We live in a buzzword world.
Everything that even smells of something new gets a buzzword. I have visions of smartly dressed people with stylish glasses and fancy haircuts going, “let’s give a name.” Then we come up with a sample like this:
3-6-3 Rule
A Ton Of Money
Accounting Noise
Acquisition Indigestion
Across The Board
Active Box
Activity Based Budgeting – ABB
Affluenza
After The Bell
Agency Cross
Agflation
Air Pocket Stock
Alligator Property
Alligator Spread
Alternative Energy ETF
Alternative Investment
And Interest
Angel Bond
Angelina Jolie Stock Index
Ankle Biter
Anonymous Trading
Antitrust
Arbitrageur
Aspirin Count Theory
Sourced from www.investopedia.com/categories/buzzwords.asp
What usually happens is a small segment of the population actually understands what it means. People in the know sound really smart because they can repeat the buzzword and sound really intelligent. The Internet has spawned all kinds of them. Example: “It is important that your GUI design captures the eyeballs. Make sure that you employ search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), and Web Analytics. ” The genius ones use a lot of them in many sentences. (Wow, he’s smart, he is buzzword compliant). And people buy it all the time. (I guess that why they work).
I will be the first to admit that I loved buzzwords too. I used to sit around with my collegues who dressed nicely and play the buzzword game too. I was a buzzword expert too. I would do it in front of clients and feel really good about myself.
There is one constant in human evolution. Human interactions have not really changed. Despite all this technology introduced into our lives, we as a species still function pretty much the same way. While we may not feed each other to lions, we find new ways to be cruel just the same. And our fears and desires are pretty simple too. We can still be made to fear and sex will always sell.
So, what is all this social media hype about anyways? What’s all this Internet stuff with My Space, Facebook, Linkedin, and Plaxo about? Well, the reality is human evolution in buying has gone from the bazaar to the store, to the electronic store. Buying and selling is still done on emotions. Doing it on the Internet is no different. Now we have to either visually or through words impact people’s emotional reaction to buying from us. Just like we did when people stood in front of our table at the bazaar. There is no buzzword to describe this. Businesses just need to learn how to sell in this new market. It is old fashion buying and selling that is going on today.
Cold calling is dead. People no longer pick up the phone and talk because caller ID says I don’t have time for people I do not know. So, they are changing from having the world come to them to opting into the world of their choosing. People are quorom sensing beings. They will naturally gravitate towards those people that have similar interest and become part of a community. Instead of going down to the Church Hall, they may now choose to join the forum on under water basket weaving because there are not many people at church who are into under water basket weaving.
Business professionals globally are also trying to connect with potential colleagues with like interests. They no longer pick up the phone and listen to sales people. Instead they pick and choose what information interests them or could help them. The challenge today is learning how to generate the information they would be interested in reading. Or, creating an environments that gives them the option to participate. Again, it is old fashion buying and selling.
In the end, humans have not changed. We are still creatures of habit. We still gravitate towards shared interest. The only difference is that we do it in a different environment today. So, if you peal off all the buzzwords and narrow down the basic human behavior we see today, success is simply watching how humans behave in their new environments. If you observe the Internet from this perspective, you will see that nothing has really changed, only the location where people congregate has.
Paul is an Internet consultant and President of Professional Blog Service. Professional Blog Service works with companies trying to beat their competition online using business blogging, social media and search engine optimization to dominate their markets. My interests are in Entrepreneurial pursuits, soccer, music, and travel.
