How clear is your message?

Listening to the radio one morning, Ken Clarke came on to explain a concept within the judicial system. Now I always enjoy it when he speaks on the radio, because he always explains things so that it sounds so simple. Law is a complicated subject, but not when Ken is talking about it.

This is quite an art. In years past, I couldn’t get my business ideas across because I made them too complex. Now I am writing my assignments for a diploma in digital marketing, I’m finding it hard because I have to explain things simply. Dumbing down is not easy, but it is necessary – yet it is important not to undermine your audience.

It’s not worth putting absolutely everything into your description. The idea is to assess exactly what is needed from the question offered to you. Work out the most essential items, and then discard those that don’t apply. If you have ended up with one or two things, then you have succeeded!

Simplicity is key when it comes to explanations, but anybody who says it’s not difficult is either lying or a genius. And then the other side of the coin is that if something is made too simple, it has the danger of sounding stupid, inadequate and incomplete. How it is presented is the answer, keeping the audience in mind, and with enough material to fulfill all expectations.

Another tactic for complicated subjects is to break it down into manageable chunks. Don’t bombard your audience all at one go, or their poor brains may explode. It’s easier to digest small portions than to stuff everything in at one go. And simplifying the information will make it that much clearer and therefore more understandable.

Use the sort of language your audience knows, expects and comprehends. Don’t pepper them with jargon and acronyms, you may think it sounds impressive, but truly it’s not. Simple, clear, ordinary words that everybody uses in everyday language is what is more likely to be retained, absorbed and acted upon.

That is exactly what Ken Clarke does, he explains the latest breaking-news about a discrepancy in our legislative system so that everybody can understand it, and so that the radio presenters cannot pick him up on inconsistencies or inexplicable statements. But somehow after he has finished, which during his speech you nod and agree with everything he says, you still find you are none the wiser.

What’s the point of processes?

Processes are inevitably necessary to run a successful business.

Of course, the bigger the organisation, the more relevant this statement becomes. Except that sometimes the processes get so complicated, people lose track of what their objectives truly are, and the whole concept of what they are trying to achieve is lost.

Processes are not bad things, they are invariably good. Without them there would be no method, practical activity and a sense of purpose. The journey from the beginning to the end would be haphazard and directionless, without focus and even missing vital opportunities to work more efficiently with what you’ve got.

Floundering aimlessly along may be enjoyable in the short term, but may end up being costly, as nothing substantial is achieved. This waste of time and resources may suit some people, but at the end of the day if there are no proper returns, what is the point? Processes can provide a suitable pathway in which to follow towards a profitable outcome, both financially and morally.

Even the best laid out processes may have flaws, when the energy and method are allowed to leak out, but if the foundations are solid and fool-proof, a firm guiding hand will soon sort out the mess. Structure and well-tested methodology will provide the framework that holds the processes together, and the cogs and wheels will continue to turn towards their ultimate goal.

Don’t get put off starting a blog

Fairy Blog Mother

So, you’ve been told it’s a good idea to start a blog, and you go online to learn more about it.

It seems that everybody is recommending WordPress, but further investigation halts you in your tracks because it all sounds so complicated.

That is because the majority of advice out there starts from the wrong end. The kind of people who are writing about how wonderful blogs are, already have whizz-bang versions of their own. They are quite happy to bang on about the bells and whistles you can get with a blog, without sparing a thought for the poor, intrepid beginner who, until only a few days ago, hadn’t heard much about blogs.

Blogs are, of course, complicated things if you don’t understand them. Even a game of chess is complicated unless you’ve been playing it since you were a child. So reading what these ‘experts’ have to say will certainly put anybody off who doesn’t understand all the jargon being banded about so freely.

So my advice is to start at the shallow end. Find out and create a WordPress.com blog: free, easy to use, simple to set up – a perfect medium to get you started.

You won’t need to have an expensive web-developer to set it up, because WordPress have done all that for you. All you need to do is to decide on what you want your blog to be called, what you’re going to write about (i.e. its niche) and half an hour to spare to press some buttons.

Once your blog has been set up, the idea is to practise. You can’t break anything, so don’t worry about making mistakes – except those within your posts. Explore a new facility every time you go in to publish something. Let your curiosity take over, and you’ll soon learn all the helpful things WordPress have made available to you to make your blog wonderful, all at no extra cost.

Eventually you’ll get the hang of this blogging activity, and you’ll be ready to move on. Great – that is exactly what your objective was at the beginning. Now you can contact a suitable web-developer to set up a WordPress.org for you (if you don’t fancy having a go at it yourself), and your blogging world will start to open up even more!

But remember, without your chance to learn about blogging on WordPress.com beforehand, venturing straight into the world of WordPress.org from the beginning would have been a very daunting exercise indeed. Oh – and you can very easily transfer all your old posts over to your new blog at a drop of a hat!