A great web program called Wordle allows users to type in words or a website and create a Word Cloud from the text. You can personalize it, change the colors, the style, how many words you want to use, etc. There are two things that I really like about the program:
1. The visualization is just cool - and the fact that you can put in your brand's colors also helps (it would be nice if they would allow you to chose your brand's fonts as well, but I'm trying not to be picky).
2. It let's you see what you are talking about and what key words you are using the most.
The second part is what I wanted to focus on today. I copied and pasted all of my blog entries that I have made over the past 4 months. I cut all of the dates and the bookmark buttons. There is an option for you to click to remove common words, which I did as well.
What I have left with is a visualization of the things that I have talked about. The first image is a 200 word limit, the second image has only 20 words. This allowed me to see which words I have been using the most and which ones I was not using.
Let's first take a look at the larger image. The first thing I noticed was the word 'people.' I liked this a lot because the focus of Dahle Communication Group really is on how people communicate with each other and how that affects our lives. We want people to be the focus of our business. I was very happy to see that as the top one. Other words that stuck out included presentations, good, great, presentation, Twitter, and blog. All of those I was glad to see because those are things that are important to communication. However, I also noticed the words: something, lot, one, things and going. While those words are not necessarily bad, I am now more aware of them and am going to try to cut down on the use of those words: especially something, which was quite big.
The second image is neat because it is stripped down to the top 20 words. While those words were bigger in the first image compared to the other words, sometimes you just need to cut out the fat of an image to truly see what is going on.
If you are working on a presentation or a speech, you should use Wordle or a similar program. What it can do is tell you what you are focusing on. Are you using key words that you want people to remember? Are you using phrases that will confuse people? Putting your speeches and/or documents through a program that tells you which ones you are using the most will give you some perspective as to what you are doing and can help you fine tune your message.
Others have already recognized the value of using wordle as a tool. Carolyn Elefant of myshingle.com, Nan Hu of The Daily Princetonian, Emily Cagle Communications, Sentence First and Inside Out are just a few of the blogs that have been talking about Wordle and using it themselves. This gives you a good idea as to what impact it is already having on the way people think and re-fine their information.
Travis
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