But what struck me were some of the terrible names that companies were coming up with for these departments, such as command center or war room. Jeremiah’s suggestion was Center of Excellence, an improvement over military-style names, true, but it made me yawn.

Thirty years ago, when Tom Peters rocked the business world with In Search of Excellence, excellence rocketed to the top of the word parade. But three decades later, with another world-rocking phenomena, can’t we come up with name that’s shiny and new?

Names are important. Seeing as social media is all about being social and connecting, can’t we come up with something that’s more personal and fun?

To help all the companies who are grappling with this dilemma, allow me to toss out a few suggestions. Like when I was naming my babies, I’m considering nasty ways the mean kids could twist the name.

Social media hubs

This complements the hub-and-spoke model that Altimeter’s research revealed is becoming the most popular structure. However, don’t forget that the hub approach forces air travelers to meander hub-to-hub before they reach their destination, so it’s probably not a good name with businesses that inconveniences customers, the people business social media are supposedly set up to serve.

Social machine

Because many social media functions comprise multiple hubs and spokes, they resemble a simple machine. Besides, the guys who came up with the war names would be placated. On the other hand, Quebec folk might think of the biker outlaw group Rock Machine.

Sweet spots

Jeremiah called one of the models honeycomb, which is mostly aspirational, as most companies haven’t yet evolved to this decentralized, individually empowered structure. Seeing as social media is mostly handled by women, as Jeremiah confirmed, the name would go over well. To facilitate the rebranding from command center, the room could be candy floss pink. Better stop this decorating fantasy before I squander the day with decor porn. What’s more, sweet names and pink rooms might ghettoize social media.

Bee hive

Sweet like the previous name, but connoting lots of activity. Only trouble is the many drones are guys and the one queen a female, the opposite of many social media departments.

Still, it has nice ring. No decorating fantasies come to mind. Though the alpha crew could rename it the B team, which implies second rate.

Hot wheels

Because the hub and spoke model comes from wheel design, maybe this one would fly. It would remind the guys of the hot wheels toys they loved as kids, though the “hot” connotation may be uncomfortable for some of the women, though the energy implied works well.

Queen bees

This involves inverting the gender balance of the bee hive, with lots of women in charge. Then again, too many queens and too few drones might lead to some nasty office politics. Or a lot of getting things done. Hmmm.

Any ways, enough musing from me. Do you like any of these suggestions? Do you have any to add? No worn-out military or management jargon, please.

If you’d like to see more about the talk, check out this sketchnote from Sacha Chua.

Focus is clarity.

When I focus, I can distill a big idea into a few words, get to the root of what a client needs, push aside brain chatter, be there for another person, grasp complex ideas, savor a bite of chocolate or get underneath the skin of the character in the novel, photo or other medium.

In optics, each focus has a single point. That implies I can focus on only one activity, thought or person at a time. Throughout the day, I may move from one focus to another. But I cannot focus on more than one point at a time.

I can, however, shift down from a single point of focus to two activities, thoughts or people. That is paying attention. For example, I can chat with my daughter while chopping vegetables because neither requires a single point of focus. However, if I don’t pay enough attention, I will hurt my daughter’s feelings or my fingers.

Paying attention is clear enough.

Multi-tasking involves cycling between or working simultaneously on lower-attention thoughts, ideas or people. For example, I can play computer solitaire with music in the background while I say “no thanks” to the telemarketer.

Multi-tasking is blurred.

If I try to multi-task when I should be paying attention, I send the wrong attachment, miss the point or piss off people.

If I pay attention when I need to focus, I miss details, subtleties and connections.

So why do people brag about their ability to multi-task? Why do employers ask for it? Are they saying their tasks aren’t important enough to merit much attention? Should we not be striving to focus?

This post has been updated since it originally appeared at http://barbsawyers.wordpress.com.

Thanks for the photo, Jason Bechtel.

I expect many are not motivated enough to read a book that will smooth the writing process, from routine emails to complex business plans, let alone to practice with the worksheets. But some of the employers I’ve talked to would like that to change now that engagement and collaboration have become serious issues beyond the communication department. That’s why I call my new e-learning program Writing is Serious Business.

To collaborate, their people need to pull out ideas and express them clearly. To engage, they need their writing to bring them closer to people. To look smart, they need to stop making the common mistakes that spell check does not catch. To improve productivity, they need to write faster and tighter.

The 14 five-minute segments each continue with an assignment based on what they’re writing that day. This way, busy people can fit learning into their schedule and immediately understand how it applies.

To track their progress, they are encouraged to run their writing through standard reading ease tests and evaluate their improvement against specific benchmarks. Every time they complete an assignment or show improvement, they can award themselves an iWrite star.

Here’s what Writing is Serious Business entails:

Think first

Who’s talking to who?

What about?

Write like you talk

Hook your reader

Big finish

Just write

Write better

Memorable

Concise

Look smart

The two common flubs

Professional, consistent

Stand out

Tell your story

More Hollywood techniques

More media

Keep improving

After learners have consumed the  bite-sized pieces, they can return to the segments they’d like to review. Or they can practice with the worksheets that go with the book.

Some of this could change, for the better, as I’m testing the program with two organizations before the big launch. I’m also working with adult educator Lee Weisser, previously with the Canadian Society for Training and Development.

For more feedback, I’ll post the introduction here soon. Stay tuned.

This prolific author on reading and writing can also help you write more engaging content. Rudolf’s advice, backed by research, can be summed up in two words: get personal.

Personal words

He advises us to use gender-specific pronouns, such as his or her and words like actress, Jim or father, some no longer welcome in our politically correct world.

While I’m glad the days of assuming everyone who can read is a he, politically correct writing is often dry and awkward. So let’s keep looking ways to be politically correct and personal. For example, in longer content, I often alternate between he and she.

Rudolf also encourages the use of people and folks. Do you hear that, all you people who refer to me and other readers as users, customers or (choke) stakeholders. Right on, Rudolf. You engage by writing to individuals, not for a faceless group.

Personal sentences

In his formula, Rudolf also calculated the percentage of personal sentences. They include:

• quoted dialogue
• questions, commands and request addressed to the reader
• exclamations
• and incomplete sentences, where the reader can infer the full meaning.

Let me stress that this advice was taken to heart by print journalists, dramatically raising the interest levels of magazines and newspapers. Now that so many people are publishers, we need to heed this timeless advice.

Because of his emphasis on plain language and short sentences in his well-known tests, I’ve been a Flesch fan for a long time. I was delighted to discover that he also recommended people “write like they speak.” I must have channeled his spirit when I was writing Write Like You Talk Only Better.

Because of political correctness, I’m not going to put my copy through his test. Besides, I’m too lazy for unautomated calculations. Check here if you want to try.

But I am going to encourage everyone to follow Rudolf’s advice’s to get personal.

And to enjoy his vintage infographic.

Place a straight edge on the left scale indicating the percentage of personal words. Place the other end on the right scale indicating the percentage of personal sentences. The intersection on the middle scale will show the Human Interest factor.

To help you better understand how to make your stories work, let’s look at some of the techniques employed in four examples: Kony 2012, the killing of Osama bin Laden, television crime dramas like Law and Order and Jon Morrow’s popular post, On Dying, Mothers and the Fighting for Your Ideas.

Despite their differences, they all:

Good versus evil
What prompted more than 100 million excited views on Kony 2012? After a sermon on the clout of individual viewers through social media, director Jason Russell’s son Gavin hooked pretty much everyone.

Before viewers would strongly identify with the child victims, who are kidnapped and turned into soldiers and sex slaves, they needed to open their hearts to this adorable white American boy, who is just like our own children or friends’ children, possibly even a little cuter.

After we were introduced to a victim, Jacob. Because Jason stressed how much victim Jacob was like Gavin, audience members could not dismiss him as another African poster child.

While previous media coverage had focused on the Lord’s Resistance Army, Jason personified the evil through Joseph Kony. His image was relentlessly repeated and accompanied by the simple plea for action: Stop Kony. Bam!

Jason accomplished what Big Media could not, because he connected us to the atrocities, gave us victims we cared about and united us against a single, sinister villain. To be fair, of course, the journalists were reporting, not storytelling, though the line often blurs.

People just like us
When U.S. President Barack Obama told the story of the slaying of Osama bin Laden, he knew we already hated the villain.

So he focused first on audience identification, devoting most of his announcement to how the American people are still mourning the loss of loved ones in 9/11 or living in fear of another attack. The twists and turns of radar evasion, a helicopter crash, whispered meetings and tense faces in the situation room could wait.

The story continues to unfold, and likely will at least until the election, with more revelations about betrayals by trusted servants and wives. Hollywood could not tell it better, though no doubt it will try.

While content marketers don’t have blockbusters like this, they can pump up their stories by opening at the turning point and focusing on one hero and one villain. For longer campaigns, they can extend the narrative with plots that continue to roll, much like a spy novel or an ongoing soap opera.

Open with murder
Like the U.S. President’s announcement, the first scene of Law and Order and similar crime dramas is always the murder, the central conflict that will drive the rest of the story. We are engaged immediately by the horror, with just enough character development thrown in to make us care about the person who died and the grieving famly and friends

The Law and Order formula may work better for content marketers who lack the emotional pull of terrorists and their prey and have to grab the audience quickly.

In the absence of a compelling event, you may lose the people who grew up on fast-paced movies, television and video games. Lacking the patience to stick around, they may need to be hooked immediately and repeatedly reeled in.

Solve a problem
Instead of a murder, though, lead with a dire problem or conflict that sets up the point you want to make.
Jon Morrow’s poignant tale begins with the doctor delivering the bad news to his mother about his fatal disease.

Although there are villains, like the bureaucrats who don’t want him in a regular class or the people who won’t listen to his ideas, the spotlight is on Jon’s feisty, loving mother. When the villains aren’t rotten to the core, there’s more need to champion the hero.

Pitch your point
Watching his mother go to bat for him inspires Jon to fight for his ideas and become one of the most popular bloggers on the planet. His point, which he set up in his title and built through his story, can’t be missed. Neither can the fact that it relates to you.

Your point is to get people to respect you, sign up for your course or do something else. That’s the same as Jason Russell wanting us to stop Kony, Barack Obama defining his place in history, Law and Order gluing us to the tube and Jon Morrow inspiring you to take risks.

While you may not have as gripping a tale, you can develop a quick plot about a problem you solved, a pain you relieved or a life you touched. These stories probably involve people your audience can identify with, love or hate. What’s more, you have a point, your call to action.

As a corporate storyteller, I often found that people were reluctant to air their problems or get personal. But life is messy and profoundly emotional.

You have to tell stories with characters your audience will relate and react to, conflicts that will drive the plot and a point that will encourage the action you desire. Only then can you live happily ever after.

What a wasted opportunity to connect with your most important readers, the people who have stuck by you.

You still need to summarize what you’ve told them, especially how it affects them. But you also need to provide:
1. a call to action
2. a sense of completion
3. a desire for more.

Action
The call to action is often your sales pitch or anything else you want your readers to do.

Do this too early and people won’t continue to read. But there’s a good chance that people who have made it this far are interested enough to at least continue the relationship with you.

This call to action needs to be specific, not subtle. Don’t assume readers will get it.

Memory
By taking a specific action, people will also be more likely to remember your advice. For example, if you want them to care about the environment, you might ask them to write “Reuse and Recycle” on the back side of a piece of paper sitting on their desk.

Although immediate actions like this work best, you may also remind them to think about your advice the next time they do something relevant, such as appreciating how the trees clean the air the next they take a walk.

Close the circle
Instill a sense of completion by reapplying any techniques that hooked readers in your introduction. Think of the circle of life, a problem solved or a case closed.

If you’ve told a story earlier, return to it and repeat or conclude it.

If you’ve made a comparison, return, reinforce, rinse and repeat.

More
Leave your readers wanting more, looking forward to your next post or excited about meeting you. Don’t take this for granted. State it clearly and personally.

Most people won’t make it to the finish line. So don’t leave any vital information for the end, unless you are writing a suspense thriller. But do shower the love on the ones who do are your most important readers in terms of building sales, visibility or respect.

Copy your intro
I often draft my conclusion right after my intro. That way, I know where I want to end up when I’m writing.

I simply copy my intro, add the call to action and pump it up. Usually, I add more dazzle when I finish the first draft, still more as I rewrite.

Big finish
So remember to write a concrete call to action and to complete the circle the next time you’re wrapping up.

If you’re writing a blog, pose a question. If people don’t comment, I try to convince myself that I’ve said everything there is to be said on the subject. Then I cry.

So, to keep me from crying, and add some finishing touches for other readers, please tell us: What’s your favorite way to wrap up your content?

Thanks for the photo, Smil.