Do you need to adapt your brand’s language for the internet?

Last week, I was lucky enough to come across this Huff Post article called Why Replying ‘OK’ In Work Chats Sounds So Aggressive, According To An Internet Linguist.

It’s fantastic.

In it, they look at why sending OK to a Slack message or email sounds so curt and aggressive.

After all, there’s nothing aggressive about the term, is there?

But when you get a reply that just says OK, it feels shitty. It feels like you’ve done something wrong.

Why is that?

Here’s where things get really interesting…

Gretchen McCulloch, a linguist that presents the awesome Lingthusiasm podcast (check it out), says that because the English language doesn’t have a formal or informal “you” like other languages, we rely on other, more subtle, cues to tell whether someone is being polite.

“Kk” is an example. When people reply kk to a message, they’re employing a linguistic technique called reduplication.

We do the same thing to soften language all the time.

“Bye” feels curt, but “bye-bye” sounds friendly.

“Night” sounds blunt, but “night-night” is softened with implied affection.

And, as anybody with a small child will know, “poo-poo” and “wee-wee” sound much cuter (and funnier) than “poo” and “wee”.

But why has online language developed this way?

Well, when we communicate face-to-face with people IRL (*shudders*), we use a great number of gestures and facial expressions to convey our meaning.

We don’t have them online.

You’ve probably heard of Albert Mehrabian’s model of communication in which he says that only 7% of what we communicate is made up by the words we say.

The remaining 93% of our meaning is made up by our tone, intonation and volume (38%) and our body language (55%).

Online, we’re left with just 7% of the puzzle to decode and decipher.

As such, if we’re not careful, lots of stuff gets lost in communication and can even be misinterpreted.

But things are changing…

There’s an entire generation that has grown up communicating almost exclusively via the internet or via text.

As such, their language has become much more nuanced. They’ve got ways of communicating sarcasm, irony and in-jokes.

In fact, this evolution of online language by younger generations has developed to the point where different “tribes” on the internet have developed their own language.

It sounds almost ridiculous, but linguists have discovered that Beliebers have developed their own online language. And it’s not exclusive to the Beebs either.

It’s the same for fans of rap music, cooking, football, Twilight, dogs…

They’ve all developed their own unique languages, different not just in terms of the words they used, but how they structure sentences and spell words.

Here’s what Professor Jansen, one of the researchers said about the findings:

Interestingly, just as people have varying regional accents, we also found that communities would misspell words in different ways. The Justin Bieber fans have a habit of ending words in ‘ee’, as in ‘pleasee’.

Isn’t that absolutely insane?

So what does this mean for your business or brand?

Well, it means that we all have to start taking more care over the language we use online.

Communicating our tone clearly has never been more important.

Brands need to learn the nuances of online communication to make sure that they’re not misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Emojis can help, if used properly. Having a clearly and carefully designed voice can help too as customers infer your meaning from your consistent personality.

But most of all, we all need to start really listening to our customers. We need to study how they communicate on the internet by hanging out where they hang out online and soaking it in.

It’s almost like learning another language: hard work, but worth it.

Because once you manage that, your brand has an exciting opportunity to speak to your customers in their own language so that — almost immediately — they say ‘hell yes! This is the brand that gets me’.

Or, as Professor Margaret Hogg says in this 3-minute explainer on linguistics in advertising, it’s all about congruence and making sure your message lines up (without necessarily matching) the way your customers speak, think and expect:

So as you’re writing stuff this week, remember: always think about how your customers think and talk and make sure your message is put in a way that lines up with that.

You don’t need to ape their language or copy their lingo if it doesn’t suit your brand, but it should speak to them in a way that feels familiar and comfortable.

Do that, and you’ll see an uptick in everything from likes on social media to money in your bank account.

Trust me.