First, I admit it. I have a not-so-secret crush on John Hodgman. Don’t know him by name? Picture the cuddly geek who plays the PC on those Mac commercials. Yeah, this guy:
My crush is not physical. It’s intellectual. John Hodgman is one of the smartest, funniest men on earth right now. Plus, he knows a thing or two about content strategy and information architecture.
The organized truth of a fictional reference book In his book, More Information Than You Require (the second in a trilogy of almanacs about fake facts), Hodgman realizes his lifelong dream of writing a page-a-day calendar.
Each page includes a date and “an interesting historical fact that did not occur on that date.” Pure fiction.
Besides being hilarious, the facts are perfectly placed on the page. They appear as insets—a sidebar of sorts. It works because the facts:
Do not interrupt the flow, nor have anything to do with, the chapter in which they appear
Do not need to be read chronologically
Are there for those who, indeed, require more information
For example, in the chapter “Even More More Information Than You Require, With a Special Emphasis on Food and Animals (A Kind of Food),” we find this gem:
July 3 1983, NEWTON, MA: The first suburban white child breakdances.
This fake fact has nothing to do with food. Or animals. Yet there it is. And I love it.
Typically, I wouldn’t applaud an author for providing aimless fodder, but each one goes perfectly with the book’s overall theme. It just doesn’t fit neatly into a chapter.
How I applied Hodgman’s genius to web content I thought of Hodgman’s book during a client meeting recently. While reviewing the client’s sitemap, I was having trouble understanding the position of a particular page. It seemed out of place.
After asking a few strategic questions about the page’s planned content, it became clear to me that it included “nice to know” information. The content was related to the site’s main purpose, but did not fit the overall story.
So, I took a page—not literally, though he encourages it—from Hodgman’s book. I suggested placing this content outside of the site’s main navigation, perhaps as a sidebar throughout the site. That way, the information would be there, but it wouldn’t get in the way.
My client loved this suggestion. They created a new sitemap and new wireframes to reflect this direction. And I wrote a little sidebar that linked to the “nice to know” information.
I doubt my copy will crack people up the way Hodgman’s phony historical tidbits do, but his approach worked on my client’s site.
More information about John Hodgman I encourage you to develop your own crush on my little Hodgy. Perhaps you will discover more ways to apply his methods to web content.
Here are some links to help you stalk him from afar:
I've been at conferences almost non-stop for the past several weeks. My brain is full. It hurts. IT HURTS.
The bad news is that I'm tired. The good news is that there are many, many smart people out there who are serious about making web content better. More relevant. Findable. Persuasive. Consistent.
I'd like to highlight the work of a few brainy colleagues, here.
Colleen Jones (Threebrick) participated in the Content Strategy Consortium at the IA Summit in Memphis (big post on that coming later this week!).
At the IA Summit last week, she spoke about the need for content to find a balance between "usable" and "marketing-focused." I'm very impressed by Colleen's thinking about the role of persuasive content in web user experience.
Rahel Anne Bailie (Intentional Design) and I finally met in person at SXSW. She's been writing and talking about content management system design and strategy for a very long time. I admire her straightforward style and her smart, common-sense problem-solving approach. This is a presentation she gave at the DocTrain conference.
And finally, Derek Powazek (powazek.com) totally wowed me with his SXSW presentation, Design for the Widsom of Crowds. Plenty to think about here when you're hatching your user-generated content strategy. (He includes a few references on his blog.)
2. Our favorite lunch spot is the Bulldog NE. But we doubt we’re their favorite customers. (Maybe if we called ahead before all 15 of us stomped through their doors …)
3. We’re really, really happy about our new dishwasher. Magically clean dishes.
4. We’ve had a TV for 6 months that we haven’t taken out of the box.
5. All meetings involve snarky comments. It’s why we have meetings.
6. Hilarity is one of our core values. For real.
7. Our fridge is stocked with string cheese, English muffins, sparkling water, Diet Coke and V8.
8. Kristina thinks V8 is gross. David, Julie and Elizabeth strongly disagree.
9. We love the fake grass in our conference room table.
10. Meghan and Elizabeth hate each other. Elizabeth says Meghan eats kittens. True story.
11. We’re almost out of beer for Disco Friday.
12. For Amy and Angie 1.0’s birthdays, we ordered a Pride & Pegasus birthday cake (e.g., Jane Austen on a pegasus). Best birthday cake ever.
13. Our receptionist team includes Liberace, T Rex, and a cow. We had to fire Buffy the Vampire Slayer because she was dressed inappropriately.
14. Erin and Meghan are in a fight.
15. We really, really, really want to hire more guys. We love dudes. And equal opportunity.
16. We love it when dogs visit the office. Our favorites: Molly, Wahoo, and Sam.
17. Chunks of things fall from our ceiling.
18. Delivery dudes, please pay attention: No one named Brian Traffic works here.
19. But if you are named Brian, and you’d like to work here, please let us know.
20. We have very loud shoes. We are the loudest walkers in the history of anyone who walked.
21. Favorite shoes around here: Danskos (particularly favored by IAs), MBT shoes (the anti-shoes), and Fluevogs.
22. We made our own Christmas stockings.
23. We work in the old Banks building. Many clients and visitors remember shopping here before it was turned into office space.
24. We’re within spitting distance of the Otter, Popular Front, and White Castle. But we do not spit on any of them.
There’s a good chance you’ve seen “content strategy” popping up in your RSS more frequently – what it is and why it’s important.
If you aren’t yet familiar with content strategy, here’s the 10-second breakdown we use at Brain Traffic:
Content strategy is the plan for creating useful, usable content for your website. It defines:
What content should be on the site and why
How content will be added to the site
How the content will be managed after the site launches
Sounds great, right? Well, maybe it makes sense to you, but you aren’t sure if you can justify spending the time and money to do it. Or, maybe it makes perfect sense to you, but your boss isn’t convinced.
Although there are many ways an organization can benefit from content strategy, here are five things content strategy can do for you:
Help you plan for the future Once you create and launch a website, it isn’t really ever “done.” Websites need ongoing care and feeding. Content strategy creates a plan for giving your site life post-launch. Who will maintain it? How often should content be refreshed? When will it be updated?
Ward off Frankensite Your site launches and it's organized, clean, clear and concise. But soon the sales team decides to add a new service that needs to get on the site ASAP. And your CMO goes to a conference and comes back wanting to blog. Then your PR firm pitches an interactive timeline of company history – and since it looks cool, it needs a driver on the home page.
Before you know it, your site can turn into a cobbled-together creation that doesn’t quite make sense.
Content strategy creates documentation that can help you (and those that come after you) make informed decisions for website growth – that align with the original, measurable vision of the site.
Keep your customers engaged A vast majority of visitors to your website are looking for something – information, an experience, or an e-introduction to your organization.
Can they find what they are looking for on your site? Is it easy to find? Does it help achieve the task at hand?
Once someone arrives at your site, what they find must be useful and usable content – or they simply won’t stick around. The research involved in developing a content strategy can help you get relevant information to your audience in the right way, at the right time.
Give you a plan for herding cats A million social media options exist. Although you can’t control social media, having thought out your approach and position on how to handle your online reputation can do wonders.
For example, what are you going to do if a flurry of tweets mention your company? Will you respond? What will you say? Who will be “the voice” of your organization?
Articulating a content strategy means planning what you're going to say, why you're going to say it, and how it's going to happen. This absolutely includes social media – having a plan is critical.
Make you a hero Let’s face it. Content can be complicated – which means that it typically gets put in the “someone else will take care of this” camp. If you develop a solid content strategy, YOU’RE “taking care of it.”
Armed with a content strategy, you get to swoop in and save the day by looking smart and proactive.
I'm mostly excited – but a little nervous – about my first-ever SXSW experience, which kicks off tomorrow.
After admitting my "South-by-naivete" to the Twitterverse, I received all sorts of helpful ideas from the cool kids who have been going since the beginning of the millennium.
Walking shoes? Check. Business cards? Check. Dorkbot and Nuclear Taco Night? On my can't-miss list.
If you'll be there, find me on Twitter (@halvorson) and let's say "hi" in person. Brain Traffic's own Julie Vollenweider (@jjvollenweider) will be there, too, trying to pretend I'm not embarrassing her too much.
You're especially invited to check out the two terrific panels I'm honored to be a part of: Try Making Yourself More Interesting Friday, March 13, 5:00pm – Room A There are no cheat codes for community. No Charles Atlas shortcuts to
make your pet project the one to rule them all. Want people to think
you're awesome? Be awesome.
Brian Oberkirch has asked me to address Being Sustainably Awesome on this panel, which obviously has close ties to content strategy. (Not seeing it? Oh, believe me. You will.) I'm excited to mind-meld with co-panelists DL Byron (Bikehugger), Amit Gupta (Photojojo), and especially David Rees, who writes my very favorite cartoon, Get Your War On. From Freelance to Agency: Start Small, Stay Small Saturday, March 14, 3:30pm – Room C
The web has always attracted mavericks and entrepreneurs, and a rocky
economy makes the freelance life more desirable (or at least more
inevitable) than ever. So what happens when your freelance business
starts to grow? How big can you get without getting bad?
The esteemed Jeffrey Zeldman (Happy Cog, A List Apart, Zeldman.com) invited me to share the stage with the brilliant Roger Black and UX designer/celebrity blogger Whitney Hess to talk about our shared experiences along the professional path. I promise to use the phrase "in these uncertain times" as often as humanly possible.
As is often the case in the Twin Cites, the audience was wonderfully engaged and asked smart, insightful questions. Thanks for coming! And special thanks to Tim Brunelle, series coordinator and prinicipal of Hello Viking for inviting me to speak.
If you missed it, here it is again. Enjoy. Comments welcomed!
Having recently been dubbed by some of my more outspoken coworkers as the Rose Nylund of Brain Traffic, I feel it’s incumbent upon me to dispel some long-standing myths about White Anglo-Saxon Protestant-raised Midwestern web writers:
We don’t carry around a copy of Strunk & White and/or a pocket thesaurus in our satchels. (We don’t carry satchels at all—ha!)
IMHO, we’re perfectly capable of txtng. w00t!
We’re not a bunch of failed librarians and/or poets and/or designers.
We don’t speak in bullet points. (But we are working on a top-secret technology that will one day allow us to hyperlink live conversations.)
We won’t correct your grammar . . . at least not to your face.
I’m totally kidding about number five. Because we will correct your grammar! But we’ll be super nice about it. And we’ll absolutely do it to your face. Better yet, we’ll leave a note. Because that’s a super thoughtful thing to do!
For a taste of just how thoughtful we are around here, take a gander at my desk. This homage to passiveaggressivenotes.com was masterminded by a couple of our particularly “creative” (read: smart-alecky) writers. That was soooooo nice of them!
A suburban New York man said the personalized license plate he obtained for his car—XXX PERT—causes many people to ask him about buying pornography.
Henry DeRossi, 78, of East Meadow, N.Y., said the plate on his Mercedes-Benz is a reference to his business, Expert Metal Slitters of Long Island City, N.Y., but the triple-X on the plate causes many to confuse him for a porn seller, the New York Daily News reported Monday.
"You’d be surprised how many people stop me when I am at a light and want to buy porn," DeRossi said.
He told the Daily News the number of people confused by the plate has grown to the point where his auto dealer has him park the vehicle in a back lot when he brings it in for service.
Clearly label content, or risk user interpretation DeRossi may be an expert at metal slitting. But next time he chooses a vanity license plate, he may want to get a second opinion. Perhaps even from a web writer.
DeRossi’s unintentionally kinky license plate makes me think about poorly written navigational and page links. Since most users skim and scan web content while they’re looking for useful information, it’s important to clearly label your navigation and page elements.
Even if your users carefully read every bit of content on your site, they’re not likely to click a link unless they think it will take them where they want to go.
So when writing links, be sure to use words that are meaningful to your users. NOT corporate jargon or internal slang. And especially not the cutesy labels your marketing team cooked up.
Keep your links in context
Ginny Redish gives us a great example of how not to write web links in her book Letting Go of the Words. In chapter 2, she talks about how we all interpret as we read. For instance, your users may not know the same words you know. Or the same word might mean different things to them than to you.
Her example refers to an old version of the official Transport for London website. Two users are looking for information about special deals on tickets, which is found under a link labeled “Oyster.”
p. 11, Letting Go of the Words, Ginny Redish.
Call your content what it is
Let’s all learn from DeRossi’s dirty little mistake. If you label a section of your website “XXX PERT”—but what you really mean is “read tips from our knowledgeable staff”—be prepared to field lots of questions about porn from some very frustrated users. Or, you could just call it what it is: “Expert Advice.”
Celebrities love Twitter, too! Yes, some of them are for real. Like MC Hammer (lately, that man is everywhere!) and couples such as Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.
Back when I spent much of my day contacting media folks with the latest and greatest from my PR clients, the best compliment I ever got from a reporter was:
"I always open your emails because I know they'll contain something I can actually use."
Why should you care about my prized compliment? Because reporters have a lot in common with website visitors. Really.
Both suffer from information overload
Both need information or content to help them complete tasks
Both want to feel like content providers understand them
Both get annoyed by content that wastes their time or gets in their way
That's why we recommend you learn three very important things before creating a lick of web content:
Who the content is for
What information they want
How they want to receive information
The case of the compliment Here's what I learned about the reporter before I ever pitched her:
Who the content is for. This reporter wrote a personal finance column.
What information they want. From reading the column regularly, I determined that the information my client had to offer – personal finance tips focused on the emotional aspects of money – was precisely what this columnist was looking for.
How they want to receive information. I also knew – because I asked her – that her voicemail box was perpetually full and ignored and that she preferred to get PR pitches by email.
The web content connection Successful websites find the sweet spot between business goals and user needs. Searching for the sweet spot can be a lot of work. But it's absolutely necessary.
Finding the sweet spot At Brain Traffic, we develop a Strategic Foundation Brief (sometimes they aren't that brief) at the beginning of every project. It includes an analysis of business goals, audience characteristics, and user needs.
First, we learn all we can about the audience – web usage, gender, family situation, etc. Then we cross- reference business goals with audience wants and needs. It's sorta like magic when it becomes apparent that the business and the users want some of the same things.
Voilà. Your starting point. And your path to site feedback that garners the compliment: "I always find the information I need when I visit your website."
