The Episode About The Content Wot We Wrote – Episode 40

Because we work with a lot of B2B clients, especially, we see this a lot in really technical industries, right? Like architects, engineering companies, that kind of thing. Everybody loves to use really kind of convoluted words and very complicated phrases. I guess there's a little bit of kind of making yourself feel smart or positioning yourself as an expert by using the kind of the language of expertise, I guess. But I think a lot of the time it's really counterproductive. Um, and I guess what I really wanted to do was use this episode to just talk about why we're so passionate and so adamant about using plain English and talk a little bit about how just doing something as simple as kind of rewriting a blog post in plain English can suddenly massively increase your, I guess, how accessible your content is to people, and how likely people are to respond to it. Engage with it.

Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. It's, uh, Dave in the office and Alex working from home.

Indeed.

The a hot topic just now, isn't it? Working from home? The whole kind of, like business is in turmoil. Yeah. Um, with the whole work from home thing, like the government are changing the rules here in Scotland. I think they've already changed down in England. Um, people are debating. I was some interesting talk on the radio, I was listening to LBC and there was a conversation going on where people, some people were saying, look, we need to get everybody back to the office. And other people, um, were saying like, no, we don't want to go back to the office. We're way more productive from home. And, and we have a better work life balance. And, and, and so an interesting conversation going on in the country.

Especially in our industry, I think, isn't it a lot of kind of hand-wringing and a lot of people kind of flocking to LinkedIn to tell everybody about their opinions about whether or not you should work from home? It's just, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. It's basically the staple of talk radio is people phoning in telling you what they reckon in it, and that's what it's about. And it's like within about a nanosecond, you can figure out what their agenda is.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, speaking of language and, and the use of language, um, I'll let you introduce today's subject, uh, which I think is going to be really interesting. And I think I'm going to learn a lot today because you are, um, an English specialist, you're a language specialist. You've even got a degree in the subject I do.

It's funny though, I was waiting for you to tear into me and say, oh, because all you can speak in is simple English or something to that effect. Far from it.

Far from it. You're very eloquent, young man. Alex.

Thank you very much. Um, no. So what we're going to be talking about today is basically plain English and why you should be speaking it, I guess, um, whenever you're writing to customers or writing for your website or writing a blog post about why it's really important to keep communication simple and straightforward and accessible to as many people as possible.

Do you are you saying that people should talk proper England like what US does?

Yeah. Uh. Real good. Uh. And yeah, I mean, I think and I think the thing is, I guess because we work with a lot of B2B clients, especially, we see this a lot in really technical industries, right? Like architects, engineering companies, that kind of thing. Everybody loves to use really kind of convoluted words, very complicated phrases. Um, I guess there's a little bit of kind of making yourself feel smart or positioning yourself as an expert by using the kind of the language of expertise, I guess. Um, but I think a lot of the time it's really counterproductive. Um, and I guess what I really wanted to do was use this episode to just talk about why we're so passionate and so adamant about using plain English and kind of ditching all of those really long, convoluted technical terms and, you know, inaccessible paragraphs of writing and talk a little bit about how just doing something as simple as kind of rewriting a blog post in plain English can suddenly massively increase your kind of, I guess, how accessible your content is to people and how likely people are to to kind of talk to you about it, respond to it, engage with it.

Do you think it's fair to say, um, because a very famous scientist said it, that if you can't explain something to a six year old, then you don't understand it.

I think that's the yeah, that's a, it's an Einstein thing, isn't it?

I think it is an Einstein thing.

Yeah, I really like it. And I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's just because you can explain something in a really kind of convoluted and highbrow way doesn't necessarily mean that you should. Um, yeah. If you can't explain something simply, you probably don't understand it well enough. And if you do understand something well enough, I think it's just a little bit criminal really, to kind of explain it in a way that makes it sound like you're trying to be cleverer than you really are.

Um, yeah. Yeah. For sure. I'll tell you an amusing little anecdote. I, I worked at the University of Aberdeen back in sort of Nineteen ninety seven. Till about two thousand I was working as a.

They have a special needs program.

Yeah they do, they do. I was working I was working as a programmer on a on a on a. Yeah. Um, and my boss, uh, sadly, very sadly died in his fifties, uh, Neil, Neil Hamilton, doctor Neil Hamilton and just, uh, just a tour de force of a man. And he was just a fantastic guy. Um, and I remember once he asked me to check something he'd written and I didn't typical of me. I didn't actually listen to exactly what he was asking me. So I read this piece of content. I was like, this is awful. I mean, Neil's like one of the brightest people I've ever met. You know? I mean, this is awful. And, um, I went back to him and I said, well, I've made quite a few changes, uh, Neil. And he looked at it and he was like, uh, did you not actually listen to the brief as well? What was it? He said, well, I've written it for six year old children to read and, and, and so you can imagine the language it used was very simple and almost a bit. It was almost incorrect in places, but it was the way that that particular um, group of people, the kids would have, uh, would have, uh, understood sort of thing. So it was, yeah, I never lived that one down. It was, uh, quite embarrassing at the time, but I'm a huge fan of plain English. I love the language. I love the English language. And it's and I like expanding my vocabulary, but not so I can try and sound clever because let's be honest, how often do you try and sound clever and sound clever?

Well, I mean, that's part of the thing. And the other thing I would say is like, how often do you read a page of web content and think, wow, the person writing this was so intelligent. Like, I have so much respect for them. I'm going to go and buy something off them immediately. I mean, that's just not what it's not what people are reading your web content for. And I agree with you like, I love the language. Like you say, I have a degree in in English and a good chunk of that was linguistics, but there's a time and a place for that kind of thing. And I don't think on the web is the place at all really? People are coming to your website, generally speaking, because they want to find information. They want to find the answer to a question. And the faster you can provide that information, the more succinct and clear you can be, the better your content is ultimately the better it's going to perform anyway.

I've got a candidate name for this, this, this episode of the show.

Go for it.

The podcast about the content, what we wrote. All right. It's an it's an homage to my favorite comedians, Morecambe and Wise, but I think we'll call it that. We'll be call it that.

We can we can call it that. Yeah. Why not? Yeah.

Yeah. Let's do that.

A subtle irony to it. But yeah, I mean, I guess that's the thing isn't it. We're not I don't want to bash people. I mean, you know, among the the many clients we work with in the oil and gas industry, there are a fair few of them that are very guilty of this, that, you know, kind of pad their website with technical terminology and stuff that's just very opaque. It's very inaccessible. And, you know, I guess there's an argument for proving that, you know, the language for proving that you understand the terminology. But I think a lot of people do get very carried away in that kind of speaking to somebody that they assume has the knowledge they have, you know, that they assume is on the same level as them. And I think often you just have to be mindful of the fact that your web content is like, yes, it's for a specific audience, but it's also for people that are kind of in a rush, that are on the train, that are kind of, you know, in the back of a taxi, googling something on their phone, and you just don't want to make people work really to get to the core of what you're trying to say.

Yeah, it's sort of a danger, though. Is there a danger that you could go so far as to sound like you don't know what you're talking about?

Yeah, I think so. That's the that's the difficult bit, isn't it? That's the balancing act, I guess. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing is with with the whole plain English thing, like it's nowadays especially like there's a very well documented way of writing in plain English so that all government departments, for example, they have to there are rules around the way they write and a lot of it is just about kind of implementing those rules for yourself. You know, it's things like writing in short sentences. It's things like using the simplest verb or the simplest noun you can find doesn't necessarily have to dumb your content down. It just has to kind of make it a bit easier to read. Really.

Yeah. That's right.

Um.

So do you, are you a believer in being a professional language person? What do you think of tools like Grammarly, for example, which can help with that? Because you can use a tool like Grammarly to set the tone, set the audience, set the style of the whole document, and then start writing. And Grammarly will say, well, for the audience that you've told us you're writing for, that's gonna sound like double Dutch. You might want to try rewriting it. And how about this?

Yeah. And the other thing Grammarly does that I really like is it has that whole kind of like detecting the mood of what you're writing thing, right? And I think stuff like that's really powerful as well. And okay, that's not kind of directly tied to the whole idea of like plain and simple English, but it is things like having something that can sit over your shoulder and look at what you're writing and say, oh, did you know that using this word is making you sound like aggressive or forceful or, you know, happy or whatever? I think that's quite a useful thing as well. So yeah, I think things like Grammarly are really powerful, to be honest, especially for people who are not professional writers who don't want to sit there kind of picking over editing their content. I think yeah.

Yeah. Um, I mean, you make the point. Like it's not for people who are professional writers, or rather, it's for people who are not professional writers. And it's a great tool. Yeah. And so do I. I mean, I don't classify myself as a professional writer, I enjoy writing. I think I'm okay at writing. I was on a NUJ course because they do run some courses that are open to all comers. And I was on an NUJ course and I was and I talked, we were talking about, I can't remember. It's something to do with content. And I mentioned Grammarly and the lady who was leading the course, who was very nice, she was very quick to jump in and say, oh, well, of course, as a professional writer, I would never use a tool like that. Well, you know, I've read quite a lot of journalism, and, uh, you might want to consider it. Some of you.

Everybody makes mistakes, don't they? It's funny, though, because I think writing is one of those things that people get very caught up in their own ego with it, right? It's like, I'm a professional writer, I don't need help or I'm a professional writer. So the way I've chosen to phrase this is perfect and it's often what you need, I think with writing. I mean, you know, when I first joined reading, you said whenever you write something, you ping it to another member of the team and get them to read it over. And I think it's that kind of thing, isn't it? It's like, let somebody else see it. Let somebody else say, oh, actually, this is a bit weird. This is a bit confusing. I don't really understand the point you're trying to make here, but people I think are quite, I guess, defensive about their writing sometimes.

Yeah, I'm definitely in that camp sometimes if I've put a lot of effort into a piece of content and I'm utterly convinced I've explained something really well, and then maybe you or Julie or Caron will ping it back to me and go like, this is just like confusing. I'm like, how dare you? How can it possibly be confusing? It's a wonderful piece of work. But usually, you know, sort of take a breath, get a cup of tea, read it and go. Thanks, guys. Thank you for not letting me make a fool out of myself and put this out there. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I guess that's the thing, isn't it? Really? It's just like. I guess if there was any one thing I'd say it is kind of lose the ego, really, if you're writing content for the web, because yeah, it's not for you, is it? At the end of the day.

Do you think that that's one of the reasons we hear so often people tell us that they can't write or similar to that, but not quite the same, is that they say they can write and we say, right, we need this content and that content, and then they don't produce it because they lack the confidence, because they want to write in a way that makes them sound clever, or they think maybe worse than that, they think they have to write in a way that makes them sound clever. Yeah.

And I think it's really interesting, right? Because we sometimes we work with clients who work in a very confusing space that do something very technical that we know absolutely nothing about. Right. And we'll sit down.

You speak for yourself. I know everything about all the work.

You are a chartered engineer, I forget. Um, no, but you know, you know, and we sit down with them on a Zoom call or in a face to face meeting, and they can explain in ten or fifteen minutes face to face exactly what they do in the simplest possible terms. But then when you ask them to write it down in a blog post or to write a landing page for one of their products, you just get this kind of awful kind of technobabble waffle where they, you know, clearly they've sat there stressed about what to write and then come up with the most kind of convoluted and confusing thing they can possibly conjure out of the ether. And I think that, yeah, I think you're right. I think it is ultimately fear of doing something wrong or fear of being laughed at, or fear of somebody saying, oh, this is rubbish or this is too simplistic or. Yeah.

Well, that's the thing about content, isn't it? You are. Even if you haven't put your name to it, you are still putting yourself out there. You're committing something to a wide audience and you know it's going to be, well, hopefully in widely read and people might be critical of it. So it is a kind of situation where, you know, in life, you know, there are certain circumstances where we have to speak publicly or put ourselves out there or even, you know, in a day to day situation, you might have to have a conversation that's a little bit uncomfortable maybe, or whatever. But putting words out there on web pages and into PDF documents is a very public thing to do. And people are nervous about it. But I think to the point of the subject that we're discussing just now, if you stick to the use of plain language, then you're not going to go far wrong.

Well, I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's it's exactly like you say. I mean, there are times when I sit down and I'm, you know, kind of dead nervous to commit, you know, pen to paper, as it were, because I don't really feel confident in what I'm talking about or whatever. I think it happens to all of us. I think the thing is that, and I guess the other aspect of that that feeds into it, is the fact that anything you write on the web is there forever, right? Or there's this perception, at least, that it's it's indelible, that you're never going to be able to get rid of it, that somebody six years down the line will find some blog post you've written where you did something a bit stupid and they'll say, look, this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's talking about. But I think you just have to remember that, you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, if you head out there to do your best job of explaining something in clear and simple terms, like there's not really anything to find fault with there, is there?

No. That's right. Um, I think the starting point, and I think maybe this is where the nub of the problem is, perhaps the starting point is really to understand your subject back to the back to the Einstein quote. You know, if you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. So if if that's your starting point, if you're kind of trying to produce content on a subject that you don't know much about, then yes, there's a danger that you're going to perhaps lean into complex language to try and disguise that. So, you know, before you start writing, make sure that you absolutely understand it. Talk to subject matter experts. If it isn't your area of expertise, and get to a point where you know you feel that you could confidently stand in front of a room of people and talk about the subject. I mean, I don't I'm notoriously don't do a lot of preparation other than outlines. When I'm giving a talk, I almost no, I do prepare, I, but I don't prepare as in like print it out, know exactly what I'm going to say. I give myself, I give myself bullet points because, you know, thankfully I'm only, I'm only required to stand up and talk about things that I know quite a lot about. And I enjoy that. And I think I think when you do that, it communicates to the audience, the live audience right there that you understand it. Well, I think it's the same with writing. You know, your understanding of the subject is going to come through, and if you're trying to obfuscate, then that's going to come through as well.

Yeah. And I think the other thing I always find quite useful, she'll probably kick me when she hears this, but I use my wife quite a lot. Right. Because she's a doctor, but she knows, you know, about a very specific subject area and absolutely nothing about all the things that we were talking about all the time. So whenever I'm writing something or whatever, I'll try and explain it to her. And if it's too complex for her to pick up and she's like, you're boring me now, then I know I'm doing it wrong. Brutal. Well, I mean, but I think stuff like that is kind of the best way to get around it, isn't it? It's like you say, kind of absorb as much information as you can, but then try and kind of regurgitate that information to somebody who knows nothing about it. And in doing that exercise, you kind of end up thinking, okay, well, this is how to explain it. You know, this is, this is how people actually need to understand this. And yeah, I think that's really helpful.

Well, so what you're really talking about there is we've, you know, we've accepted that you need to understand your subject or you need access to people who understand the subject, who can, who you can interact with in order to get the level of understanding that you require. Um, but then you need to know who your audience is. You need to know at what level you're pitching it. So you could be talking about a really complex product or service that the person who's buying it also understands. So you can make, you know, some allowances there. Um, but often that isn't the case, is it? I mean, the stuff that we do, it might be a CEO of a business who's reading our content and, you know, they're not going to know all of the acronyms that we use and the language that we use and the CR or this and the SEO or that and the CRM that it's going to, it might be like, what are these guys talking about? So we need to make sure that we're communicating in a language that gets across what we do to that particular audience.

I think that's exactly it. Right. And I'm going to do the classic, um, from the coalface thing and talk about cars for a little bit now, but I was having this discussion with someone recently because I, you know, I was writing about cars for a client. I don't know that much about cars. I know lots of people who are car enthusiasts. And the general kind of perception, I guess, is that people that get cars in inverted commas know everything about them and love them. And, you know, you can use any amount of technical terminology and they'll just be on the same page as you. And they'll be like, oh yeah, I know exactly what that acronym means. And I know exactly what that engine means and whatever. Um, but, you know, in talking about it and discussing it with people, what I realised is that even among car enthusiasts, there are varying levels of expertise. So even if you know for sure, you know your audience is car enthusiasts, that doesn't mean you've got kind of carte blanche to write whatever kind of technical jargon you want. You still have to be, I guess, kind of aware of the fact that even within those kind of audience brackets, people don't necessarily always know everything. And if you explain it to, I guess the lowest common denominator, everybody else is still going to understand you just don't leave anybody behind. Really?

Yeah. I recently wrote some content for one of our customers, and in order to write the content, I had to educate myself about Weber carburettors. Now, if you if you know anything about classic cars, they're. The Weber carburettor was the the must have carburettor on any car that you would class loosely as a sporty vehicle. Um, now you know, I do understand cars. I mean I could probably, well, not maybe a modern car, but I could certainly take an old car to pieces and then put it back together and there wouldn't be too many bits left over on the bench at the end. And me wondering where on earth they were supposed to go. What's a break? Um, yeah. But I never really understood what made Weber Carburettor so special. So I watched a series of videos. Um, and this guy who is basically a Weber carburettor tuning person expert, he explained it so well. I mean, it was a video so he could show as well as tell, but it was, um, I came away from that thinking, actually get this now I understand because one of the things that, uh, that our client does when they're doing Weber carburettor tuning is they, you know, when I had the conversations with them, they said, yeah, we, we actually drill holes in the carburettor. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. You drill holes in a car. And that just baffled me. Even with a sort of semi engineering brain that baffled me. But once I'd watched the video, are you drill holes there for this purpose? And I understand now. I get it now. And then I was able to write the piece and which was approved by the client who is the expert, and they were quite happy with it. So I'd clearly been gathered enough information to be able to explain it in language that that our clients customers would get.

It's interesting that though, isn't it? Because just to kind of unpick, if you look at the, the kind of things we write content for, right? Generally speaking, we're trying to establish our clients as experts, as authorities, and generally speaking on the web, that's what you want to be doing, right? That's why you're writing a blog or an article or whatever. It's to say, you know, I'm the subject matter expert. I know about this stuff. You can trust me to provide this service for you and you. You went away and found this guy who was explaining something in very plain English. But I guarantee that you'll always remember who that was and go back to those videos. If you need any more kind of info about Weber carburettors or info about classic cars, that kind of thing. And I guess the point really is that in explaining something very simply, that in a way that you could understand, that guy's kind of cemented himself in your memory as the go to authority on that subject. He doesn't seem like somebody who doesn't really understand it and is explaining it at a superficial level. He seems like somebody, even though he's using plain language, who is all over it and can just explain it very well because he understands it.

Yeah. And what you've neatly segued into is the idea of we first said, understand your subject, know your audience, but determine your goals and your your goal might be to convince somebody who knows nothing about the subject that you're an expert on it. But to do that, you would not use complex language that would show them that you know how that you know some big words. It won't necessarily communicate to them that you're an expert. And it's exactly what you just said. I'm just repeating it using a slightly different, slightly different language. Yeah I do. I'm a huge fan of plain English. I do get pulled up sometimes. Um, but you know, I see that as a, as a real kind of personal, like failing if somebody's like, oh, I really don't understand. I mean, I was speaking to a customer this week and I explained something in an email and we were, we were actually meeting the next day and she came back to me and said, I didn't understand a word of that. But we're meeting tomorrow. You can explain it to me then. And I was really quite wounded. I just thought I failed. I haven't, I've let myself down.

Um isn't it. Yeah.

Go on, go on, go on.

I was just going to say like all the internet really exists for is to, to transmit information. And I guess part of the reason we feel kind of wounded when we explain something poorly is because that is ultimately like all we're ever trying to do is explain things to people in the clearest way possible. So yeah.

That's right. So I mean, I've, I'm nicking these off a of a blog post that I found, but it's some examples of, of Every day words that people use conversations. Um, so people will quite like to use the word facilitate. Yeah. Whereas they could say help or make possible.

Um, my absolute favorite example of this, I don't know if it's on your list or not is utilise. It's completely redundant. There's absolutely no reason to ever use the word use is fine. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. That's right. Owing to the fact that it's quite a popular one as well. And well, just say because things like that. Yeah you're right. I mean convene. Yeah. Uh, instead of meet designate instead of name. Uh, there's, there's loads of them. And I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of using the, of using these type of long winded. Um, and when I'm writing, I'm, I try, you know, when I go back and review, I'm quite brutal with it. Um, you know, and because I am trying to tell a good story. Um, speaking of which, we are going to be doing a podcast, uh, quite soon with the master storyteller. And, uh, it'll be interesting to get his take on plain English, the use of language, etc. in, as part of the storytelling process. I'm fairly confident I know where abouts, you know, he'll be. Um, and I think he'll be probably pretty much aligned with us, but hey, you know, we might be surprised. Um, you mentioned earlier, uh, write short sentences and paragraphs. Uh, that's something that I know I'm guilty of. And the guys, Julie especially, and Caron will pick me up on like the huge long sentences because I'm trying to brain dump onto the page. And then I realise, wait a minute. I've just. And then actually, that's one of the things that Grammarly is very good at. It says, this is kind of wordy. Can you break it up? Can we put some breaks in it and, and some transitional phrases, perhaps in order to break it down? Yeah, it's something I'm brilliant at.

One of the things that I'm guilty to. I love a good comma. Like, you know, just keep it going. Just keep the momentum up. One of the things I always remember, I worked for a little while as a health writer, and they made us do because it was public facing. And whenever you're giving health information to the public, you have to write in plain English. It's just the, the rules. Um, they gave us like really intense training around it. And we did this kind of three day training course. And one of the things they had us do was like write instructions for, um, you know, like going to the shops or write instructions for making a piece of toast. And then the instructor would sit there and just kind of misinterpret everything that you'd said or, you know, like deliberately just to see how, how clear your instructions were. And I always think that kind of thing is a really good exercise. Like you say, just sit down with somebody else and get them to kind of read through it and pick up on all the points where, you know, they're confused, or you could interpret things in a different way or whatever. Mhm. That's really useful.

Yeah. Um, it would be remiss of us not to talk about the misuse of words as in completely the wrong word. Um, I'm thinking from a humorous point of view, is there any, any that, that you're familiar with that, that jump out? One of my favorites, and I've been in meetings where clients have said Pacific instead of specific that that one. And you know, I know I sound like a snob now, but it just, it does make me want to chortle when I hear things like that. Any, any favorites in your, uh, in your memory?

One of my absolute favorites on this. I don't know where it comes from. It's such an internet thing, I think, but it's weary and weary. People get them confused all the time. And people say like, oh, he's really weary of going in that room. They don't mean weary. Weary just means tired. Every time I see it, I'm like, oh.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's funny how these things can grate. Um, you know, people who know me who are listening to this podcast would be disappointed if I didn't mention my all time favorite, which is the use of the word premise. Um, and yeah, the emergency services, um, use the word premise when they mean a house. The firefighters gained access to the premise and can proceeded to put out the fire. And yeah, at that point, um, my my piss is boiling, I can tell you.

Yes. All got a bit abstract there hasn't it? Like premise is not the singular premises.

Yeah. Again, tools like Grammarly. It sounds like we're on commission from Grammarly isn't it? But tools like Grammarly, they're unbelievably good at picking things like that up. You know, like you've used this word doesn't look right. Are you sure you meant this? Do you not mean this instead? So whether it's, you know, Grammarly or one of the other tools out there, again, if you if you do need a boost, if you need something to give you a bit more confidence with your writing, then things like that will not slip through these tools. Um, I don't know if the AI tools, which we've flirted with like Jarvis and tools like that, I don't know if they are good with plain English or not.

I mean.

In our experience.

I would say not. Um, I would say they're very bad at kind of simply explaining things, which is kind of, I guess why I yeah, we flirt.

Now then, now then is it simply explaining things or explaining things simply? Alex I don't know which it is. I wish I did.

Explaining.

Something, somebody listening will better tell us.

And if Grammarly, by the way, I was just going to say if Grammarly, if you're listening and you do want to sponsor this episode retroactively.

You know, the thing is, if we started taking adverts, then we wouldn't be able to say what the hell we liked. And I kind of like saying what the hell we liked.

Well, I mean, just to pick up on that point, I mean, I would say that of all the AI tools we've tried, absolutely none of them have performed well enough to be to be bothered with really, have they?

Yeah. And when I read about this stuff, um, although it might have been what I was reading might have been written by an AI bot, so it would have been prejudiced or biased, biased rather. Um, uh, it, I'm sure that there are people out there who are saying they're having phenomenal success with AI. Like they've got websites that are doing phenomenal traffic and every single piece of content on that website was written by a bot. All AI generated, and there are people saying that you've got to figure out how to use them effectively. If you just want to give it a subject, press a button and expect to get something out that, um, that an author would be proud of, then you might struggle. What do you think?

Yeah, I think to me it seems a bit gimmicky. Can they produce good content? Sure. Like, could you produce enough content to fill a website? Sure. But I mean, that's not really saying much, is it? Because there are plenty of websites out there that although everything's written in grammatically correct English, it's still bollocks. He's still never going to sell anybody anything. What I'd love to see is somebody who could show me that their AI generated content actually converted people or made sales, because that's the bit of the puzzle that I think will always be missing. Like you talked earlier about understanding who your audience is and talking to them in language they understand. And I just don't see how an AI could ever really do that particularly effectively. But I mean.

That's a bold statement.

I'm willing to be proved wrong.

But you can understand the attraction because, you know, succeeding online and getting good search engine results, search engine rankings, etc. is predominantly a content game.

Yes.

And producing content at scale is not easy. So you can understand the attraction. These things, you know, churn out a thousand words on a subject which you can put on a web page and if it works.

Yeah. And I think it goes back to what we were saying at the very beginning of this episode, really, isn't it? Which is that I guess a lot of the people listening to this who are kind of running websites, managing brands, trying to grow the online presence of a, of a business, it's probably quite intimidating to be told, you know, you have to sit there and, and write all this content. You have to produce it all at scale. And now you have to think about whether you've written it in a way that's accessible and simple. And I can see why some people end up just kind of burying their head in the sand and saying, you know, actually this is way too much work. I'm just going to get an AI to do it or, you know, worse, I'll head on to Upwork or Fiverr and pay somebody else who knows nothing about my business and doesn't really care about my success to churn out some words for me. And I think, to be honest with you, that's one of my like biggest marketing hates in general. It's one of the things that I really despise about the industry in general is that there's this whole idea that content is king. Any old content just get three thousand words on the page and you'll be successful. And that's what it takes. But you know, the there's no replacement for good writing, effective writing. And I think really, to be honest, it's just one of those things that you do have to eventually bite the bullet and, and do yourself or, you know, work with somebody, I guess like us who is actually going to learn about your business rather than just kind of dashing out words for the sake of it.

Are you using this totally impartial, fantastic podcast to, to push to push our services?

I realised as soon as I'd said it, I was like, I'm gonna get pulled up for that one. But no, I mean.

I feel, I feel grubby.

Now. Um. I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? You don't have to do it yourself. Nobody's saying you have to spend the next three years of your life not running your business, writing web content for some idiots who are, you know, trying to Google where should I get my new tires from or whatever. Um, but you do have to, you do if you're going to put content out there on the web, it does kind of have to be representative of your brand. It has to be good. It has to be effective. It has to speak to your audience. And there's no shortcut for that, I don't think.

No, there really isn't. And I think even simple things, which again, the tools that are out there really help with, um, spelling and typos. I mean, how often do we see? Yeah, I think we, we, we have been, we have been told once or twice, oh, you've got a typo on this page on our own website. Sloppy. Not good.

But honestly about that recently, like I spotted that you'd mistyped the word Celsius and I was like, why Celsius even on our website?

I know, that's right. Yeah, but it must be in there spelled wrong somewhere. Uh, we can go and find it and fix it. Um, but you know, when we, when we work with clients, come along, customers come along with with existing websites or we, we get an opportunity to quote for somebody and we'll go and look at their website so often that they jump off the page. And I wonder if that is that's a side of writing that's kind of unforgivable because the, the tools are there to help you not do that. And I think it kind of says something about your brand. It kind of makes people think about you differently. It's like when you're listening to somebody talk and I'll use the example before. So you listen to somebody talk and they're making a good point. You know, this person's really interesting. And then they say, and to be specific and you go, oh no, oh no, I can't now. I can't believe anything that you're telling me because you don't know the difference between those two words.

It's like an instant credibility killer, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. That's right.

And I think, you know, we're all guilty of it. I mean, certainly like when I write, I miss words out. I, you know, use the wrong word in the wrong place.

Do you know what you do when you're right? We were talking about this in the office because you've been working. Yeah, well, you've been working from home. And it's quite funny because a sentence will just end. And I think, yeah, what he's done is I'm going to go, I've got some, I've got, I'm thinking about that. I'm going to go back to it. And either you don't go back to it or you do what I do, which is in your head. You typed the rest of the sentence, but you just couldn't get it out quick enough, so your fingers just didn't ever type it, even though you convinced you did.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it. So I it's mainly when I'm racing and I'm trying to get like a whole thought down really quickly. And I'm like, yeah, like, you know, I know what I'm trying to say here. I want to get onto like the, the meat of the subject and you just kind of leave the previous sentence unfinished. But, but the difference, I guess, and this is the thing we're talking about, isn't it? The difference is I write like that and then I pass my work to somebody else and they say, look, you've done this idiot mistake, fix it. Or, you know, look, you spelt this word wrong. What are you doing? But if you don't do that, you know, they're, they're really, really easy to miss, especially when you're editing your own writing. And I think that's all it really says about a brand, isn't it? It's like when we see those spelling mistakes, it just says, well, somebody wasn't careful here and okay, sometimes you can get away with that kind of thing. But when you're selling somebody on the fact that, you know, you're kind of professionals that pay attention to the fine detail and you've misspelled words in your own website, it'll, it'll kind of falls apart pretty quickly, doesn't it? Really?

Yeah. That's right. The and I have seen this. Probably the absolute best is when people misspell the word professional.

Yeah.

There must be a word for that. There must be a word that, you know, like oxymoron or something. Yeah, maybe just irony, I don't know. That's right. Yeah. Um okay.

I'm isn't it. I guess.

It is. That's right. I mean, that's what we're talking about here, isn't it? It's we're talking about like, use plain English, use the tools that can help you think about your audience. You know, if you get all of this right, um, it will help engage your customers. It will give people a much better, um, view of you and experience of working with you. Um, you know, to a certain extent, it'll, it'll probably help with Google rankings because chances are the people carrying out searches are using plain English. They're not using the big words that you're using. So although there's a semantic link between your big word and the simple word version of it, if you're using plain English, there's a good chance I think you'll rank better.

Well, this is an interesting point, right? Because one of the things that obviously Google pays a lot of attention to are headings or kind of titles in your work, right? So like, you know, when you're halfway through an article and you've got a subheading to divide up two different parts of it, lots of people try to get really witty with them and really smart with them, and kind of put stuff in there that, you know, is like a brief summary of the paragraph before or whatever. But a lot of the time, the articles we actually see performing best in Google are the ones that just use kind of simple questions for subheadings, right? It's like, what is this thing? How does it work? Do I need it? And it looks really simplistic on the page, but actually Google's kind of digging into that and saying, okay, these people are answering all the questions anybody could ask. Let's rank this content really high. So yeah. Yeah. I think doing things simply taking the kind of simplest approach is often the best way to actually get content ranking in Google. So yeah.

Mhm. Okay. I'm conscious that you have a client meeting in seven or eight minutes, and you probably want to go and grab yourself a cup of tea first. Um, I think we've covered off. Have you covered off what you wanted to cover off in this one?

Yeah, I think so.

I think so, yeah. Okay. Um, as ever, if you've enjoyed this and you would like to come on the show or you've got any questions you can go to https://www.redevolution.com/digital-marketing-from-the-coalface, go on the contacts tab and drop us a line. You can also get in touch with us via redevolution.com. I think there's an opportunity to do that on pretty much every single page on our website.

I think you can avoid it.

I don't think you can avoid it. That's right. Um, we, you know, we're always interested in having people on. We are now getting, you know, approached by, uh, people who want to come on the podcast, which is great. It shows that, uh, hopefully we're, we're getting some traction and moving along nicely with this thing, which is, which is lovely. Um, in the meantime, uh, thanks for listening. And, uh, it's goodbye from me and.

And for me as well.