Annoying Words

The Metro recently ran an article on the most annoying words today with prizes going to the much overused “whatever”, “like”, “you know” and “just saying”; you can check out the article here Metro: “Seriously, there are literally millions of words that are basically annoying. Just sayin’”

Working in online marketing, I have also developed hatred for many industry-specific words. Here are 5 that always get me:

• Incremental – often impossible to prove so!
• Boutique agency – we can’t get many clients.
• Strategist – surely most are actually tacticians?
• A viral – seldom lives up to its name.
• Insights – stating the obvious.

To add to that, there are also lots of cryptic phrases that suggest one thing but actually mean the exact opposite:

• “We have been optimising your campaign” – they worked on other things.
• “To implement, simply drop one line of code on your site” – you know what follows!
• “CTR has been quite strong” – hides a financial catastrophe.

I am sure there are loads of more and better examples out there. What are your favourites?

PS: All this reminds me of the blurb used by social media people, neatly turned into a handy tool on this website http://whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com/
PPS: No insult intended towards those that use these expressions. Just a warning :)

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