I’m sitting at my desk this morning working on the search engine optimization (SEO) for our agency’s homepage. I’m deep in a mix of technical details that amount to a series of what you would call “educated guesses” on the changes I need to make. These improvements will, hopefully, improve how the homepage of our website will perform in the search engine result placements (SERP).
Surface Tactics
I live in a world of acronyms, techno-babble, and gross marketing drivel. What I call, “The Speak”. Here’s a bit of it:
SEO, SERP, SEM, PPC, SMM, KPIs, ROI, burn rates, lead generation, pillar content, evergreen content, GIT, GRUNT, brand positioning, conversion rate optimization (CRO), click-through-rate (CTR), customer relationship management (CRM), bounce rate, user experience (UX), chatbot, prompt engineering, artificial intelligence (AI), retargeting, click fraud, churn rate, sales funnel, conversion funnel, and on, and on, and on.
From this list (which is in no way complete), we can construct a whole bunch of sentences that should probably make us well up with tears.
That list, btw, was meant to be that painful.
I often joke with my business partner when things get to feeling crazy and a bit too large. “Have I ever told you that all I ever really wanted to do was design skateboards?” He laughs, more courtesy than anything because I say it a few times a year.
The question, while kind of dumb and mildly humorous (the first time you hear it), gets to the heart of the problem. Being a creative professional requires much more than creativity. Each of those terms I mentioned above is important, they’re all tools that can be harnessed to build a better company, a better product, and a better business. Yet, you will find that each of those terms will take you one step further away from the real creative process.
Get the Knife
For those of us who got into this work to be creative, learning and knowing these terms is like the slow process of “death by a thousand cuts”. The deeper you go, the more equipped you become, but at times that knowledge can feel like you’re adding a soul-sucking amount of distance between yourself and your real purpose — the act of creating.
When I feel saturated by the speak (sometimes I hear it just flop out of my mouth), I do something that is the polar opposite.
The truth is there are very few designers and/or agencies out there that can get by on their good looks*. Most of us have to buy into the terms above because it moves the nickels back and forth. But, we need to be careful. We can get lost in that maze of garbage speak thinking that we are engaged in the task of creativity. It can become everything we’re focused on, and then we lose sight of “why” we do this work. Don’t believe me? Just listen to how many marketers and SEOs talk about their work like it’s an art form. IMO, they’re lost in the maze. They’ve allowed themselves to be overtaken by the speak. They have an amazing skill, but art? I’m not so sure**.
Shake It Off
So, what to do? When I feel saturated by the speak (sometimes I hear it just flop out of my mouth), I do something that is the polar opposite. I grab my journal and I start to write. I crack open Illustrator and I create vector shapes. I jump into Photoshop, and I work on a digital collage. I open up the bins I have on the floor with all the ephemera and I create mixed-media collage. Whatever your jam is, do that.
The point is that when we become too concerned, too focused on the speak, it’s time to divest and get back to basics. Tools are tools. They help when you need them, yet we shouldn’t confuse that with why we do this work. We do this to create. To bring something into the world that did not exist before. We aim to surprise and delight, not to obsess over, “...our retargeting strategy, and its ability to increase our CTR so it can become a KPI we can accurately measure each quarter.” When you hear his come out of your mouth, it’s time to divest.
Again, the tools I’m railing against are important. I know this. BUT, they have their place. Make sure you make time for your creativity. It’s at the heart of everything we do. Remember why you started doing this work. Go forth and create something beautiful. Once you’ve done that then you can worry about employing “the speak” to make it something more... or don’t. Not everything we do needs to be about the nickels.
Notes:
* There are a few agencies and creative pros out there that don’t need to worry about investing in too much of the speak because they have global awareness of their brand and projects, which is hard-won and deserved. Yet, the rest of us do not.
** I know I’ll probably take a lot of heat about this statement. Let me first say that I know some amazingly talented marketers and SEOs. Second, I do this work as well. No insult intended. Just an opinion.