When creating content for your brand’s Web site or blog, there are several things to consider during the planning and the writing process as far as language goes.

While the safest route for a company’s corporate site is to have writeups written with a formal tone, the blog and your social network responses can have a lot more freedom to allow your brand a little personality. However, take note of the language use as a lot of readers can easily get turned off by your choice of words and many factors within your content.

Here are a few important pointers anyone crafting written pieces for the social media space should be mindful of. Yeah, there are a lot and maybe we’ll have a separate post to list them all, but these alone can leave a bad taste in a reader’s mouth.

Demographic
You are, after all, relating to humans so the language should naturally be aligned with your actual demographic. Depending on your market, you should be able to distinguish which words or references you need to avoid; for instance, it’s not really a good idea to use some Mac OS tool as a reference when responding to a comment on your site populated by Windows loyalists. Not only will they not get it, but it will also potentially put your relationship with them at risk.

Grammar
Bad grammar is easily one of the few things readers immediately notice when reading anything online. The common consumer may find grammatical errors and just brush them off as mere typos, but there are also those who would find them off-putting and will bring it up on the comments section. Some will even ridicule you for it and this cannot possibly be good for your brand’s reputation.

Cuss Words
Maladjusted attempts at looking/sounding badass to live up to a hard-edged reputation have produced obnoxious blogs that feast on ridiculing others and throwing expletives around. This may work on some personal blogs (and maybe very few brand sites) and a few single-purpose Web sites, but it’s never a good practice if your representing a brand. It shows a lack of professionalism, disregard for your readers and it’s a quick way to demolish any potentially good campaign strategies you may have already implemented during brand development.

Tasteless Humor
Every once in a while, when we feel it’s appropriate, we throw in some clever reference we know our followers can easily catch or a witty comment that lightly ridicules a subject. But as far as humor is concerned, you should be careful not to purposefully offend anyone just to elicit a few laughs. Your knowledge of your demographic and the brand you are represent can practically tell you the brand of humor you can let lose. Also, if you’re at the receiving end of the joke, learn to roll with the punches, don’t take it personally and maybe you can laugh with them—unless of course something grave has been said to damage your brand, in which case, have a quick talk with your team or the higher ups as to your next engagement stratagem.

Tags: Anti-Social Media Douche List, Bad Language, content creation, Cussing, Grammar, Humor, Internet Marketing Campaigns, Social Media