Social media and business blogging are not immune to the buzzword culture of the Internet

In the business blogging and social media world, buzzwords are king.

As I move into the Autumn of my life, I am amused at how business blogging and social media get caught up in the buzzword culture of the last 15 years. When I was younger, I got caught up in the game too. Those of us in the industry forget that the average person does not have the same passion and knowledge we do about the world in which we work. How often to you find yourself talking and the other person has no clue what you are talking about? It made me pause.

Everything that even smells of something new gets a buzzword. I have visions of smartly dressed people with stylish glasses and fancy haircuts going, "let's give it a name." Then come up with something like this:

3-6-3 Rule
A Ton Of Money
Accounting Noise
Acquisition Indigestion
Across The Board
Active Box
Activity Based Budgeting - ABB
Affluenza
After The Bell
Agency Cross
Agflation
Air Pocket Stock
Alligator Property
Alligator Spread
Alternative Energy ETF
Alternative Investment
And Interest
Angel Bond
Angelina Jolie Stock Index
Ankle Biter
Anonymous Trading
Antitrust
Arbitrageur
Aspirin Count Theory

Sourced from investopedia.com/buzzwords

What usually happens is a small segment of the population actually understands what it means. People in the know sound really smart because they can repeat the buzzword and sound really intelligent. The real genius' use lots of buzzwords in every sentence. (Wow, he's smart, he is buzzword compliant). And people buy it all the time. (I guess that's why they work).

I will be the first to admit that I loved buzzwords too. I used to sit around with my colleagues who dressed ever so nicely and play the buzzword game too. Yes, I was a buzzword expert with everyone, clients included.

No Buzzword For This
There is one constant in human evolution. Human interactions have not really changed. Despite all this technology introduced into our lives, we as a species still function pretty much the same way. While we may not feed each other to lions, we find new ways to be cruel just the same. And our fears and desires are pretty simple too. We can still be made to fear and sex still sells.

So, how does tie into the hype surrounding social media? What's all this new Internet marketing stuff about? Well, the reality is human evolution in buying has gone from the bazaar to the store, to the electronic store. Buying and selling is still done on emotions. Doing it on the Internet is no different. Now we have to either visually or through words impact people's emotional reaction to get them to buy from us. Just like we did when people stood in front of our table at the bazaar. There is no buzzword to describe this. Businesses just need to learn how to sell in this new market.

This is a absolute fact not lost on us or our social marketing efforts. Whether we are blogging for a business or promoting a post on Facebook, we seek to impact people's emotions.

In the end, humans have not changed. We are still creatures of habit. We still gravitate towards shared interest. The only difference is that we do it in a different environment today. So, if you peal off all the buzzwords and narrow down the basic human behavior we see today, success is simply watching how humans behave in their new environments. If you observe the Internet from this perspective, you will see that nothing has really changed, only the location where people congregate has.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.