Cite It Correctly Or Don't Cite It At All!

As I've mentioned, stories, analogies, metaphors, examples, and quotations are very useful in helping your listener become interested and involved in what you are saying. However, when you choose that special something to make your point or give it weight, be sure you are stating it correctly and attributing authorship correctly.

I subscribe to a few informative marketing e-zines and hard copy newsletters which I scan for updates, new information, tips, strategies, and tactics. When I see something (large or small) that isn't quite accurate, it jumps out at me and stops me cold, totally disrupting my train of thought.

One guru, for example, said he was playing around with the concept of "feast" as a marketing metaphor. Great concept! But then he mentioned turn-of-the-century actress Lillian Russell and "her famous quote": Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.

"What?!" I thought. "That's not right. Lillian Russell didn't say that." Then a spent the next few precious minutes recalling who said what under what circumstances, totally detached from his newsletter and marketing advice.

The fact is that the line "Life is a banquet ..." is not a quotation from a person. It's a line from the book "Auntie Mame" (by Patrick Dennis, aka Edward Everett Tanner) which shows up in the film "Auntie Mame" and then in the musical "Mame." Furthermore, Lillian Russell didn't say the line (this was way after her time). Rosalind Russell did in the film.

I've seen this (and other things) misattributed or misstated before. This suggests to me that those individuals didn't check it for accuracy before using it. After all, if another guru used it, it must be okay. As I have learned the hard way, unless you know it is correct, you should always go to a highly respected reference (or the original source) whenever possible to check.

Mistakes are perpetuated and become gospel simply by people just repeating them. And, as we all know, the Net is rife with incorrect information and opinion masquerading as fact.

You may be saying, "Big deal! It's just a crummy line in a book or play." What makes it a big deal for the confident self-promoter is that even the smallest factual errors can, at the very least, distract your reader or listener ... or, at the most, create dissonance and irritate them, sending them to search their mental files, or elsewhere, for the correct information, letting your message drift away.

Afterward, they may wonder how careful you are. Their minds may dance around the idea that if one obvious (to them) mistake occurs, perhaps there are others. At which point they may focus on whether other mistakes are made or they may tune you out altogether. In either case, they may block out the rest of what you're saying. A seemingly simple error and - suddenly - you've lost them!

You never want to give your audience the opportunity to become disengaged from your message. Your objective is to have them see you as very credible - someone they can believe in and trust. They don't expect you to be perfect but they do expect you to be correct in what you tell them as you engage them in your area of expertise.