What Would Happen if Robots Overtook Your Business:

By: Lisa Slagle

If robots came into our office, froze all of us (even Scout) with ray guns, hacked into our website, and rewrote the content, it would probably sound something like this:

"At this juncture, Wheelie Creative is a digital communication and development association specializing in  blueprinting your company's actionable goals into a visual medium. We value our human capital as much as yours, and will incentivize your customers to develop brand recognition and loyalty to give your company extra leverage in a diverse and competitive marketplace."

These robots would answer the phone using similar barf-in-my-mouth kind of corporate nonsense. Our existing clients would probably hang up feeling very confused, and potential clients wouldn't even know that we could make them a logo between all that business jargon.

It would be the worst.

Well, I take that back. Being frozen by robots would be worse than boring and confusing wording on our website, but it would still be pretty bad.

A huge part of your company's brand is the writing on your website. We've been making a whole lot of websites lately, and I always tell people that the words on your website are just as important as the design. Sometimes business owners tend to over-write their content, and it sounds very confusing and robotic.

The most unique part of your business is YOU, so make sure your website sounds like something you would actually say to a real person standing right in front of you. That's the best advice I can give to business owners who want to write (or re-write) the words on their websites. (Or brochures, blog posts, posters or even emails for that matter.) 

I have a minor in creative non-fiction, which turned out to be incredibly useful for writing for my clients. I use that part of my degree almost as much as the design side, and I love that about my job. A lot of times, I work with what already exists on a company's website, but tweak it a bit. Starting points are awesome.

Instead of saying, "We value our human capital as much as yours," say, "We care about you and your business."

Instead of saying, "we will incentivize your customers to develop brand recognition and loyalty to give your company extra leverage in a diverse and competitive marketplace," write what you would actually say to a human, which is probably something like, "We use design to help businesses show their communities who they really are, what they do, and why they do it. We like watching your business succeed."

People like connecting with other people. They want to know that they are buying from or contracting out a real, live person (YOU). They want your unique perspective and skills. That's why they are hiring or buying from you, not someone else.

They don't want a corporate robot.

They want you.