Warming up for a hot spot—the importance of words
So, my granddaughter asks me this morning at breakfast. "G.G. will you warm up my tablet?"
I'm sitting there wondering what in the world she means? Is her tablet cold?
Instead of trying to figure out the trappings of a six year-old's thought process, I ask her what she means.
"I want you to warm up my tablet so I can use the Internet."
What? I still have no idea what she is talking about.
"What do you mean, honey? I have no idea what you want me to do."
Then it dawns on me. I had told her I would turn on the "hot spot" on my cell phone so that she could use the Internet because the restaurant we were at did not have Wi-Fi
The point of me sharing this with you is that we have to be careful of the terms we use when we are talking with or writing for people who may not be familiar with the terminology we are using.
Not everyone knows what a "hot spot" is. Not everyone understands what "affiliate marketing is." We are here, in part, to educate, as well as provide solutions for our readers—and our grandchildren!
Sometimes I forget that I am writing for the World Wide Web and not everyone is going to understand everything I say. Writing in simple terms is probably best for most of our blogs. Save the fancy diction for the literary sites!
Remembering to write for our readers is a key to building our sites. We could have the best keywords in the world, but if we don't write like we are communicating with a friend, it will be harder to build that audience and turn them into customers instead of just casual readers who may just pass by our site if it is not written to be understood.
Best wishes,
Karin 😁
Recent Comments
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This is such good advice. If I want anyone to learn from my blog, laugh at my jokes, buy from me, or hire me, first I need to be able to communicate with them. Your simple story illustrates this. Great post.
Communication is vital to our business. We don't have to be "great" writers to communicate.
Best wishes,
Karin 😁
LOL... Hot spot!!
Oh, Karin isn't it fun!! Grandkids... 😜
Awesome post by the way... I just had to get control of the giggles!
LOL...Yeah, grandkids are the best! I wish we'd had them first before the kids!
Best wishes,
Karin 😁
Absolutely!!!... I have seen many blogs written that just confused me so bad that I had to stop reading it. I need to understand the basis of what you are saying it I'm list and then uninterested. Great post!
I get what you mean, Doris! It can be really difficult to follow a confusing post. I think some of that comes because people look at writing as this super hard task that has to be done in a particular way. I read a book a few years ago called If You Can Talk, You Can Write. Basically, write like you talk (well, some of us might have to "clean it up a bit"!), but the general idea is that writing doesn't have to be scary. Write like you are talking to a friend and it makes it a lot easier.
Best wishes,
Karin 😁
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Yep, I totally agree. We can't assume everyone will understand what we're saying.
Right. Slang is especially hard to understand. What I might say here in Minnesota, might be totally misunderstood elsewhere!
When I moved to Michigan no one understood what I meant when I said "ish." In Minnesota, it meant something was gross or disgusting. In Michigan, they understood "ish" to be at the end of a word, like "I'll meet you around 9-ish."
Best wishes,
Karin 😁