As an editor, one of the things I look for when reading a story (aside from typos, wordiness and bad grammar) is the presence of questionable references.
For example, most of my readers skew on the older side (50-plus), so when a 24-year-old reporter refers to someone’s “drip,” or fashion sense, I remove it. Or if they refer to something as “fire,” which I suppose is the latter-day equivalent of “boss,” “keen,” “groovy,” “far out” or “cool.”
Knowing your audience is important. As a political science major in college, I once turned in a paper I thought was stellar. For some reason, I thought the professor was a baseball fan, so I littered the paper with multiple references to the sport.
Turns out I was wrong. I got a B, and the professor noted that the paper might have deserved an A, but he didn’t know what I was talking about at some points.
Lesson learned.
Carefully write and edit all of your written materials or there’s a chance that you present incomprehensive content to whoever’s reading it. That could include customers, suppliers and even your peers who might be in a particular silo and not know all of the company’s terminology.
Avoid cultural references in materials targeted at consumers. Someone will fail to understand the reference, no matter how popular the thing is you’re referencing. While everyone may know who Taylor Swift is, anyone over 40 who doesn’t have a daughter probably can’t name a single Swift song. That includes me.
In addition, be careful of jargon. Every field/professional uses terminology that’s generally understood by people in that specific sector but by few others, which people tend to forget.
Utilities face a bit of added confusion from customers of the scientific nature of how the creation and distribution of electricity works; lots of folks will just tune out – as they did in high school science class.
If you do need to mention an industry term in materials aimed at the public, explain it in clear terms and don’t be afraid to keep the discussion simple.
To help alleviate potential confusion, you may want to include a glossary of electric utility industry terms on your website and also in your press materials.
Remember that you are in the business of communicating. To best do that, you have to make it as easy as you can for as many people as possible to understand what you’re talking about.
