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Content Clarity Pays Off

Monday, February 27th, 2012

Why are so many blogs and biz books overwritten; saying the same thing over and over as if repeating the message for an extra hundred or more pages will make it more powerful?

Even fiction often follows the same pattern.

Why is so much content garbage?

Why do people insist that more is better?

Why do they assume that using a word with multiple syllables will make them sound more intelligent and impress the reader?

Websites are worse, both B2B and especially B2C.

Way overwritten and in long dense paragraphs with the vital information buried.
Has it gone completely unnoticed that almost nobody reads anymore?

The majority scan and in a hurry, spending 5-10 seconds to decide if they want to spend the average of 30 seconds on that page.

And those of us who do read are easily annoyed by bad design and the garbage that passes for content.

The problem, of course, is that a healthy ‘data-ink ratio’, which means saying a lot clearly in as few words as possible, is hard work.

I probably shouldn’t complain since I offer a service called Clarity REwriting that contributes significantly to my revenues, but still.

It’s easy to avoid dense, opaque, overwritten books and blogs, but when I need information from a website I am stuck.

So do yourself (and me) a favor.

Think about the data-ink ratio when you develop your content; doing so will improve your business.

DISCLAIMER: What follows is an ad.

If that’s too much work call or write me (the contact info is in the right hand column); you’ll find I’m fast and more affordable than you might imagine.

Flickr image credit: Beck Tench

Idiocy isn’t illegal

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

Image credit: bluegum CC license

One of the things that RampUp does for its startup clients is help implement our unique approach to awarding stock options. The original methodology was conceived by RampUp’s angel Al Negrin for his own startups and we’re currently in the process of turning the consulting service into a software program called Option Sanity™.

Among all the neat things that Option Sanity™ does is track award dates and provide an audit trail that discourages backdating.

It also provides the intelligence necessary to avoid the level of idiocy present in TeleTech Holdings’ restatement of 12 years’ worth of financials dating back to 1996.

Yup, 12 years of misdated stock options, but no misconduct!

“If we eliminate misconduct, we find ourselves in the land of cluelessness, sloppiness and ineptitude… There were other goofy mistakes, like recording option grants for folks who were no longer on the payroll…And the firm’s options accounting treated some consultants like employees.

As in many of these options messes, the compensation committee’s use of “unanimous written consents” instead of real meetings (and befuddlement over who had authority to make grants) led to massive confusion about the dates on which options were officially granted. The investigators had to reconstruct the circumstances behind every grant to figure out the “appropriate” date (and hence the real exercise price) for each one. The company admits that some dates “could not be determined with certainty.”

All of which goes to prove Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

What do you think?

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