A Campaign Against Industry Jargon

Your website called. It’s annoyed with all those buzzwords, acronyms, and six syllable words in its content. Your website said that it’s dying for creativity and language that the search engines can actually do something about. Most importantly, your website said you’ve scared away customers with all that jargon.

In the next several posts I’ll be talking about how industry jargon and buzzwords bring down your website and your marketing efforts. First up, let’s talk about what it all means.

According to Descriptionary, a Thematic Dictionary by Marc McCutcheon, jargon is “meaningless gibberish; the special language of a class, profession, or a group.”

Examples of jargon include:

• Cutting edge
• Innovative
• Industry leading
• Sought after
• Dynamic
• Touch point
• Ground breaking
• Spearhead
• Leverage
• Thinking out of the box
• Action items
• Core competencies

Let’s try using a couple in a sentence to prove my point.

XYZ Company introduces its groundbreaking software that far surpasses the innovation of its competitors.

Let’s rewrite the sentence using “sexy.”

XYZ Company introduces its sexy software that far surpasses the sexiness of its competitors.

You can see in both of these examples that we really haven’t said anything important. Our sentence needs to inform not slather the page in gooey, meaningless words. Considering we only have six seconds to catch our reader’s attention, we better get to re-writing.

This is how I would do it:

XYX Company offers an accounting software that far surpasses the accounts receivable tracking features of competing software.

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Tune in next week to learn how industry jargon hurts your search engine optimization efforts, online and offline sales, and your sanity. Oh, and if you want to join the Campaign Against Industry Jargon, leave a comment and tell us about your most hated jargon.

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