/elsewhere for details. If you can find a video (or make one yourself) your audience will be grateful. Here’s how one of my clients does it
  • Leverage industry videos and handouts (be sure to comply with licensing and copyrights)

Engage readers

• Invite them to leave comments and comment on those of others
• Offer a free worksheet to help them apply the information to their lives — invite them to review the information with you off the clock, if appropriate
• Ask readers to weigh in on a topic by linking to a survey that gives them the option to see how their answers compare to those of other respondents
• Poll readers for future articles on similar/related subjects

Brains need variety

• 

  This infographic is from a parody site

  Use stories – our brains are wired for stories -and people “find” themselves in them.

• Use case studies for the same reasons

• Link to a narrated presentation deck or video to stimulate the story-receptive part of readers’ brains. One of my clients does this very well

• Use  infographics or produce your own charts and tables. FlowingData is a great resource to learn about them and you might find one to use there

What techniques have you or others used to make complex information digestible? What have you seen out there that turns you off? 

Next Page »