How to [not] speak geek and influence people

If you speak geek, only geeks will understand you. This is a truth that doesn’t seem to be widely understood.

Tonight I met an “Internet Strategist” – it even says so right on his card. If I remember correctly, he implements site management solutions and analytics tools, does something with SEO and SEM, something about Google AdWords / AdSense, oh, and he helps maximize ROI. In other words, he creates active websites. He just doesn’t know how to explain it.

I heard somewhere that the average person retains 17% of what they hear in casual conversation. Considering 90% of his audience was drinking, and I was the only other web geek in the room (he didn’t know that at the time,) it’s safe to say that very few people could tell you tomorrow what it is that he does.

I’m not trying to pick on this guy, but speaking at length about what you do typically means one of two things. 1) You’re looking for clients. 2) You like to hear yourself talk. If it’s the first one, he’s going to find that buzz words scare off beautiful babies (potential clients) that might be looking to party.

The story of what you do should be easy to remember. Search or SEM or performance marketing may be the kind of vernacular you roll out at ad:tech. But at a bar, you generate traffic for websites. The story of what you do should always be easy to understand. And your title should rarely end in ist.

We have a client that would put it this way: the thicker the vernacular, the bigger the hook. Translation: if you’re fishing for clients, don’t drop the 20-foot hook unless you know they can swallow it.