“Regulatory issues will have to be addressed.”

Too many 2011 PR plans are being written with the “have to” language, and it might as well be an epitaph for your social media efforts.  Are the words true?  Yes.  Do they incite insecurity that undermine organizational change? Yes again.

What if instead you were to say “regulatory issues will be addressed.”  The same limitations are there, but a sense of empowerment is too.

The power of this bit of language — all too common in articles and industry speeches — struck me in a story shared by a colleague who works in the health care sector.

Now, what I know about health care marketing couldn’t fill a thimble, but apparently if you sell a drug and hear that someone had a bad reaction to it, you need to report it to the FDA.  This has scared off many companies from even basic social media monitoring.  But recently someone in the company basically said “ok, the procedure for reporting adverse effects is well known.  Let’s start listening so we can start engaging.  And if we hear of adverse effects, we’ll go through the procedure. ”

Maybe you can’t do 100% of what you’d like to do online because the laws still trail the technology. But I bet you can do 10%, 20%, maybe even 50% of the huge range of what’s possible.

I bet that’s better than your competitors.

I bet that when the law catches up, your superior experience will enable you to jump farther and faster than those who waited.

Delete those two words and you’ll be able to see that fraction of possibility clearer, and the higher ups will be able to sign off on it faster.  Delete those two words, and change 2011.