Something a bit out of left field.

I am always on the lookout for different ways to engage a client visually.  Photos, graphs, charts, pictures and other visuals can often communicate faster and clearer than pages of text.  Visuals also help engage a client as you “tell a story” around the visual and fire up the more creative aspects of a client’s mind.  So here’s a quick and engaging visual you may be able to use with your clients.

“Word Clouds” are “pictures made of words”.  You might have seen them floating around before in magazines or on the TV.  The picture is created from an analysis of supplied group of words –an article, proposal, letter, website, brochure, proposal, speech etc... 

The picture quickly demonstrates the key words in the article, with the size of each word representing the relative frequency of that word in the supplied article.  The combination of the shape/picture, colours and highlighted words can quickly deliver several key messages.  Plus it’s quite eye catching.

We recently came across a free online creator of Word Clouds which we quite like – Tagxedo.  This website lets you create Word Clouds in a wide variety of shapes, colours and fonts for free (there’s paid-for premium version if you really get into it).  It would be very easy to create Word Clouds which match your branding. 

To prepare you upload the text, set-up the parameters and then save the Word Cloud for your use – either as a graphic or as a web item.  Some example uses for Advisers...

• Create a Word Cloud from a Proposal and put it on the front page, allowing you to quickly highlight some key themes as you introduce the material.   
• Create a Word Cloud to represent the last week of news, research or technical announcements in your industry and place it on the first/last page as a summary.
• Create a Word Cloud for your website, using the text of your website, to quickly catch the attention of a visitor and highlight key points. 

You may be surprised at the frequency of certain words in the documents you select as the Word Cloud quickly reveals the truth of the article. 

Example:  The Workbook from our time management experience, In Time

Example:  A Statement of Advice from a Financial Planner

Example:  The brochure for our sales training experience, My Solution