10 Words and Phrases Online Entrepreneurs and Bloggers Should Stop Using Right Now
OMG, it’s a listicle! I’m technically old enough that I should hate these as many of my more accomplished professional peers do, but I’ve stuck with the times, and I will say, there are a lot of reasons to love the listicle. Call me basic, but I’m one of the millions who do.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, a blog post was brewing even before I read this article on content.ly, 10 Phrases Fashion Writers Should Stop Using Immediately (can you come back to these though?).  I laughed my way through this list because it’s true (seriously, I’ve always cringed when someone talked about a “red lip” or a solitary “pant” – feelin’ you, sister, for sure).

As you may know from my Facebook page or previous blog posts, I’ve been navigating the world of blogging, sales funnels, creating online courses, landing pages, and all that jazz pretty intently. It’s a perfectly valid career path, but because there’s a fairly generic template that underlies it all,  there are some common themes and phrases that have popped up. Since the pool is now getting fairly crowded, I think it’s time we step back for a moment and re-evaluate what makes us all unique.

We can start by eliminating the following currently-thematic words and phrases from our own “here’s my smiling face and call to action!” websites:

  1. Epic
    Dude, it totally was epic, until 2011 or so. You’re allowed to use it once. Not once daily, just… ONCE. And you probably already have.
  2. Bestie, BFF and variations thereof
    You are not my best friend. You are asking for three $300 installments of my money, which does not make you my favorite person ever. It might, if what you teach makes me rich or drastically improves my sex life but until then, let’s just take things slowly, ‘kay? 
  3. Yo
    You are a white girl in a floral dress. I am a white girl in yoga pants. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to take you seriously. Seriously. SRSLY.
  4. Girl Boss
    Where do I start with this? It’s blowing up right now, and if you are 24, child-free and single, maybe girl still works for you. I am a married mom in my 40s and I actually own mom jeans (and not the ones you kids are buying at Urban Outfitters, but jeans with the actual brand name Not Your Daughter’s Jeans and that promote a “lift and tuck technology”). Calling me “girl” at this point means I’m veering dangerously toward “gal” territory if you catch my drift, and I am nowhere near that one yet. My mom jeans are still lifting and tucking me into some semblance of “not your mother’s slacks”. No, I am not a girl, though I am totally boss AF. (On a side note, I often see the word bitch in this mix: how to be a girl boss without being a bitch; how to be a boss bitch. Yuck. Just… yuck. If you ever, ever call me a bitch, we aren’t doing business).
  5. Tribe
    For various reasons, this one just isn’t even funny. Not to insert a dark mood into what’s simply supposed to be a bit of fun, snark and consideration, but this kind of sums this one up nicely without me having to say much else. I’d rather you stuck around for the last five of this list tho, so before you click that very educational link, let’s just kind of (very shallowly) summarize: we’re not a tribe because we hang out in a Facebook group trying to sell our online courses to each other. 
  6. Influencer
    After the recent Fyre Festival debacle (yeah, I did, I just linked to Google search results, because everything you’d ever need to know is there), I think we might need to find a different label now for people who can actually push a brand and be believed. The world is gloating over this at the moment; mocking the young, beautiful and hyper-privileged is an opportunity that doesn’t come along often enough. 
  7. Edgy
    Swearing is not edgy. Not usually, anyway. If it is, I’m being really fucking edgy in my yoga pants on my couch right now. Edgy is provocative and avant-garde. Edgy is on the fringe. We can’t all be edgy or edgy won’t be edgy anymore.
  8. Dangerous/dangerously
    This one’s most often used with the word “effective” and found in countless “listicles” about social media and marketing tools and tactics. These are dangerous because they work. I’m still not entirely sure what’s so scary about doing something effectively unless you’re also doing it stupidly by not preparing for the potential of 0-60, but okay. 
  9. Playa/playah
    I get it if you’re writing about them but please, don’t ever call me this. I am NOT a “playa” (or a “playah”).  I grew up in the ‘burbs just like you did though, and I sound just as stupid saying it as you do. Also… I’m not playin’. I’m for real. Like, totally. 
  10. Content
    This is kind of a joke but in my realm, you can’t even begin to imagine how many times a day I hear this word, and how large of a realm it encompasses. “Content is king”, said Bill Gates back in 1996, and that was pretty much prophecy. Unfortunately there are a lot of ways “content” can go and the web is filling up with BS faster than a clogged toilet these days. Content may be king, but god help us if Content doesn’t have a good advisory panel.

I’m really a kind, sweet person – just trying to move things along a little here though, so if you’re one of those people fond of using any of the phrases above, more power to you – please don’t take anything I’ve said in offense. If it’s working for you, I most certainly won’t tell you how to “play” your “game” (playa). Mostly, I meant this to be a little bit funny, a little bit educational and a little bit “oh my god she’s right”, and yeah, you got me, I also peppered a blog entry with a whole pile of keywords. Because content.

Fun: Word cloud generated by Wordclouds. It’s free. Have at it. Just don’t go overboard.

10 Words Online Entrepreneurs and Bloggers Should Stop Using Immediately
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2 thoughts on “10 Words Online Entrepreneurs and Bloggers Should Stop Using Immediately

  • May 9, 2017 at 10:52 pm
    Permalink

    Thank you! Great suggestions. … and what about that overused phrase “Let’s dive in…” ?
    perhaps it is used less in written word, but wow is it spoken too much. (i.e. podcasts and webinars)

    Reply
    • May 12, 2017 at 10:07 pm
      Permalink

      Ha ha! SOOOO true, Joy, so TRUE…

      Reply

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