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?
September Book Lust
If you’ve read any of these, please write your thoughts/a review. Here’s what’s on my radar.
Shop Class as Soulcraft byMatthew B. Crawford
Philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Crawford presents a fascinating, important analysis of the value of hard work and manufacturing. He reminds readers that in the 1990s vocational education (shop class) started to become a thing of the past as U.S. educators prepared students for the “knowledge revolution.” Thus, an entire generation of American “thinkers” cannot, he says, do anything, and this is a threat to manufacturing, the fundamental backbone of economic development. Crawford makes real the experience of working with one’s hands to make and fix things and the importance of skilled labor. His philosophical background is evident as he muses on how to live a pragmatic, concrete life in today’s ever more abstract world and issues a clarion call for reviving trade and skill development classes in American preparatory schools. The result is inspired social criticism and deep personal exploration. Crawford’s work will appeal to fans of Robert Pirsig’s classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and should be required reading for all educational leaders. Highly recommended; Crawford’s appreciation for various trades may intrigue readers with white collar jobs who wonder at the end of each day what they really accomplished. – Library Journal
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor
On the morning of December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven-year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist, experienced a massive stroke when a blood vessel exploded in the left side of her brain. A neuroanatomist by profession, she observed her own mind completely deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life, all within the space of four brief hours. As the damaged left side of her brain–the rational, grounded, detail- and time-oriented side–swung in and out of function, Taylor alternated between two distinct and opposite realties: the euphoric nirvana of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace; and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized Jill was having a stroke, and enabled her to seek help before she was lost completely.
In My Stroke of Insight, Taylor shares her unique perspective on the brain and its capacity for recovery, and the sense of omniscient understanding she gained from this unusual and inspiring voyage out of the abyss of a wounded brain. It would take eight years for Taylor to heal completely. Because of her knowledge of how the brain works, her respect for the cells composing her human form, and most of all an amazing mother, Taylor completely repaired her mind and recalibrated her understanding of the world according to the insights gained from her right brain that morning of December 10th.
Today Taylor is convinced that the stroke was the best thing that could have happened to her. It has taught her that the feeling of nirvana is never more than a mere thought away. By stepping to the right of our left brains, we can all uncover the feelings of well-being and peace that are so often sidelined by our own brain chatter. A fascinating journey into the mechanics of the human mind, My Stroke of Insight is both a valuable recovery guide for anyone touched by a brain injury, and an emotionally stirring testimony that deep internal peace truly is accessible to anyone, at any time. — Amazon Review
The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of Da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped by Paul Strathern
Despite the convoluted title, this latest from award-winning British novelist and historian Strathern (Napoleon in Italy) is simply a good, straightforward history of Renaissance Italy during the turbulent decade around 1500, with emphasis on several important players. Pope Alexander VI, though not in the title, is the central player. Famously corrupt and ambitious, Alexander aimed to enlarge the Papal States and his family’s influence, and his son, Cesare Borgia, led papal armies in three cruelly successful campaigns. The leading diplomat of wealthy but feeble Florence, Machiavelli worked hard to fend off Borgia, but admired his brutal realism, portraying him as the ideal ruler in his classic, The Prince. Both men knew Leonardo da Vinci, and Borgia employed him as a military engineer. However, da Vinci exerted no political influence, so the author’s digressions into his art and ingenious (but mostly unrealized) inventions stand apart from the narrative. Readers will reel at this meticulous popular account of Renaissance tyranny, corruption, injustice and atrocities. 8 pages of color illus., b&w illus., maps. — Publishers Weekly
So Sue Me, Jackass!: Avoiding Legal Pitfalls That Can Come Back to Bite You at Work, at Home, and at Play by Amy Epstein Feldman and Robin Epstein
This informative, hilarious guide to the law will steer you through everything from on-line porn on the job to common-law marriage; from pet burials to Ponzi schemes. The Epstein sisters have fully mastered “I Sue,” the ancient, mysterious Jewish art of self-defense, and are, for the first time, sharing these secrets with gentiles. This book cannot replace a real lawyer when you get into trouble, but mastering its contents will save you from needing one.”–Ronald L. Kuby, Host, “Doing Time with Ron Kuby”
“This fun and funny book offers a wealth of practical and jaw-dropping legal insight, administered in a uniquely painless fashion. It also offers one of the most arresting author photos in the history of Anglo-American jurisprudence.” –Roger Parloff, senior editor for legal affairs, Fortune magazine
*Special hat tip to my Twitter friend @Character_B for bringing this book to my attention. He’s an insider on the project.
Planning ahead (October & November publications)
Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich (Oct)
“We’re always being told that looking on the bright side is good for us, but now we see that it’s a great way to brush off poverty, disease, and unemployment, to rationalize an order where all the rewards go to those on top. The people who are sick or jobless—why, they just aren’t thinking positively. They have no one to blame but themselves. Barbara Ehrenreich has put the menace of positive thinking under the microscope. Anyone who’s ever been told to brighten up needs to read this book.” —Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew and What’s the Matter with Kansas?
In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes—like mortgage defaults—contributed directly to the current economic crisis.
The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis Josh Kosman (Nov)
With exhaustive research and a rogues’ gallery of interviews, journalist Kosman puts together a convincing and disquieting argument that private equity firms are about to cause the next great credit crisis. Many people don’t realize that “private equity” is just a new name for a leveraged buyout, and that private equity firms make their money by loading their acquired companies with debt, garnering short-term gain at the cost of the businesses’ financial longevity. Exposing the pernicious practices of various high-profile firms (including Mitt Romney’s company, Bain Capital, notorious for its company-destroying practices), Kosman reveals how they cripple their acquired businesses competitively, limit growth and cut jobs without reinvesting the savings, all without even generating good returns for their investors. But if only half of PE-owned businesses go bankrupt, that would leave almost two million Americans out of jobs. What’s to be done? Kosman is a proponent of legislation that encourages buyers of companies to hold on to them for at least five years. This alarming book will keep anxious credit watchers on their toes—and hopefully inspire some pressure to keep PE firms from going the way of mortgage brokers. — Publishers Weekly
The Mom & Pop Store: How the Unsung Heroes of the American Economy Are Surviving and Thriving
Corporate Bankruptcy Word Cloud
Here’s a free word cloud maker: www.wordle.net
Simply copy-paste your text or give Wordle an RSS feed and let it work its magic. When it spits out your custom image, you can play with the layout, fonts and colors to your heart’s content.
I took the two (so far) responses to “Corporate vs Personal Bankruptcy Attitudes” and fed them through Wordle and got this result:
More Word Cloud Love
As a student of whole-brain communications I love a good word cloud.
Here’s one from today’s presidential speech in Cairo.
Visualizing the Mortgage Meltdown
The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo
Whole-Brain Communications
This 10-minute video effectively encapsulates the mortgage bubble and subsequent financial meltdown. Using site, sound and simple graphics, this whole-brain approach is a case study of effective presentation.
One thing struck me as funny, though, and that is how to depict “irresponsible homeowners” graphically. Mr. Jarvis chose to do it in contrast to the “responsible homeowners” who had one child and a dog. The irresponsible ones had a load of children, smoked cigarettes (or something) and no pets. I’m still running that through my politically correct filter.
Where credit is due
I ran across this on the excellent FLOWING DATA site which “explores how designers, statisticians, and computer scientists are using data to understand ourselves better – mainly through data visualization. Money spent, reps at the gym, time you waste, and personal information you enter online are all forms of data. How can we understand these data flows? Data visualization lets non-experts make sense of it all.”
The site is run by Nathan Yau. “In a previous life I was an electrical engineering and computer science student at Berkeley, but now I’m a UCLA PhD candidate in Statistics interested in data visualization. Data analysis is great and all, but for me visualization is just so appetizing, it’s irresistible, and if done right, provides results for everyone — not just the statisticians and/or scientists.”
I just became Nathan’s follower on Twitter.
“Global Financial Hissy Fit”
One Planet, One People
A fellow Twitter-er sent a link to the best thing I’ve read all day: a blog called “Creative Spark” by Marc Garnault. In it, he perpetuates the term “Global Financial Hissy Fit” with proper attribution to its originator, Kim Sbarcea .
I selected just ONE extraordinary insight from this posting for writing prompts.
Marc’s Insight
“Everyone knows what everyone is doing now. There are no secrets, so if you’re doing evil you can expect to face some bad publicity. There’s also been a significant movement by us, the consumer, towards companies that have a compassionate backstory. We want sustainable materials, low carbon footprints and community involvement. It’s a major selling point. And, finally, you need good, creative, smart employees, and believe me, they’re not thick on the ground. It’s going to be a seller’s market on those skills, and these people are going to want their skills to go to worthy employers. If they feel like they’re going to be a cog in a corporate money making machine, well, there are nicer machines to be a cog in.
“It’s be wrong to be writing all this in the future tense, because if you look around you’ll see it happening right now. Newspapers are falling through the floor, but the online Huffington Post recently had a record valuation, online shopping is remaining steady but bricks-and-mortar retail is having it’s worst year since 1970, restaurant seating is going through the floor but sales of local organic produce are booming, no-one is buying DVDs but you’re sharing the average torrent you download with 30,000 other people, sales of premium priced Macs are doing fine, but all the generic PCs around them are feeling the pinch.”
Writing Prompts:
Consultants: What are your most progressive clients doing to take advantage of the rise of global inter-connectedness? What are they doing with their brands to connect with the “green” consciousness? For those not on board, what holds them back?
Environmental: Reflect on the state of greenwashing. Out the evildoers.
Services: What are you/your clients doing to retain and nurture the best and brightest? Are you holding on to talent that isn’t fully billable for the sake of the future of your business? How are you coping with a great talent pool in this time of retraction?
Financial: What companies will you encourage clients to buy because of their alignment with this new ethos?
