I discuss overused business and tech-related buzz words that get under my skin! This list compromises words or phrases used by “gurus” (hey there’s one) in business or the technology industry that – when used – make my brain go into a violent meltdown that causes me to lose all mental – and sometimes visual – conscientiousness.
It’s been almost a week since my last post. The reason: I’m as busy as I’ve ever been with work, life, and other stuff. Running myself into the ground has become a regular habit of mine – and it’s probably as bad a habit as smoking. Thank God I don’t smoke too?!?
So on that note, today’s post isn’t really going to follow the lines of my usual posts. Normally, I try to either help my readers solve a problem or come to some sort of understanding on how to do something with relation to SEO, Social Media, etc etc etc.
Today, I’m tired, really grumpy, and just want something to groan about! So…I’m going to flip the script and have you to help participate in a little list I’m building. The list is entitled, “Overused Business & Tech Buzz Words That Get Under My Skin.” Tongue & Cheek time!
This list compromises words or phrases used by “gurus” (hey there’s one) in business or the technology industry that – when used – make my brain go into a violent meltdown that causes me to lose all mental – and sometimes visual – conscientiousness.
However, through my experiences people that can integrate these awesomely-bad phrases into their everyday business and tech lingo tend to do better at what I will just call “things.” Mostly what I think these words & phrases really end up doing is (just like me) getting people to gloss over just enough to make the person saying them sound smart.
This corresponding thought may ensue, “This person sounds smart. What they’re saying is definitely over my head. I’ll let them handle it!” This thought is usualy followed by a “Cha-Ching!” sound and maybe later be followed by the moans and groans of those who’ve realized they may have been duped. Either way, it’s just awful!
So, here is my lost so far (in alphabetical order):
Business & Marketing
- “Action Items”
- “Apples to apples”
- “Bait and Switch”
- “Bandwidth”
- “Bells and Whistles”
- “Best of Breed”
- “Brick-and-mortar”
- “B2B”
- “B2C”
- “Capacity”
- “Consumer-Driven”
- “Core Competency”
- “Cutting Edge”
- “Data-Driven”
- “Elevator Pitch”
- “End-to-End”
- “Enterprise-Class”
- “Enterprise-Level”
- “Gap Analysis”
- “Gurus”
- “High-Level” (thanks to Aaron Flax)
- “Hit the Ground Running”
- “Holistic”
- “Knowledge Base”
- “Let’s huddle”
- “Low-Hanging Fruit”
- “Methodology”
- “Mission-Critical”
- “Mission Statement”
- “Next-generation”
- “Outside the Box”
- “Paradigm Shift”
- “Price Point”
- “Scalability”
- “Share of Voice”
- “Shoot me an email”
- “Skill Set”
- “Solutions”
- “Strategic Gap”
- “Strategic Partnership”
- “Streamlined”
- “Synergy (singular) or Synergies (plural)”
- “Tactical”
- “Touch base”
- “Transparency”
- “Turnkey Solutions”
- “Value-Added”
- “Value Proposition”
- “Value Stream”
Tech & SEO
- “Affiliate Marketing”
- “Best Practices”
- “Cloud computing”
- “Hits”
- “Keyword Density”
- “Latent Semantic Indexing”
- “Optimizing Search Engines”
- “Optimizing the SEO”
- “SEO Optimization”
- “Social Graph”
- “Semantic Web”
- “Web Semantics”
- “Web 2.0”
- “Web 3.0”
Maybe I’m wrong to hate these words, maybe I’m not? I just don’t know. What I do know is that twinge of pure rage that I get when I hear them. That much I can’t control!
Please, I encourage everyone to add to this list! The more phrases that we add, the better I’ll be able to feel about myself when I look at them. Because if I am looking at them often, then I’m probably running my brains into a wall trying to compete with someone using them.
P.S. Anybody who sees or hears me – with a serious face – trying to use any of these terms can feel free to punch me. I don’t even actually have to know you. Just punch me! Please, do it for my sake and the sake of my future children!
