When you stray from your strengths, you must stretch.  That applies to language.  I’m not talking about the language from the country you grew up in, but other sub-languages we learn going throughout life and our careers.  There are many.

For example, if you become a civil engineer, you learn a ton of words and phrases relative to inclines, paving roads, designing bridges, movement of soil, application of heavy equipment to grading surfaces.  To excel in that field, you must master those intricacies.  That concept applies to every highly technical field in the world today from medicine to telecommunications, nuclear power or environmental remediation.  To be successful, you must dig into the subject matter and work hard to master it.

That’s why it’s a bit odd to me that social media is considered something you just pick up.  I would agree that in general social media tools are mostly straightforward.  But to master their use is a different story.  Like other more technical languages we pick up over the years, if you want to successfully utilize social media, you must start with the fundamentals and grow from there.

Find the tools must useful to your business.  Start small.  Find other businesses to model your program on, and follow their protocol.   There’s nothing wrong with mimicking.  Read up on what works and what doesn’t for your industry.  Attend social media groups (most major cities now have social media organizations, similar to communications and marketing associations).  You’ll hear interesting war stories, and get feedback specific to your field.

Your social media language will not magically develop.  Like any other niche language, you must learn to speak it first, beginning with the simpler phrases and concepts, then build from there.  Once started, keep sharpening your base.  Hone it, eliminate what doesn’t work, and try some new things.  Amazingly, you’ll find yourself talking the language.

Current news events often hold a message that can be used in business or personal communications.  If something in the news can make a key point for your communications, why not use it?  By starting off your writing with a relevant and timely story you’ve seen on TV, read on the Internet, newspaper or magazine or picked up through a social media source, you immediately capture the reader’s attention.

Take the refuge situation in Europe.  If, for example, you want to communicate to your employees the necessity for change, you could lead with the refuge crisis.  Lay out the reasons the current flood of humanity is risking their lives and those of their children to get to a European country.  The high risks of survival drive them to leave their homes.

Make this point relevant to the situation within your business.  Are your profits in a precipitous decline?  Are new players encroaching on your territory?  Lay out the factors driving change.  The plight of business is different from human survival, but you can find examples that underlie both:

·         People are way more likely to change behavior in a crisis situation.  When your back is against a wall, you have no choices.  Can you effectively use this message with your employees by comparing your company’s plight to the masses exiting the Middle East and Africa?

·         People need help.  Your employees cannot succeed in a vacuum, nor can your company.  They need information and tools to successfully negotiate change, the same way refuges need help in terms of shelter, food and water, as they look to settle into a new life.

·         Once some early basic steps are taken, change is not over, though often we forget follow-up steps are necessary.  Settling the refuges will not end the problem.  There is a root to their plight that must be addressed in the world political arena.  Similarly, putting in a new policy or sending out a memo doesn’t constitute change in your company.  You must continue to communicate, reinforce messages, get out and talk to the masses face-to-face and follow-up continuously to show what ongoing steps are necessary for your company to succeed.

Those are only three points you could make by utilizing the current news on refuges to get the attention of your employees.  There are many more issues you could address, and news events to pick from. 

Whatever you choose for your news event, make it relevant to your case at hand.  Structure your lead (the news) to gain attention.  Compare it to your business case.  Make your readers think.  Transition to your company’s specific subject matter.

Consider when you eat:  If you stuff your mouth with something that takes forever to chew, you won’t be able to swallow.  You’ll work your jaw vigorously, pretending to your companion you’ll be done in just a sec, when in reality your eyes bulge out as you masticate with no end in sight.

That’s kind of what happens when you put together a dense set of words or several long-winded paragraphs.  The reader’s eyes glaze over.  You lose them before you can introduce your main thought.

Like smart eating habits, break your sentences into smaller bite-sized pieces that the reader can consume.  Do this, and you feed your audience.  You nourish them.  They want to come back for more because there is an actual payoff – what is written makes sense to them and they understand the point(s).

Readers overwhelmed by complicated, long-winded sentences and language are left perpetually hungry.  When they are puzzled, they don’t want to go on, so even if they work through an early part of a dense communication, they really aren’t following you.  It swirls around their mouth and they never swallow and ask for seconds or dessert.

Don’t leave the reader hungry. Break your thoughts and sentence into bite-sized, consumable chunks.