Liz Welsh emailed me yesterday. Although I have been known to talk to myself, I haven’t yet reached the point where I’m emailing myself. This was a different Liz Welsh, from Kentucky. She had wanted to buy this domain name and found that it was already in use–by me. So she challenged me to a Scrabulous game–winner takes the URL.
No, really, we hit it off. Interestingly, this Liz Welsh has her own marketing company, too. Lucky for me, she outsources quite a bit when she needs marketing materials created for her clients, so we chatted about collaborating.
Anyway, this parallel universe me (has anyone really ever been to Kentucky?) didn’t help me with my latest worry that I’m very average. Lately, everywhere I go I hear, “Oh yeah, we’ve met before” (no, we haven’t), or “You look familiar,” or “I swear I know you from somewhere. Do you play volleyball?” (not a chance). I figure if I look like so many other people, I must be extremely average looking. Now I come to find out that there are three other Elizabeth Welsh’s in Liz Welsh’s hometown of Louisville. How many are in Madison? I’m afraid to Google that.
This got me thinking about what separates me from other Liz Welsh’s. And then about what makes LizWelsh.com unique. And I came back to an email I had sent to a prospective collaborator describing my services, and I think I found it: “Basically, I do what fancy big-city companies do, but I do it myself without all the silly jargon and b.s.”
At a conference I spoke at last summer, I was stuck listening to a dry presentation at 8 in the morning. To make matters worse, they had run out of coffee. So to keep myself awake I struck my best “this is fascinating, I’m going to take notes” pose and tallied buzzwords on my notepad to see which geek-speak was used most often in that hour and a half. Would “price point” win? “Vertical”? What about “platform”? “Next-generation” anyone? 3 points for “algo,” and 10 for “B2B.” “Cononical,” “RLT,” “ROI,” “turn-key,” and “2.0.”
As fun as that exercise was, I do appreciate the need for industries to use jargon–I guess. But at the same time, much like I wouldn’t speak to a client in Spanch (inside joke), I won’t speak in Googlish either, or use search-enginisms, in person or on my website (if you catch me doing this, please call me on it).
In sum, what I’m trying to say is that when you work with me, WYSIWYG.
Oops, I did it again.
