I’ve also been working on some hand-tatted jewelry to raise money for lupus research but more on that later.  Right now I’m on VACATION.  And by vacation, I mean I’m still plugged in, monitoring clients etc.  I’m just doing it on the other coast and I’m obnoxiously taking photos.

Want to see?  I knew you did:

Smilebox

All kidding aside, this is going to be short and sweet:

If you haven’t optimized your website to be viewed on a smartphone then you need to do so immediately.   It is estimated that 70% of people will be accessing the majority of online information via smartphone in the near future and if people (like nearsighted old folks like me) can’t read it — they’ll go elsewhere for their information.  And by elsewhere…I mean your competitor.

I am not a web developer.  However, I’ve heard from reputable sources (like real web developers) that it is often a simple plug-in that optimizes a website for a smartphone.

See?  Told you this was going to be a short one.

Remember the old childhood taunt:  Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me?

Well we were wrong.

An ill-chosen word can make a huge difference in communication.

I’m not particularly talking about using the wrong word.  Actually, sometimes that is amusing.  I have a friend who always says, “exasperates” when she means “exacerbates.”  I find it charming and I know what she means.  But as usual…I digress.

My advice is for those who practice more informal writing.  We’re conversational.  We often write in the colloquial.  And…we play fast and loose with grammar and punctuation.  See what I did there?  To illustrate my point I indulged in a huge punctuation/grammar no-no.

Let me give you an example from my own experience.

For 15 years, I was a southern expatriate living in the midwest.  In addition to liking grits and okra, two things that most of my midwestern friends find repulsive, I evidently have a phrase (or two) in my arsenal that just doesn’t translate outside the south.

Here’s what happened:

I was given an assignment by a local magazine to write about a well-loved barbershop.  The two barbers had been in town for years and were both well-known for their funny antics.

Now, where I grew up, the phrase, cutting the fool means goofing off, acting silly or generally participating in good clean shenanigans.  In Michigan…it has no particular meaning.  So, when I went to my editor with the story and the headline read, “Cutting Hair And Cutting The Fool,” he looked and me sternly and asked WHY I would call the customers of this barbershop fools.

After explaining my meaning, we reworked the headline to read, “Cutting Hair and Cutting Up.”  Cutting up is universally understood as joking around. Thanks to a sharp pair of local eyes, I avoided total humiliation by not going to press with a headline that would have been controversial.

Another time I used the word facile in a discussion.  My understanding of the word is, “easy without effort.”  My friend’s understanding of the word was, “shallow.”  Both definitions appear in the dictionary but if you say someone has a facile mind, it could mean they grasp concepts effortlessly or it could mean they are shallow.  Oops…I pity the fool that steps into that misconception.  Oh…I WAS the fool.

I like reading pieces written in a conversational tone.  It feels more real.  I feel more connected.  And in the age of one-on-one connections between company and consumer it has a certain appeal.

However, before you get too carried away with the Awww Shucks jargon (or trying to show off your facile vocabulary) remember that your audience might not “speak” the same language you do and sometimes a well-intentioned word or phrase not only gets lost in translation but might even offend.

I’ve learned to use a thesaurus if the definition of a word is sketchy.  If I’d run facile through the thesaurus instead of depending on my own understanding of the word, I would have seen that shallow is a synonym as well as quick or easy to grasp.

I’ve also learned to get an outside opinion if I need to be folksy in tone just to make sure that colloquial phrases are relatable.

These are really simple precautions that can help you avoid an unintentional yet major communication breakdown.  Otherwise, you might find yourself up sh!t creek without a shovel.  Hey, did that translate?

Now on to my thought.  I need to write it down before it escapes me.

As things change in our business at breakneck speed, I find myself altering my advice on a fairly regular basis.  Just in the past 2 years, I’ve started advising clients that they should maximize their website for viewing on a  smart phone.

It’s my understanding that in the near future 70% of us will access the majority of our information through these devices.

Besides, it’s very frustrating to this near-sighted old woman to try to access information via my iPhone only to find the website is not optimized.  The text is teeny tiny and I have to enlarge and scroll around in order to read it.

With the burgeoning success of Pinterest, I’m adding “make your website photo-rich” to my ever-growing list of recommendations.  Once again, it is frustrating to cruise around the internet, land on a fabulous idea, click “pin it” only to be informed there are no viable photos or videos on the site.  Curses.

So my friends, what do you think?  Is Pinterest big enough to warrant some website modification so that it’s compatible?

But…I wanted to make sure that there was some interesting information for you at The Fuzzy Red Robe.  So, I’m sharing a wonderful infographic from one of my partners in crime…Mr. Michael D. Yoder.  Other than his lapse in judgement for working with me, Mr. Yoder is a VERY smart man.  He is the founder of the hugely successful networking group, LinkedUp Grand Rapids.

Grand Rapids has whole-heartedly embraced social media from the get-go. In fact, many other communities look to Grand Rapids to see “how it’s done.”

Mike decided to do a little survey about this phenomenon.

Click here for the link to his post:

77% of SMB’s in West MI use Social Media for Sales/Business Development