Nearly all of us are swayed by the power of words. A powerfully written essay blog post or article can open our minds convince us of uncertainties and even engage us to action. Today Matt at the 37 Signals blog has an excellent piece that helps dissect buzzwords and effective language:

People who really get it aren’t impressed by this sort of jargon. They smell BS. They can read between the lines and see what’s really there: fear. Fear of clarity. Fear there isn’t actually anything worthwhile to convey...

...Tech folks often use terms that imply we’re part of some secret club. It’s as if we’re saying “We can speak in a code that those other people can’t understand.” It’s a way to build a wall that separates us from them. It’s a form of exclusion.

You don’t need to build walls or exclude people when you’re confident in your message though. When you’re confident in your message you want everyone to understand.

Matt makes some excellent points and leverages more than a few good quotes in the process.

In the SEO industry we hover on both sides of the tech-jargon fence. As insiders to insiders we're constantly referring to SERPs sandboxing splogs and singular value decompositions (OK rarely do we actually discuss SVDs). But in the world of marketing our profession requires that we bridge the gap between technical jargon (that can impress and speak to a tech and search-savvy audience) and communicative plain language that speaks to our customers.

I believe that the search marketers who accomplish this best - speaking knowledgeably to insiders and plainly to potential customers - are the ones who achieve the best reputations and highest levels of demand. At the top of this list I'd earmark Mike Grehan who consistently impresses every audience he speaks to and then transitions to our coveted insider-search-babble over cocktails in a matter of minutes :)