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Where my grammar nazis at?

Where my grammar nazis at?

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Where my Grammar Nazis at?

by Pat Mellon

Language is a vital, though often overlooked, part of success. And the way people “see” your brand is based largely on what they “hear” from you. People who correct other people’s grammar are annoying. What difference does it make if, for instance, I put AT on the end of a sentence? Where are you at? Where…

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VIDEO DIDN’T KILL THE RADIO STAR...

VIDEO DIDN’T KILL THE RADIO STAR it just made him dress nicer 

By Pat Mellon 

Speaking of your brand evolving, PODCASTS are now a wise bullet to have in the arsenal of promotional weapons. In the early 2000's, for instance, you didn't have the option to record and distribute a PODCAST. The technology didn't exist to even IDENTIFY, much less create one- if you typed PODCAST into an email in 2002, it would have been flagged as a misspelling. 

But now, thanks to Audioblogging, re-branded as PODCASTING thanks to the iPOD, you can reach a targeted captive audience in a car on a long commute, with content that they've actually sought out. It's essentially a radio infomercial for the lifestyle of your product, without the PAID-PROGRAMMING aftertaste. Plenty of people have been slow to warm to the idea of such self-promotion and have waited to see if the technology and its effectiveness sustained or if it waned, the way QR codes did, or video discs did until the invention of the DVD. It can be an amazingly powerful part of your brand. 

Many rejected podcasting, as I did initially, as a waste of energy. In fairness, early on when there were no networks for podcasting and its business model was less focused than now, it smacked of self-congratulatory volunteer work. I saw it as an infringement on my profession. I have 15 years of radio hosting experience. I saw podcasts as competition. In my short-sighted view then, I didn't see the full potential of a podcast. I just saw it as people wanting my job. But as time went on, I began to see the ways, at least in terms of in-car entertainment, that podcasting was the future. And like the cryptic fortune cookie says, "Kill Your Darlings". Or maybe go with the less-confusing, "Reinvent Your Business Constantly. The End Goal May Be The Same But The Tools and Methods Evolve Constantly" which is a Ken Tucker quote I saw on a Snapple Cap. Or even the more direct, "You Have To Reinvent To Stay Fresh and In The Game" which Madonna said once. 

But early on, I saw it as the enemy - the way news journalists must have felt when FREELANCERS started getting a lot of the work in the late 90's. I thought, "If all you need to broadcast is a computer and an opinion, why the hell did I major in Broadcasting? It's like everyone becoming a Youtuber or a Social Media Influencer (seriously, that is NOT a good name. It's just saying what you're doing. It lacks creativity, like naming the glass thing you drink out of a "glass". Or the room with the bed a "bedroom". Or the thing you swing on a "swing". Or the... Sorry-I'll move on.) Anybody can become a Social Media Influencer these days, (and if they're under 14 and haven't been trying for half their lives then you might want to make sure they're breathing) and that means fame, sometimes money, but more important: LIKES. I overheard my 8 year-old playing with her friends and they were pretending there was a genie or something granting wishes and one girl asked for a pony, and another asked for a house of chocolate, and my daughter asked for a million LIKES on her video. LIKES are currency for pre-teen popularity. And LIKES or even merely PAGE VIEWS can be currency in the grown-up world of business. My point is that anyone with a computer and a camera can make money on Youtube if they hustle. It's simply the new normal. It's great, if not dangerous. We've yet to see the fallout of a generation raised on Youtubing, unless, of course, you count cautionary tales like Logan Paul or Jo Jo Siwa, both of whom are rich. It's simply another entertainment option for kids. I kinda thought podcasting was that, but for adults who only wanted quasi-fame; to show-off. But it's bigger than that.

If you're a plumber, for instance, and you want to maximize business, you probably want a decent social media footprint, some solid YELP reviews, and maybe even a podcast. Toilet clogged? Click here for an interview with master plumbers from all over. It's not the ONLY thing you should do. It's ONE of the things you should do.

On the consumer side, you have to realize that traffic, especially the bumper-to-bumper kind, is GOLD to a radio talk show host. People listen the most in their cars, so DJ's in New York and Los Angeles, the #1 and #2 radio markets depending on who you ask*, for instance, who entertain on the radio, are always on their toes to stay funny and relevant because it's so easy to push a button and change the station.

Then suddenly there was a new game in town. People were bypassing the radio altogether and plugging external sources into car sound systems, removing the commercials and unwanted Morning Zoo shenanigans, and rendering my entire college education and training void. My only hope was wishing death to the podcast movement, which I think I did a couple of times on the radio accompanied by a sound effect of a toilet flushing (Take THAT, Podcasting!). It didn't work. I kept hearing the word. Podcast. (eerie voice) PODD CAAAST! My head was in the sand. People would say to me, "you should do a podcast" and I'd cringe and wildly swing fists at imaginary ghosts who were accusing me of "Resting on your laurels" and "Holding on too tight.”

It took a while, but I get the appeal and, more importantly, the power of the Podcast. It's like a book-on-tape for the 21st century- 10 times as cool, though, because it's technologically relevant, and can be different every time you listen. So we agree that podcasts are real. And we acknowledge that there is room for many things on the dashboard of a car, be them outlets, or additional buttons. And we agree that the the way we do business is always changing and we have to adapt to some degree. So why all the hub bub? Because we can't have an intelligent conversation about the delicate existence of Podcasts without talking about Shane Gillis, the comedian who was hired and fired by Saturday Night Live in the same week last year. We need to understand the power of what it was that torpedoed his streetcar (tune into Mixed Metaphors with Pat Mellon Tuesdays on The Podd Couple, right after Poddamnit at 8, and Pod of Thunder with Gene Simmons at 8:17) He and a buddy do this show, this podcast, it's like a radio show but you don't listen to it on your grandpa's Victrola, you tether your MP3 player to the radio inside grandpa's Camry, and there's bad language, which there never is on traditional, boring old dumb talk radio, so right away, it's awesome (honestly, the only difference between Howard Stern on radio and Howard Stern on satellite is the F word) and the internet allows curses and take that, Mr. Suit and Tie, and this is going to be amazing. And on one particular show from 2018, Gillis said "chink" when describing someone in Chinatown. Not a huge scandal, but I guess you'd have to ask Roseanne Barr if the internet can get you into to any kind of trouble. She was exiled from the the entire US for a social media post that mentioned race and monkeys. And the same new normal that allows John Q. Anybody to do a podcast ALSO watches everything you do online and will sink you if it sees something it does not like. America can be confusing that way. Freedom of speech and freedom of complaining about freedom of speech are always at each other's throats, it seems. And you can't have it both ways. The guy who alerted the world to Bill Cosby's dating rituals online is loved by many but is also shunned by others, but that guy knows what he did and he knows not to complain about the ones who, well, complain. It's the price you pay.

The point is, you need to constantly be hustling and using all of technology’s modern tools to get your product out (they’re not burning DVD’s anymore) and maybe one of those avenues is a podcast with salty language, and maybe that podcast exists among your body of work that clients can enjoy whenever they want.

But we live in a new age of retroactive outrage. Eddie Murphy was on SNL and is arguably the most talented person the show has produced. He did a stand-up special in which he explores “What if Mr. T were a Faggot?” It was inflammatory and it was insensitive and it was homophobic (though that buzzword was still a decade from conception) because the premise of the joke- the attribution of homosexual behavior to a big, strong, black man being marginalized as solely predatory sodomy - crossed the line. When I spell it out like that it looks horrible. But it’s a simple comedic device: assigning unlikely behavior to someone for comedic purposes. It’s the fish-out-of-water gag. It’s why we had Mork, and Alf, and Balkie from Perfect Strangers. It’s Freaky Friday. It’s why The Rock playing a babysitter or a tooth fairy is funny. Murphy did this AFTER he was on SNL. But if has been released before he auditioned, do you think he’d have been hired? 

  Of course he would have. Because the Mr. T thing was a small part of that special (though, I recall, an extremely quotable part) and the people who didn’t like or appreciate the language didn’t have the bionic megaphone of the internet so they could get their outrage all over your conscience. The point is that your podcast is a reflection of your brand. You have to weigh your desire to speak freely and loosely with your desire to keep the Cancel Culture at bay. At a MINIMUM, though, you should keep things clean for your clients, listeners, and most importantly, your potential customers. Shane Gillis missed out of being on SNL and fame, instead on infamy because he broke one of society's biggest rules:he said something controversial out loud. Granted, it was in bad taste, but if that were a crime half of us would be in jail. It's just important to remember that your language on a work-based podcast should be professional, which I realize cannot be defined easily, but maybe stay away from slang and cursing. Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD.

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Where my Grammar Nazis at?

by Pat Mellon

Language is a vital, though often overlooked, part of success. And the way people “see” your brand is based largely on what they “hear” from you. People who correct other people’s grammar are annoying. What difference does it make if, for instance, I put AT on the end of a sentence? Where are you at? Where is it at? That’s perfect English, no?

Well, no. First of all, it’s unnecessary. The sentence is fine WITHOUT it. Where is it? Three words. Where. Is. It? Boom. It’s more concise. It’s always baffled me because the people who add AT to the ends of sentences typically are the same people, you’d think, who would want to end a sentence as quickly as possible because they’re lazy- they don’t want to learn the rules even though it means less work.

Baffled.

By now you’ve probably deduced that I’m, what is commonly referred to as, a Grammar Nazi; a term that gained popularity on Social Media over a decade ago, and one that suggests that people who speak the language correctly and get a thrill from correcting others are awful and should, well, be linked to mass genocide. I mean, that is ROUGH imagery. You must REALLY not like being corrected about how linking verbs are modified by adjectives, not adverbs, in public to use that term.

I prefer Grammar Police. I’m a Grammar Policeman.

It’s not a fate most would embrace, and it is not a popular space to occupy, but professionally, every company needs one Grammar Policeman, the same way they need an IT guy no one likes because, like the Grammar Police, he knows more than you do. When Jimmy Fallon was on SNL, he did a sketch about the IT guy at the office who, when asked to remedy the various problems the employees would have with their computers, would act completely put-upon and disappointed, but also a tad superior.

It’s a completely relatable scenario and illustrates two things: 1) there’s a brilliant humanity in humor that targets the EXACT crowd you want to reach effectively (the people who SHOULD get the joke will get the joke, i.e. the target advertising audience for SNL) and 2) to remain relevant to your target audience, you need to evolve, with technological references (think about how Seinfeld had an episode in the early 90's about the craziness that a tape in an answering machine could produce, and how that particular comedic device wouldn’t work in 2020 because everyone has voicemail, and how a sketch about a company where everyone has a computer on their desk but only one person in the company knows how to fix them- a premise that wouldn’t work in, say, the early 90's).

But you should also be fluid and somewhat current with the language, casual and otherwise. If you speak with a certain flair (and most people in Sales or PR do) you might not want to say “talk to the hand"-type things when we’re in more of a “shade-throwing” era, colloquially speaking. In fact, I just saw a headline on Yahoo news that said Demi Lovato Accused of Shading Taylor Swift. I didn’t read the story but I’m guessing Demi Lovato recently THREW SHADE at Taylor Swift, which, if you’re over 23, means disrespecting in some way, usually leaving a hanging high-5 unrequited, or being ignored on call waiting, either of which, I think we’ll all agree in 2020, would be enough to stop the world from spinning. Seriously, between that, the Popeyes /Chick-fil-A battle, and the election stuff, I’m finding it hard to look at the internet for any extended period of time. The point is, if Yahoo news had written Demi Lovato Accussed of Dissing Taylor Swift instead, they’d more than likely have been ridiculed online for using an archaic term like DISS. It’s admittedly sophomoric behavior but in the business world of pin-point target accuracy and internet immediacy, it’s a good thing to keep in mind.

A good mantra is “YOU LIVE BY THE INTERNET, YOU DIE BY THE INTERNET.”

Plenty of businesses use Twitter, for instance, to connect to their customers, like restaurants and airlines, and that interaction becomes invaluable in the e-commerce era, but each industry knows that if you use social that way, it allows people to complain about your product (in this case, the food, or the rudeness of the flight attendant) which everyone will be able to see online, but also allows you to instantly reply to those customers with a remedy to their complaint, or at least an acknowledgement of it, which others in your cyber neighborhood can ALSO read. It’s truly a 'making lemonade from lemons' kind of thing- that didn’t exist in the 1990's.

So, your brand needs to keep up with the technology and with the language, and idioms, and figures of speech, and literary allusions, all of which evolve constantly, Ya dig? Are you picking up what I’m putting down? (It CAN backfire. I mentioned to a roomful of clients once that I was late because I couldn’t carry my laptop, my phone, my coffee, AND my computer bag from the parking garage and that I’d had a real Sophie’s Choice moment. It totally didn’t land because it was a group of Japanese twenty-somethings. I made it worse when I apologized and made an L on my forehead with a finger-gun that I then used to squeeze off a couple of friendly shots at the stunned front row while click-clicking. (You gotta read the room.)

But your company needs at least ONE person who knows the difference between THEN and THAN. Because even if you don’t see the value in that person’s obsession with proper English, one of your clients might. Sound petty and ridiculous? There’s a restaurant in Los Angeles with a sign in front that says MEXICAN CUISINE AT IT’S FINEST that some people refuse to do business with because IT’S the wrong ITS. Bad grammar weakens your brand, whether it’s spoken or written.

There’s no shame in it.

I’m the Grammar Police. But good news- I’m also a Grammar Attorney, so I can probably get your sentence reduced to a prepositional phrase.

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No one was ready for this.

No one was ready for this.

.stk-post img { max-width: 100%; } No one was ready for this.

As the nation collectively waits for the smoke to clear so we can begin to assess the damage and start to rebuild our lives, too many people who were struggling beforeCovid are finding themselves in the kind of dire situations they never anticipated. If you were living comfortably before, you’ve probably been hit with an…

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No one was ready for this.

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Ads are like Video Games

Ads are like Video Games

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Digital content marketing agency

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How would you rate your online experience when the content you seek is drowned out by constant interruptions such as pop-up ads, invitations to sign-up or register, feedback questionnaires and seemingly never-ending interruptions are pushed into your experience? You lose trust and tend to not revisit such an intrusive site. That’s the outdated method of “Push marketing” based on a general lack of respect for your audience. It’s is quickly becoming more and more obselete.

The new “pull marketing” strategy is a more effective and consumer-focused method which respects the consumer. Offer easy-to-find, relevant and captivating content purposed to answer questions, offer advice and even instruct visitors regarding the Information to attract visitors who actively seek information relevant to them when and where they want it. That is the marketing solution that builds loyalty and trust.

In response to the inconsiderate and distracting digital marketing methods of pushing marketers agenda and sales pitches, 200 million Americans use ad-blocking software. That number equates to lost opportunities.

At Content to Convert, we understand that Content has always been King as it is the time-tested way to drive visitors to your site. By delivering useful, timely, engaging, and relevant content visitors actively seek, you build trust and loyalty, which is at the heart of every customer journey.

Please viisit our site at www.ContenttoConvert.com to learn more about us and schedule a free consultation. We are confident in the power of well-executed content adhering to your brand’s tone. Additionally, we offer analytical reports on how particular content is performing so we can optimize our strategy to maximize your ROI and meet, even surpass, your desired results.

We look forward to hearing from you and answering any questions you have.

Sincerely,

Jennie Macauley

Founder/CEO

Content to Convert, LLC

415-844-9988

#contentmarketing