Buzzwords in business. We’re all guilty of showering every business or potential new client with a torrential downpour of buzzwords. You can’t escape them. Especially when you launch into the world of social media marketing (also a buzzword) and start using some of those buzzwords as hashtags or search criteria (buzzwords as well). My current favorites? Aligned: Let’s all get aligned with this plan. Let’s get all of our teams aligned. Once we have our goals aligned we’ll be in a much better spot. Etc. etc. etc. Also, “We’ll circle back on this”. If I say that to you, what I’m really saying is –I don’t know how to handle this right now. I might not have time for this and/or it is not high on my priority list at the moment.
Buzzwords do play an essential role in business though. You have to consider that by tracking buzzwords you can actually track the current interests in business markets and steer customers, employees, and more into a certain mindset.
Consider, like blogger Fraser, that using buzzwords is a “way of wielding certain tools, at certain times, to certain audiences.”
He goes on to explain that:
“In a discipline where brevity generally always counts, the use of buzz words can prove a powerful tool. When everyone present shares a common understanding of all that the buzz word encapsulates, you can slash the level of effort needed to communicate elements of the idea.”
This is so important in business. We’ve got enough hoops to jump through, let’s throw out a few buzzwords that we all understand to help us get to our main point a little faster. So, in the debate of buzz vs bull, I vote buzz!
If you’re wondering what some of the most popular buzzwords are right now, here you are:
Content, Big Data, Thought Leader, Responsive Web Design, Growth Hacker, Outside the Box, Customer-Centricity, Customer Experience, Thought Process, Game Changer, Engagement, Coopetition (Cooperative Competition), Strategic, Wheelhouse, Leverage, Viral, Heavy Lifting, Hit the Ground Running, Going Forward, Pivot, Pre-Revenue
So I say, embrace the buzzwords! Align your thought processes around using them outside the box going forward in a customer-centric way so that you can hit the ground running. I would write more on using buzzwords to focus your social media and content marketing efforts –but, we’ll circle back on that in another article.
Have a favorite buzzword (or ten of them)? Are you loathing buzzwords right now? What role do you think that they play in business interactions and in business to customer interactions? Comment below!
