Use "utilize"? Never. Well, hardly ever.

Utilize is the most worthless word in the English language. Seriously. It's superfluous, unneeded, pretentious. Useless.

And yet some very intelligent people constantly use utilize. From baseball commentary to business meetings, the utilization rate of utilize seems be increasing on a daily basis. In other words, people use it a lot.

Therein lies my dislike of the word utilize. There's no place to use this word where you can't say use instead. Right?

So why do people use utilize? Well, it sounds important. High utilization rates sound more impressive than saying people use this a lot. I mean, if you have high utilization rates, you are like to have a higher marginal income optimization rate, right? You won't get laid off if you're billable a lot.

So for all my dislike of utilize, I would never use it? Right?

Wrong.

The prime directive is to reach your audience. If your audience expects the word utilize, use it. If you're more likely to sway the project's budget committee to give your project money, then use it and all the other expected words. Your job is to be effective, and the rest be damned. Second-person writing with lots of active voice doesn't usually work in academic circles. You might be right to avoid passive voice, but in some circumstances you'd be dead right.

Of course, if you're writing dialog, the rules change. If your character is an agressive, career-minded up-and-coming manager, they'd be more likely to use corporate speak. Of course, you could also have a down-to-earth, stunning, strikingly attractive writer who keeps trying to correct her.

Yammer, Twitter, and Customer Service

Twitter is a micro-blogging application that allows you to reach subscribers (called "Followers" in Twitter) with short messages of up to 140 characters. When you have a Twitter account, you can follow whoever interests you and you receive anything they say.

Yammer is similar to Twitter, but it's designed to work within your work domain. It doesn't have as strict a limit on post length and a number of other features Twitter doesn't have. (In fairness, some of those features are useful inside the firewall, but might not translate outside.)

Either way, your micro-blogging system of choice, internally or externally, can be a useful extension of your customer support ticket system.

Imagine a world in which you can call customer service and enter a trouble ticket, then hang up and automatically receive notifications via Twitter or Yammer every time the status of your ticket changes. Depending on the ticketing system, this functionality already exists.

The concept is simple. When you get a confirmation e-mail back about your ticket, it can contain a link that allows you to subscribe to the customer service feed. Every time the status of your ticket changes, you receive a notification via Twitter or Yammer indicating your new ticket status and including a link to the ticket system's web interface. The technical details at this point aren't important. Perhaps the URL sent in the message could log you into the customer support system and take you to the ticket for which the status changed. Or it could take you to the list of your tickets where tickets with new status are highlighted.

Either way, you would be able to track status of your tickets without calling the customer service line, which takes your time and theres for an exercise that usually adds little to no value.

Conversely, if you check your feed for notices and there are none, you can call customer service and pursue a more timely solution to your problem.

What's WordPress.org?

In the world outside your company's four walls, WordPress and Blogger are the two primary blogging sites most people use. WordPress has one important difference: it allows you to download the blogging environment for free and install it on your corporate Intranet server. In other words, it allows you to build a blog for your own internal use.

When you use this version of WordPress (Wordpress.org), you can select from a plethora of plug-ins that can help you extend the usefulness of your blog. As I mentioned in the previous post, we use something called Subscribe2 that allows users to subscribe to the blog and receive e-mail messages when a new message is posted. The number of plug-ins is as varied as the needs of the people who use WordPress.

WordPress.org is an open source product. In other words, you get the programming for free and you can build your own plug-ins based on your needs. It's sort of like of Microsoft were to make Word's source code available to the world and let people build their own enhancements.

The advantage of hosting the blog software yourself is enormous. Your organization can have a professional blogging backbone within your firewall for free. On the other hand, your IT organization will have to install and maintain the software.

WordPress or any other blogging software makes it easy for you to render posts written in basic HTML. If you want to go beyond what the text editor allows, though, such as adding tables, you need to write the tables in HML. (It's really not that hard. Just Google HTML reference.)

Blogging on the Intranet

First of all, if you haven't seen it, hurry on over to the Virtual Writer's Group to look over my series about blogging using Blogger.

We've started an internal WordPress.org blog at work. In it, my department can get its message out to a diverse audience across my firm's entire US population without requiring them to go looking.

A blog's a great way to help your internal users engage with your group. Ideally, if your workplace is RSS-enabled, you don't have to e-mail your users about what's going on. They can subscribe to your blog and all the updates show up in their feed reader (more on that in some future posts). Internet Explorer 7 includes an embedded feed reader.

Even if you aren't RSS-enabled Word Press has a plug-in called Subscribe2 that allows your users to receive e-mail messages when you update the blog.

Why blog? In many companies, it's hard to get the core information on the Intranet updated. In our case, our Portal team has done an outstanding job creating our Intranet. It's easy to use and well-organized, but to get something changed requires an expenditure of time and resources, and in our current economic state, both are scarce.

Our blog allows us to own the means to update our users on important issues without requiring us to schedule updates weeks ahead of time. It puts our users a giant step closer to us and the information we can provide them, while still allowing enough of a barrier to assure we can do our jobs, as well as helping our users.

More on WordPress and its usage for internal blogging in the next post.

Minimalism is cool

We live in an era of information overload. How many times has someone sent you something in e-mail that you've lost in the avalanche?

If you want people to read what you write, you have to make it easy for them. Give them the information they need in easy-to-digest, bite-size pieces and link them to more if they need it.

Use these tools:

• Bulleted lists starting with phrases. The lists increase white space and help people understand the key points without a lot of effort.
• Verbs. Verbs are the most powerful words, especially if you're instructing someone. Tell them what to do first, then include the detail.
• Numbered lists. Never bury instructions in a long paragraph. Always break them out into a numbered list, which shows sequence and is easily followed.
• Pictures. If you can show people what to do, rather than tell them, they'll do it.
• Minimal appearance. Lotus Notes includes a sections feature that allows you to hide pictures, which reduces the size of the message. The pictures are easily displayed with a single mouse click. Look for options like that for composing your message.
• Audio and video. Some people do better if they can watch or listen to the message. If you can include audio or video, you'll reach more people.

Words are our tools, but people want fewer of them. Our goal as writers is to get them to read our work. Thoughtful use of tools and approaches shows our readers we care about their attention and time and increase our effectiveness.

How Twitter Can Make You A Better Writer

Try writing your message in 140 characters, no matter what it is. Spaces count. If you can't do it, your message stays forever unsent.

That's the concept behind Twitter, a micro-blogging social network that allows you to subscribe to--or follow--people and let's them follow you. And everything you put out there has to be said in 140 characters or fewer.

Using 140 characters is easy if you're saying "I like your picture," or something simple. But most ideas aren't simple. And if you're like me and you detest IM-speak (I want 2 do smthng 4 U), the pressure is really on. Your idea is like a floundering airplane that needs to shed all unnecessary weight to fly.

Utilize? Use saves three characters. Very? Not likely. If you get rid of that, does it change the meaning of the sentence? If not--and it usually doesn't--away that goes.

The best way to write effectively, regardless of your purpose, is to write economically. Every word that doesn't suit your purpose must go away. For me, that translates into a savings of between 16,000 and 20,000 words between the first and second drafts of a novel. Every time you use a big word and a smaller word will do, you're better off with the smaller word. Simpler is better.

Writing to a 140-character limit and not cheating helps you establish the habit of writing better.

Try Twitter. It's free. It's fun. You get to know cool people. And you'll get better at self editing.

Be interested

I aspire to be a fiction writer, yet I haven't written a lick of fiction in the past three months. You might think that's not a way to move toward my goal, and you might be right. It's not that I'm not writing, it's just that I'm not writing fiction right now.

A number of things have transpired that have broadened my horizons and shot my discipline to a tattered remnant of what it once was. In November, I went to the Florida Writers Association's conference, where I found out about the world of social networking. A woman named Penny Sansevieri told me about how her business, Author Marketing Expert, used online tools to help writers sell their books. She introduced me to Twitter and made me reconsider Facebook and dust off my LinkedIn profile.

Then, in early December, the government announced that 533,000 people lost their jobs in November. Another 692,000 followed suit in December. My employer is actively looking to outsource everything it can. In short, I need a network.

What I found was a blessing. In the short amount of time I've been active on Twitter, I've "met" a lot of interesting people and learned a lot of new things. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) will soon be the required format for financial reports in the United States. I learned that from a woman named Francine McKenna, who has a blog called Re: The Auditors. I learned that there are a boatload of website where you can submit press releases for free, from Dana Willhoit of The Press Release site. I've learned a little bit about PR from a woman named Lizz Harmon. Every Sunday night, I make a note to watch Business Owners Online TV, where Aaron Foster provides a great forum for anyone who wants to learn about making money online.

The point is, we live in a world that has more opportunities and possibilities than you can imagine. And dipping your toe into that world and finding out about the possibilities broadens your writing base, which can make you more versatile. And the more you can help people, the more you can get paid for what you write.

Three Free Web Tools that Bolster Your Message

You know Billy Mays, the manic guy with the beard and moustache who's always pitching something that will change your life? This blog post is releasing my inner Billy Mays. Only I'm not going to pitch you ShamWow! and everything I list here will be free. These are tools available to you to help you get your message out and put to work for your company or clients.

I'll revisit this topic periodically as I get familiar with new tools. But as the Virtual Group Leader (I knew I'd make it to management someday) for the Florida Writers Association, I'm dabbling with these tools. Eventually, I might make some money helping other people use them.

Tool #1. Blog Talk Radio.
Imagine having the ability to set up a radio talk show on the Internet for free, and allowing people to call in. Imagine being able to store that show for listeners to reference after. Imagine integrating that tool into your company's or client's support function. Imagine doing it for free.

BlogTalkRadio is an easy-to-use Internet radio station that allows you to have a guest and callers. It's free online talk radio. After you're through, the show stays resident so users can stream it. It's a wonderful way to reach out to specific users in a way that doesn't require them to actually read (see the blog title).

One warning, when you start your show, mute your computer, or you might hear yourself on delay.

Tool #2. Facebook.
Yes, Facebook isn't just for teenager girls lusting after Johnny Depp any more. In fact, businesses can set up a Facebook page to tout their wares and make product announcements. The neat thing with Facebook is how easily you can meld it with other venues. For instance, if you produce a video and put it on YouTube, you can add the YouTube video easily to your Facebook page or profile.

Facebook is also a good venue for individual businesspeople, like authors. I've started reading an author named Brian Freeman. Thanks to Facebook, I've had multiple miniature discussions with him. He doesn't know me from Adam, but it's great outreach and it makes me more likely to buy his next book and tell others how approachable he is.

Like Blogtalkradio, Facebook is free. It's also very easy to use.

Tool #3. Twitter
Twitter is microblogging, your chance to attract followers and talk with them in short, 140-character "tweets." You can embed URLs and direct your message to all your followers or to individual followers. It's a simple and powerful tool that can give clients or customers the feeling of individualized attention.

Among other companies, Jet Blue, Dell, Starbucks, H&R Block, and Kodak use Twitter to communicate with customers. Companies can monitor tweets directed to them and either respond directly with the sender, or direct them to more information, such as an FAQ.

Looking at a feed with a few hundred people posting can be intimidating, though, so if you use Twitter, you should investigate using a Twitter client, such as Tweetdeck.

A Word of Caution
When I started working in radio, I was told over and over that it's a personal medium. You should feel like the guy on the radio is talking to you. The same applies to these media. They're free and easy to use, but you can damage your reputation (or your client's) if you don't use them as relationship-building tools. Listen and respond. Do not broadcast. Their real value is in making clients or their customers feel personally engaged. Once that engagement occurs, it's easier to build an ongoing business relationship.