There’s a TV ad where a hapless mother confronts her pre-teen daughter over the alarming use of her cell phone text messaging, only to become entangled in a barrage of text messaging shorthand. “OMG it’s NBD! TISNF!” protests the girl.

I found myself in a similar situation when my teenage niece started Instant Messaging me every afternoon a few years ago. It wasn’t long before I was lost in the maze of IM lingo: “Hi AB! Your last email made me LOL. BTW, gotta go, but I’ll BRB...I have to go to VB! TTFN!” (Translation: Hi, Aunt Brenda! Your last email made me laugh out loud. By the way, gotta go, but I’ll be right back...I have to go to volleyball! Ta-ta for now.”)

Anna and her brothers obviously found my IM ineptitude hilarious as I struggled to keep up. I loved connecting to my faraway family every day, but I definitely needed a translator!

It may be part of a teenager’s DNA to create barriers between themselves and everyone else, in business that same tactic is a very bad idea...yet we do it nearly every day. We may attract a client, only to lose them in a badly executed phone call or poorly written yellow page ad. In our “conversation” with the outside world, we regularly omit important information, drop lingo people don’t understand, or – worse yet – forget obvious things like our phone number or how to find our website.

So take a few minutes to think about this: What kind of barriers are you creating for your potential customers? Look at your flyers, your newspaper ad, your website. Do you make it easy for clients to find you? Do you make it easy for them to say “Yes”? Marketing doesn’t do much good if the message is flawed. If you make them jump through hoops, I guarantee they’re gone!

TTFN,
Brenda
CreativeInc.net