Kristina’s book, Content Strategy for the Web, arrived in the Brain Traffic office this week. (Psst: You can buy it here.) Watch the unveiling:
So, what are we going to do now that Kristina published a book? The same thing we do every day, of course: Try to take over the world! Congratulations, Kristina!
Posted in Around the Office, Brain Traffic, Content Strategy, Information Architecture, Uncategorized, Web Content
The simplest sentences and websites take the most thought. Ruthlessly revising and deleting is the hallmark of great writing — and how you keep readers on your site. Jakob Nielsen reports that readers read at most only 20 to 28 percent of the contents on a web page. Many stay for less than FOUR SECONDS.
To reiterate: You have FOUR SECONDS OR LESS to show a user that you have the information that he or she is looking for. Anything that’s not entirely relevant or usable has got to go. Or your user’s gonna leave your site.
Knowing that, here’s some advice from the pros that I rely upon when I’m getting too wordy:
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.”
Joseph Joubert
My favorite book on writing is On Writing Well, by William Zinsser. The lessons are incredibly relevant, even if the bulk of the book was written before the dawn of the internet. There are a million golden rules on every page, but it’s not overwhelming. I’ve highlighted nearly everything in the book.
Here’s what’s most relevant in terms of the work we do every day:
“Clutter is the official language used by corporations . . .
Beware, then, of the long word that’s no better than the short word:
• assistance (help)
• numerous (many)
• facilitate (ease)
• individual (man or woman)
• remainder (rest)
• initial (first)
• implement (do)
• sufficient (enough)
• attempt (try)
• referred to as (called)
• and hundreds more
Beware of slippery new fad words: paradigm and parameter, prioritize and potentialize. They are all weeds that smother what you write. Don’t dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don’t interface with anybody.”
Posted in Editorial Strategy, User Experience, Web Content, Web Writing
At Brain Traffic, we’re serious about fun. And coordinating outfits. That’s why we couldn’t pass up competing in Popular Front’s Foosfire tournament last month.
Office politics and a couple naysayers couldn’t stop the Brain Traffic team from representin’ – so what if we lost in the first round. So what, we say!
We got it all on video thanks to our good friend Nate Kadlac.
Prepare to laugh. Also cry. And perhaps appear dumbfounded and confused:
Foosfire Fame from Nate Kadlac on Vimeo.
Posted in Around the Office, Brain Traffic
It’s National Limerick Day!
Wheeeee!
In honor of this auspicious occasion, here are a few of our staff’s limerick attempts.
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Limericks About Brain Traffic
At Brain Traffic we care about content
When it’s bad, we so often lament
If you let us write
Like a thief in the night
We’ll rock it and you’ll say we’re god-sent. – Meghan Casey
Oh crap. Our content is a mess!
It’s causing us pain, strife, and stress
If our content is shabby
Our boss will be crabby
It’s time to call BT, oh yes. – Melissa Rach
We bought ourselves just one more whiteboard
For our schemas and plans to record
I left a quick note
My ideas to promote
But as usual, I was ignored. -Kristina Halvorson
There once was a lass called Kristin-er
At conferences, you might have seen her
Now she’s on the hook
To write a big book
And, after that she should take a breather. – Melissa Rach
Here’s what a good schedule can do
It should stick to your project like glue
So when things might fall apart
Don’t take it to heart
Just point and say, “Hey, buddy: It’s Due!" - Angie (1.0) Halama
A Brain Traffic web writer
Is a trained word and grammar fighter
Who defends user needs
Until her pencil bleeds
On a quest to make the internets brighter. - Angie (2.0) King
Control + Alt + Delete
Boy, you sure are neat
You lock my machine
So my Microsoft screen goes aquamarine
Which prohibits my crafty co-workers from hijacking my machine to send a prank email or tweet. - Julie Vollenweider
Limerick-Off
Elizabeth is a girl I know
She has black hair like a crow
She’s fun to tease
And when I please
I respond to her stories with, “So.” - Meghan Casey
Meghan is a white devil lady
Her stories are always very shady
She swears like a man
And smells like fake tan
And one day I’m going to put hot pizza in her shoes so it burns her feet off. - Elizabeth Saloka
Bonus Limerick!
I dated a girl in high school
Sometimes I thought she was cruel.
She’d put up a fight
At the end of the night
She wasn’t from Nantucket, I’ll tell you that. – Josh Foldy
Posted in Around the Office
This week, we’re twitterpated over Twitter news—It’s everywhere lately.
The Art of the Tweet.
From Rands in Repose. A good way to look at using Twitter. Are you adding something useful to the conversation?
How Tweet It Is
New York Magazine’s profile about Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams.
Get more information in your inbox about your Twitter followers.
This app will take you from “So-and-so is following you on Twitter” to full-scale information about said follower. Watch the video. It’s only a little longer than a minute.
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.
Interweb the Rainbow with Skittles.
The candy brand managed to garner a lot of attention for its foray into social media.
Posted in Resources
This week’s installment of “Around the Office” concerns rapper and pop culture phenomenon MC Hammer. Or is he just Hammer now? Not sure anymore.
In any case, everyone at Brain Traffic is now five degrees from MCH. Here’s how the Baconian tree works:
1. My husband William, owns an Etsy shop.
2. He had the idea last week to create a poster pantomiming the lyrics to "2 Legit 2 Quit." Just for fun.
3. Two days later, Hammer TWITTERED about it.
4. William found out through a fellow Etsian, who must have been following Hammer (which raises its own questions).
5. We have established, with some surety, that it’s the real Hammer*.
* He has not responded to requests for information as to how he found the poster. But William experienced quite the surge to his shop from said Tweet, so we’re all very thankful. Aahhh, the wide world made much smaller by the internet.
Posted in Around the Office
Like a lot of people, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my finances lately.
There are a lot of things that I either don’t like, or don’t understand, about money. And trying to get real information that makes sense to me . . . well, it’s hard to find.
Last fall, I decided it was time to open up an internet savings account. I looked at a couple of options. At the time, the rates were quite attractive.
I chose ING Direct. They didn’t have the highest rate.
So why did I pick them?
Simple: They spoke my language.
Their motto is simply, “Save your money.” That’s it. I get that. And whether I like to save or not, ING makes the process clear. The basic functions, transactions and transfers, leave no room for interpretation, either.
Even the privacy policy and the terms and conditions, notoriously ugly gluts of legalese on most sites, make sense. Here is an example:
These people clearly understand that saving or investing money is intimidating. Their tone is reassuring and conversational. So right away I feel secure about leaving my money with them. Why? They skip that highfalutin’ financial talk and stick to basics. I feel like I’m in control. (Empowering your users is always a good thing.)
For example, their "Declaration of Financial Independence" explains what being a saver really means. After some basic saving rules, they move to more emotional and global issues around saving money (and even a plug for the ol’ adage, money doesn’t buy happiness). It makes me think, "You GET me, ING!" And it sheds some light. Saving money is less about not getting new shoes, and more about making a better world. I hadn’t thought about that before.
ING also sends periodic e-newsletters chock full of information chunked out into bite-size bulleted lists and easy-to-navigate chunks of copy. They use bullet points, lists, and lots of headings to keep information organized. They touch on the emotional side of saving and investing, but don’t dwell on it. And the newsletter is task-focused so it gives me something to do with myself (besides freak out, I mean).
If a well-written website can inspire this chronic spender to save, anything is possible. I love that ING makes money management simple. Now the only question is . . . can I live without these new shoes? (ING would tell me, straightforwardly: Stick that cash in your savings account, Missy!)
Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, User Experience, Web Writing
Welcome to this week’s edition of links we like. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
In Defense of Readers
YES! Users want content, which means the design of readability is very important. This post on A List Apart takes a careful, insightful look at how users read.
Make your Firefox work for you
We could all use some shortcuts, no?
Mind-mapping content strategy
It’s the first we’ve seen.
SEO and survival
We’d like to add that you also need a good content strategy.
How One Little Letter Can Sabotage Your Meaning
Editing still matters—spelling and grammar go a long way in helping readers understand your content. Even in the age of spell check, you must choose your words, and use your words, carefully.
Social media secrets
This ClickZ blog post, combined with a great MIMA event today by Jeff Rohrs from ExactTarget, are good reminders that you aren’t in control when it comes to social media. And that’s a good thing. It means people are interacting with your content. And, well, isn’t that the point?
Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Style Guides and Such, User Experience, Web Writing
We love when there's smart, useful content on the internet. And because we love to share such things, we'll be doing so weekly. Here are some posts and sites that have captured our attention in the last week or so:
Chef Gordon Ramsey, content strategists, and project management
This post on the Eat Media blog—which has the tagline "for the content hungry"—recently made a great comparison between the chef and these disciplines.
10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.
Do you know how to control all your privacy settings on Facebook? What are the loopholes that interested parties can climb through to access information?
Words are Delicious
This post, "Defiantly Reaching Out," explores how to use simple, clear language instead of jargon or cliché.
After Deadline
This blog from The New York Times draws from "weekly newsroom critique" about language, grammar, and editing from the standard-bearing site. For example, "The Chitchat Patrol" post separates clear writing from the colloquialisms we inadvertently adopt as standard language.
Posted in Around the Office, Resources, Web Writing
Writing and designing for the mobile web—it’s about being pithy on an even smaller scale. There’s a mode that will be helpful to keep in mind when considering content for the mobile web: transactional.
The inverted pyramid keels at even steeper pitch, and each word must work twice as hard on a miniscule screen.
Typically, people logging on from Blackberrys, Treos, iPhones, and the like are looking to make some kind of transaction—bill pay, driving directions, checking a bank balance, fantasy football rankings, the weather, or their flight departure time.
And since they’re on the fly (sometimes literally), they want what they want and want to move on. Small screens, even tinier keyboards, and limited navigational capabilities means they don’t have time or patience to mess with multiple screens, gigantic graphics, or extra features—whether writers or designers find it to be filler or not.
It comes back to the mantra of keeping it simple. Think about what users are coming to the site for and make it readily available, near the top of the page. They might be in harried situations or moods and need to take care of business immediately.
Make transactions simple—one-button "pay now", "check flight status," or other commands with easy-to-use forms (as few open fields as possible) at the tops of pages and little to no redirection to other screens.
As always, the simplest routes and products have the most complex thoughts behind them, and have to be planned in advance so that the web site serves all of its users, no matter from which device they access the web.
Posted in Content Strategy, User Experience, Web Writing