After spending some quality time with our pal Jonathan Kahn at Web Content Chicago 2010 in June, we convinced the fellow content strategy evangelist to make a trip to sunny Minneapolis. Jonathan is founder of London-based web design agency Together London, author of the blog Lucid Plot, and an all-around smart cookie. We like him.
Amidst his whirlwind of tourist activities and an intense round of bar trivia (we won third place), Jonathan obligingly sat down with me to talk shop. I can’t wait to revisit the podcast myself: I was too entranced by his charming accent to pay much attention at the time. (Kidding!)
Listen in to hear this brilliant Brit wax poetic on:
How he came to the practice of content strategy
How to fix a broken web development process
Content strategy: A job for one or many?
The best part, though, is where I make him say something Minnesotan. (You won’t be disappointed.)
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Recently, Kristina (our fearless leader) and Joe Pulizzi (author, content marketing evangelist, and self-described “poster boy for content marketing”) met up to discuss some similarities and differences between content marketing and content strategy.
Not only will you be captivated by their insights and insults (ok, no insults), you'll learn how to identify the One Thing that really sets your company apart from the competition. Bonus: find out how content strategists and content marketers can join arm-in-arm to sing "Hands Across America."
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About JoePulizzi
Joe co-authored "Get Content, Get Customers" with Newt Barrett. He is the CEO of Junta 42, where he maintains his blog of the same name. Joe evangelizes content marketing worldwide and maintains the popular content marketing blog Junta42. Follow Joe on Twitter: @juntajoe
Recently, Brain Traffic Twitter friend Taj Moore (@tajmo) asked us for some advice about copy for authenticated websites, or websites that require registration in order to log in for firewalled content and/or functions.
Taj wanted to know our thoughts on what to call members vs. non-members, and logged in members vs. non-logged in members.
Taj’s question inspired quite the philosophical discussion around here. And by “philosophical discussion,” I mean: “really long email chain.”
We like Amazon’s approach to labeling members.
In short, we side with Amazon’s way of doing things. But, as it is with anything of value, it was the ride that mattered. Here’s how we came to our conclusion.
Are there terms to diff. bw member logged in and member not logged in? "Guest" not useful bc conflates w/ non-member.
…Or another tack: how about a word for guest/visitor who is not a member?
…b.c. I am leaning toward "logged-in," "logged-out," & "non-member" but thought you might have better insight.
Kristina: Let’s discuss. Who wants to go first?
Katie D.: Just call everyone Earthlings. We’re all just people, after all.
Christine A.: Is he asking about a user-facing label? I’d question whether there is any value in showing those terms to users.
I like Amazon’s approach. They use a cookie to identify users who have accounts, and ask them to log in only when they do something significant like go to their shopping cart.
Amazon doesn’t tell people they’re logged in, logged out, non-member, etc. They just put the person’s name up there if the cookie is in place, or show a generic login link if it isn’t. They don’t need users to keep track of their own status.
If he’s asking about what the developers/UX people/etc should call it, it doesn’t much matter as long as they’re consistent and the labels identify clearly defined roles.
Elizabeth(her email passing Christine’s on the information superhighway from NYC):
I’d say, the first question is, how are these terms going to be used? Are they internal or user facing?
If they’re meant to be user-facing, they don’t really seem necessary. If the user is logged in to the site, you’d address them by name. If they’re not logged in, you’d probably call them a guest. If they’re a member who isn’t logged in, you can’t really know that. Not sure why it’d be necessary to label each separately, unless he’s talking about terms to be used internally …
Angie K.: Whoa. It’s like Elizabeth and Christine A. had a cross-country mind meld.
True story: We ate walking tacos, we drank margaritas and Mexican beer with lime. We swung at piñatas.
And, oh, we broke a window.
Kristina took it well:
What We Did on Our Summer Vacation, Part II
It was the day after a tornado tore up part of our fair city. The sky was dark. The rain was falling. We would not be deterred. We would not.
For to see our name in lights at Midway Stadium, to get down with Mudonna and Super Fan, to leave the Nerd speechless was our mission. Watch out, St. Paul Saints. Here comes Brain Traffic.
The highlights:
Before the rain. And beer.
Bear says "What? What?"
Eye Love Baseball. And beer.
Slumhog Millionaire. That’s her real name.
The Nerd with Angie 2.0 before Elizabeth stole his funny.
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!
Web writers have to adopt appropriate voice and tone while remaining pithy. Fake celebrity Tweeters have to adopt appropriate voice and tone while remaining super pithy—and telling pudding jokes. It’s a hard job.
“Even though he looked like a wax figure, Mr. Jackson could do a strange backward jig, the likes of which I’ve never seen. He will be missed!” @HalfPintIngalls
“zippity hippity dop! zooba shawow! with the people, and the places, and the ohhh try some jello pudding. it’s such a good snack SHEBOP!” @JelloPudding
We just scored some sleek new business cards at Brain Traffic. They are totally awesome, or as I like to say, "tawes."
Here’s the thing, though …
We have a ton of old cards. And I simply cannot stomach the idea of throwing them into the recycling bin. So I’m trying to think of creative ways to use them.
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:
