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Now I have to admit that I'm not a big Twitter user. In fact I hardly ever turn it on but my partner Steve has TweetDeck on all day because it's important to him.

Oh he's not one of those who go looking for a gazillion followers and he doesn't follow a lot of people either ... for him it's just a valuable tool that helps him stay in touch with people who are important for the things that he's interested in. It helps him keep up to speed on search engine optimisation and marketing issues and it helps him get the message out when he wants to let his followers know about one of his special interests.

Now while I'm not such a big Twitter user I do sometimes wander into his office and look over his shoulder and when I did that over the weekend I couldn't help but notice something very sad about two people who followed Steve on Twitter. For various reasons Steve never automatically follows back so he looks at each person whenever he gets one of those emails from Twitter that tell him that a new person is following him.

While I watched he went to the Twitter pages of two new people who were following him and I was amazed ... I couldn't read the text on the page and Steve couldn't either. Here were two people ... one of whom was supposed to be some sort of marketing guru according to his Twitter nickname ... who had Twitter pages that were unreadable.

Instead of using the default Twitter page they had designed there own and even gone so far as to change the color of the page background and the color of the text too. And the problem was that the color for the text was so close to the color of the background that it was almost impossible to read.

Here were people who were trying to impress others ... people who at the very least wanted to be accepted by others ... people who probably wanted to sell themselves to others ... and you couldn't read what they were saying about themselves in the few short words that Twitter allows for a bio.

How sad is that? These people had a message that no one could read. It's like a man who has no voice but is trying to shout his message from the rooftops. Everyone can see him up there opening and closing his mouth ... they can see him waving his arms around and frantically trying to get their attention ... but no one can hear a word that he's saying.

So what about your message? Is it clear and unequivocal or are you like that man up on the roof that no one can hear and no one can understand?

Regardless of whether you're using the web, print or even the spoken word to get your message across, are people able to hear and understand your message?

Of course you wouldn't be dumb enough to use text colors on your web pages that had such a poor contrast with the background colors that no one could read it would you? You'd be sure to be using text colors that contrasted sharply with the background color because you know that good contrasts will make your text easier to read and encourage people to buy what you're selling wouldn't you?

You would also be sure to use words and terms that people understand and are comfortable with wouldn't you? You wouldn't try to dazzle them with your brilliance would you?

You do understand that simple words that everyone understands are much more effective than heaps of cool jargon and highly technical words that might make you look smart but do little to sell your product ... don't you?

Of course simple words ... contrasting colors ... and fundamentals like clear and concise calls to action aren't all that sophisticated and you'll find plenty of people over in mainstream who want to tell you that any marketing message that is simple is so yesterday and they may be right.

But there's one very very sound reason why your marketing message should be so yesterday ... why it should be unsophisticated ... why it should be plain and simple.

Your marketing message should be simple because simple works. Simple, plain, easily understood marketing messages sell products and that's what we're here to do. We're not here to dazzle people with our brilliance and our coolness ... we're here to sell a product because that's what puts money in our pocket and food on our table.

So make sure that your message is clear and it will be heard. Smother your message in poorly contrasting colors ... vague calls to action ... and loads of jargon and you'll go broke.

So is today's message clear enough for you?