What do you and Abraham Lincoln have in common? 

Depending on your height, beard power, and former presidential status, it might seem like very little. 

But after today, you can add “knock people’s socks off with powerfully brief language” to the list. What the heck am I talking about? 

Standing at a whopping 272 words, the Gettysburg Address is one of the most famous speeches in U.S. History. Thousands of seventh graders who were forced to memorize it can attest to its brevity. (That’s also how they managed to fit it on the memorial!)

If you want to teach people about your business and brand in a way they will remember for real, you’ve gotta follow ol’ Abe: be brief and be awesome. 

We think you can do it even better than he did. 
  • In question 31 of the V&V questionnaire, we asked you to list 5 words about your brand. Now, we want to turn those 5 words into 100. Here are some ideas of how: 
  • Get real –– you’re selling something beyond your product or service. You’re probably selling a feeling: safety, peace of mind, joy, confidence, etc. Drill down to that why we talked about a few days ago. (question 18)
  • Let’s expand on question 8 –– if you only had about one minute to tell someone about your business, what would you say? How could you explain it so briefly and clearly that they could turn around and explain it to someone else? 
One hint, do a word purge first without caring about length. Then cut down, down, down until you get to the magic number. Think of this like an elevator speech — the thing you are going to tell people quickly so you don’t drone on for 10 minutes, like I talked about a couple emails back.

100 words can be powerful if you know how to use them. Beard optional. 

Until next time. 

~ Elisa