All the Roots Grow Deeper When it's Dry*

At this time of deep recession, I'm sending my professional roots deeper by learning new skills and nurturing new relationships. 

New skill: acquiring new clients through Twitter (yes, it can be done). Twitter is like a never-ending party where eavesdropping is the norm. The key is finding the watering holes of those you want to meet and dropping into the conversation with something of value, like a link to an interesting article or news story.

New relationships: through a new service, Prompts for Professionals  in which I scan the global headlines and offer writing prompts to bloggers and newsletter writers on finance, the environment, services and consulting. Providing this service will keep me top-of-mind with subscribers when the business cycle turns.  Besides that, giving is good karma.

*Thanks to one of my favorite singer-songwriters, David Wilcox, whose song inspired the title above.

Whole-Brain Communications

Two sites to recommend in our quest to engage the whole brain in business communications.

FlowingData explores how statisticians, designers, and computer scientists are using data to help us understand more about ourselves and our surroundings.   Brilliant, useful stuff on a variety of topics. Next time you have a topic to research or argument to buttress, search FlowingData to see if there's a great visual to help you do the job more effectively.

Brain Rules is a blog run by Dr. John Medina, whose multimedia project, "BRAIN RULES: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School " was recently published.  The Brain Rules Bonus DVD is included with every hardcover and audio book because vision trumps all other senses—that’s Brain Rule #10. Subscribe to the blog for constant updates on brain research and how it applies to communications.

Use the Language of Aspiration

The non-profit group ecoAmerica will soon release a report advising how to communicate about climate change without sounding like left-fringe tree huggers.

Stay with me, skeptics, their findings can be extrapolated to other communications endeavors. 

For example, they advise using "aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology."  That does sound much better.

Another example is the phrase “energy efficiency” which ecoAmerica says makes people think of shivering in the dark. Isn't it better to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future”?  I think so. 

Surveys and focus groups led them to conclude they should drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.” 

Politics aside, there are some good take-aways here.  Lesson learned?  Class dismissed.