PUT YOURSELF IN THEIR SHOES

If you are a small business owner or small proprietor or freelancer trying to decide what words you should use to promote or market your business, change your shoes. Rather than being the service or product provider, put yourself in the role of customer. Visit an independent bookstore, buy a cake from a local bakery, hire a contractor, or find a real job or product you need which you may normally take care of on your own but hire it done or buy it somewhere else. And then use what you learn in your promotion and marketing.

In addition to the obvious of paying attention to how your competitor actually performs the work or to the quality and price of his or her product, concentrate on the whole process. How were you treated? How did you feel? What bugged you about the process? Was there not enough communication or too much? What made you a little nervous? What were your biggest concerns – that it be done on time, that the price was right, or that the quality was good enough? Would you have liked more personal advice or connection? What satisfied you? What could have been done better?

Use your observations and answers to these questions to amp up your competitive advantage. Can you incorporate any positive aspects of the experience into your own way of doing business? Avoid repeating the negative aspects of the experience in your own business dealings. For example, did you wish you would’ve received more status updates on work progress? If so, make sure you are providing adequate updates to your customers. If you’re not sure how many updates your customers want, ask them. After all, meeting customer needs is one of the objectives of doing business under the goal umbrella of making a profit.

Want more Wordsy Woman tips about marketing, click here and request my free publication, 10 Tips for Reaching Today's Consumers.

MANUAL MAP APP

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the historical museum in Humboldt, Iowa, and found this unfamiliar configuration of lines and words on the blackboard in the old school. Now, I don't know if this was not taught to me in school or if perhaps I was sick that day because although I didn't remember it, my kids and my husband did.

According to this website sponsored by the  Capital Community College Foundation, sentence diagrams are depicted here. Since the device hasn't been used for thirty years, it is possible it was not taught in my English classes. Diagramming sentences was developed over 100 years ago by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg; it is a way of visually breaking down sentences. Fascinating!

I won't try to explain it here for fear of totally slaughtering it, but, basically, you write the main words in the sentence like the subjects and verbs on horizontal lines and then you use connecting slashes to write your modifiers like adjectives and adverbs. For an explanation of the basics, visit this website; for instructions on how to diagram compound sentences, visit this one.

I'm thinking this might be a good technique to use when editing as the Wordsy Woman. It may help in boiling down sentences for tightness and logic. Happy mapping!

P.S. If you are a history buff, the museum has a ton of artifacts and architecture, especially for such a small town. Plus, since it is not crowded, you get a personal tour! Plan to spend at least two to three hours.

IT'S YOUR CALL...

Your and you're are cousins to the previously blogged-about its and it's. To decide which is appropriate in your sentence, follow the same advice. Read your sentence substituting you are for you're; if it sounds right, you're is the correct word. You're is the contraction for you are.

According to Dictionary.com, your shows a possession owned or possessed by you, one, or, informally, all members of a group as in your clothes, your best best, or take your average Joe, for example.

If you are doesn't make sense in your sentence, your is your best bet.

Now you're a former you're misuser from yore.

And just in case you're tempted, yur is just a text-message abbreviation and is never appropriate in prose.

ORDER MATTERS

I drove by a sign on the wall on the side of a bar a couple of weeks ago and, unfortunately, I didn't have time to snap a picture. Here is what the sign said:

"Have a beer and stop in."

Hmmm... Does that mean I should have a beer before I come to the bar? Isn't that why they'd want me to stop in the first place - to buy a beer?

I think they meant "Stop in and have a beer." The moral of the story? Sometimes order matters. Make sure you are not telling people to do the opposite of what you actually want them to do. Click here to see another similar blog post on this topic.

By: The Wordsy Woman