Get yourself heard!

More than half the articles and blogposts I come across with lately are about what methods your company should use in order to get your brand’s name out there. What channels you should use, how to harness the power of digital media, how to harness the power of social media, how many blog posts, Facebooks posts and tweets should you aim at…

Reading about all this information has gotten me thinking: in a market so crowded with information, assuming you use the correct channels and the correct frequency, how do you get your message read?

I’ve compiled a list of my top 5 tips to generate a powerful message that will get your brand distinguished from the competition and your message read:

Trim the fat: Business owners -for obvious reasons- are fans of their businesses and think everyone else cares about their brand as much as they do. Well, sorry to break it to you, but people don’t give a darn about the story of your company, how you used to hide in your grandfather’s garage pretending to make phone calls to investors to try and get them to buy EUR/USD on a Fisher Price toy phone when you were 6 years old.

People’s interactions with your company are just a small portion of their busy day and they want the information they are after given to them short and simple. Trim the fat. Cut out any unnecessary details and provide clear and concise sentences that let customers learn the facts in an efficient way.

Stop with the jargon: Don’t assume that because you speak in acronyms all day traders will follow what you are saying.

You may be used to the industry’s jargon and saying things like “let’s do a plain vanilla option of 1000 EURUSD now that the CAC is doing this and that”, may sound as common as ordering a happy meal at a fast food restaurant, but to customers, especially those who are new to trading, this jargon is confusing and headache-inducing.

If you are writing a blogpost for example, and you are going to use a certain industry term or an acronym repeatedly, explain it the first time you use it and then feel free to acronym the heck out of your post.

Bring it down to earth: Using metaphors can often help you explain complicated concepts in a way anyone can understand.

If your brokerage targets newbie traders, explaining elements of trading and strategies by comparing them to everyday situations, such as the way a restaurant kitchen or a sports team work, can help you convey a point in a much easier way.

LOL: People learn better and are more engaged with the information you are providing if you do it in a humorous way. It doesn’t have to be stand-up comedy material, just something that shows you are human and personable.

Show, not just tell: Using pictures is a powerful way of engaging an audience and can help generate interest in your content, it can create an emotional connection with the reader and add color to your message. Graphs and charts can help you support a point and add insight to your information.

Adding a picture of an app or a website for example can far better communicate what it looks like than words. When posting on social media in particular, images can make your post far more effective than posting text only.