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Thinking back to my middle school years, if given the choice to hang out with someone who looked cool — and was always saying things like, “Dude, I am so awesome. Look at how awesome I am,” I would have been all, “Ugh.”

However, if given the chance to hang out with someone who just was cool –- how they looked and acted, what they said –- I would have been all “Ohmigod, let’s totally hang out!”

(Okay, this never happened to me, but that’s beside the point.)

This concept still applies …  especially to the “About Us” section of a website. No matter how beautifully designed, if a site’s voice doesn’t ring true, it’s easy to spot an “ugh.”

Rather than using this section of a site like a congratulatory press release, consider approaching “About Us” like a magazine’s Editor Letter.

Following this logic, “About Us” should:

• Match the tone and voice of the entire website, while addressing Who / What / Why.

• Give a good indication of what to expect on the rest of the site.

• In my middle school scenario – just be cool.

This Editor’s Note from Travel + Leisure really captures this concept:

We call ourselves travel missionaries at this magazine.

The mission is to get our readers out to experience the world, with all its eye-opening, mind-expanding, and life-enhancing possibilities. But at this moment it’s hard to focus on destinations and trip-planning strategies without addressing the economic problems that travel is facing …

Showcasing travel at home and abroad is what we do in the pages of Travel + Leisure, with stories about alluring destinations from Alaska to the Basque Country of France, to name just two in this issue. Our focus remains on providing T+L readers with the inspiration and information they need to achieve their dreams and aspirations.

Although this excerpt appeared in the print version of the magazine, with some slight modifications, this could easily populate an “About Us” section online. It’s current, specific, descriptive and accurately captures the spirit of the publication.

A bit of advice? Don’t announce your awesomeness in “About Us” and expect to be cool forever. Even if your site doesn’t overhaul content as frequently as a magazine — consider frequently updating “About Us” to accurately match your evolving online presence.
 

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Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Information Architecture, Web Content, Web Writing

I saw this sign during a recent trip to Midtown Global Market.

I liked it for the following reasons:

• It clearly communicated that there was still a play area but it had been moved.
• It helped me understand where I was in the market (northeast)  and where I would need to go (southwest).
• The graphic gave me additional information (rather than acting as unnecessary decoration) and reinforced which direction I should go to find the play area.
• The design isn’t any fancier than it needs to be. It’s clear, simple, and readable from a distance. 

There are only two improvements I could offer:

• Use sentence case to improve the readability.
• Change relocated to moved. Same message, only simpler.

Nice job, Midtown.

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Posted in Editorial Strategy, User Experience, Web Writing

I've been getting a lot of messages in my mailbox lately from CEOs and the like trying to reassure me about the state of their business. No, your money didn't go towards that $30,000 antique rug in my office. I swear.

A great example of this phenomenon is a recent TV campaign with Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. In it, he strolls through Central Park in a luxe overcoat pitching a new product, all while empathizing about the "trying times" we're in. Bill Clinton feeling my pain this isn't.

Occasionally, we get asked at Brain Traffic to make space for this kind of thing as part of a larger content development project.

It seems like a lame holdover of a (much) older style of advertising . . . say from the 1950s. I guess I just can't get my Gen X brain around the idea that an appeal from authority is an effective way to retain a customer, let alone a good means to convert a sales prospect.

It's as if they think a few platitudes and a reassuring word from the Person in Charge can fix a deeper issue.

Well maybe it can, and maybe it can't. But I'm skeptical that putting executive marketing messages on your website is an effective way to soothe a nervous customer.

The customer is on your site to accomplish a task. Maybe they want to learn more about a product, or service an existing product. A leadership message doesn’t help accomplish that task. 

The best way to convince a customer that your company is still trustworthy is to prove it with action. Continue to provide value. Make the customer service process easy. Make it clear why you’re offering something your competitors aren’t.

As hard as it is for an old editor to say, there are times when content alone can't fix the problem.

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Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, User Experience, Web Writing

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!)

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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?

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Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Style Guides and Such, User Experience, Web Writing

You may remember Kristina's post about style guides. Style guides make writers happy because they can follow the rules the first time, and they make businesses happy because the writers are speaking the language. And hammering out style details at the beginning saves needless time and expense to clean up these small details at the end of a large project. 

As such, we writers have regular discussions about troubling words or troublesome tasks of cleaning up misunderstandings about capitalization, em dashes, and the like. Here's one of the latest, when we officially decided not to initial cap “internet” anymore, whether it’s used as a noun or an adjective.

As I recall, the decision came about something like this:   

Angie 1.0 (me): Hey, everyone! Should we initial cap internet when we use it as a noun?

Angie 2.0: I don’t like capitalizing Internet. Or Web. Or InterWebs.

Katie: Yeah! I hate capping things.

Meghan: But didn’t we agree to initial cap “web” when we use it as a noun?

Angie 2.0: When did we agree to that?

Angie 1.0: Didn’t you get that email?

Meghan: Wired magazine doesn’t initial cap internet. And isn’t the rule about initial capping it in the process of changing?

Angie 2.0: And Wired is on the cutting edge of that change.

Angie 1.0: Right. Eventually nobody will initial cap internet.

Erin: Once the dictionaries catch up.

Meghan: Yes, let’s be on the cutting edge of change!

Everyone: Yeah!

Angie 1.0: Remember that movie The Net with Sandra Bullock?

Erin: Wasn’t that about identity theft on the internet?

Angie 2.0: Yeah, something like that. Do we have to initial cap “Net” when we use it as a noun?

Katie: We are NOT using “the Net.” Under any circumstances.

Everyone: YEAH!

A quick perusal of a few industry blogs revealed an inconsistent style on initial capping internet. So we turned to Wired for some guidance. In 2004, it declared that on its pages internet and web (and net) would not be initial capped anymore. We’re happy to officially join the trend—since we believe it will become a rule anyway. 

It’s definitely becoming a rule in our house style guide.

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Posted in Around the Office, Editorial Strategy, Style Guides and Such, Web Writing

Nearly two years ago, Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester Senior Analyst (Social Computing), wrote a fairly disruptive blog post called The Irrelevant Corporate Website. It's still getting comments today.

In a nutshell, here's what Jeremiah has to say:

"The corporate website (of today) is an unbelievable collection of hyperbole, artificial branding, and pro-corporate content. As a result, trusted decisions are being made on other locations on the internet.

"The corporate website of the future will be a credible source of opinion and fact, authored by both the corporation and community. The result? A true first-stop community resource where information flows for better products and services."

This vision of the future scares the hell out of most businesses. Why? Because they're still struggling with how to manage web content in a 1.0 business environment.

Unless you're a publisher by trade, it's not likely you have the necessary infrastructure to effectively plan, create, publish, and oversee web content.

You're not alone. Even after 15 years, most companies don't have it figured out. But it's not for lack of trying. (Typically, it's mostly an issue of web content ownership, or a lack thereof.)

Without that infrastructure, how can you even hope to begin moving towards that future state, a website that's "a credible source of opinion and fact, authored by both the corporation and community"?

First, you have to want it.
If you're a company that thinks it's smarter than your customers, just stop reading right now. Keep doing what you're doing. And good luck with that.

If you're a company that's cool with talking less and listening more, a company that's brave enough to hear the good and the bad, a company that wants to actively engage in conversation with both friends and enemies of your brand, then you want to evolve. Keep reading.

Then, you have to plan for it.
Don't even THINK about opening up opportunities for user-generated content on your corporate website until you:

1. Get your current web content under control. Brain Traffic can help, here. Create a web content strategy, develop effective content workflows, assign centralized ownership, and get cracking.

2. Know how you're going to engage users and respond to their content. If you open up a forum for conversation, you are immediately creating an expectation that you're going to DO something in response to what users are telling you. If you don't, you're ten times worse off than you were before.

Next, you have to fund it.
I recently had a client tell me that their company had just spent ten months and two million dollars developing a new brand platform. The outcome was a new style guide, an internally-facing video, and a new corporate identity system.

This same client then told me she had three months and less than 1/10 of that amount to update the entire corporate website (which was several hundred pages and in dire need of both structural and stylistic help).

How strategic can she be, here? Sounds like a hatchet job in the works if ever I've seen one.

Give your team the time and money to get your website right. Don't cut corners, especially not on the content. Pay to develop a smart web content strategy that will support your brand, meet business objectives, and embrace your customers. It's not just how you say it. It's what you say, and where, and when, and why.

Finally, you have to stick with it.
This is all very exciting! I bet you can't wait for everything to launch so you can move on to other efforts.

Just kidding.

Publishing web content isn't a one-time project. It's an ongoing commitment to quality, accuracy, timeliness, relevancy, and customer response. It requires your attention. It demands dedicated resources.

And, of course, publishing web content turns you into a publisher. This requires a publishing infrastructure that will allow content owners to maintain a daily focus on what's happening with your (and your users') content.

And now, go forth and be brave.
Here's Jeremiah again:

"Visualize: We’ll start to see customers help write the corporate newsletter, feeds pulling in industry blogs, media (audio and video), customers rating and ranking and voting for what features they want improved, product teams working directly with customers in real-time, and customers self-supporting each other."

You can do it! But whatever you do, please. Start slow. Be smart. Get your house cleaned up before you invite people in. Because if they don't like what they see, they're certainly not going to stick around for a conversation.

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Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Resources, Web Writing

Some nytimes.com readers aren't so happy with the video content in this blog post:

 The video communicates the point of the blog post, which follows up on a story about an opera singer's weight loss. A couple of the reader comments perfectly capture the problem:

And, sadly, this:

        Can't get the video to load..

        anyone else?

There are a dozen reasons why someone can't or won't watch a video. Keep those users in mind if you're using video to communicate essential content. If you want them to get your message, you'll need to provide it in an accessible non-video format. Like, say, text.    

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Posted in Content Strategy, Editorial Strategy, Web Writing

I've been writing content for websites for 11 years.

I've worked on well over two hundred websites, maybe close to three hundred.

And how many times have I had a style guide to reference for a web content project?

Six.

Of those six style guides, exactly one of them was of any real use to me. (Thank you, Medtronic.)

Our brands are constantly evolving. New products are launched, old ones retired. Services expand and shift. Trademarks, usage, legal requirements . . . for some of us, it's a full-time job just to keep up with them.

No wonder, then, that our web content is always a few steps behind. Inaccurate, irrelevant, outdated, disorganized.

How can you prevent crappy web content?
You know what I'm going to say, here. The most important thing you can do to ensure useful, usable online content is to create a web content strategy.

But the second most important thing? Invest in a web content style guide that's actually useful to the people who are creating, reviewing and approving your content.

In her indispensable guide to writing web content, Letting Go of the Words, Ginny Redish devotes an entire chapter to creating what she calls an "organic" web content style guide. Here are some highlights:

• Start small. Let your style guide grow as issues and questions arise.
• Don't repeat the entire universe. There are dozens of great style guides out there for grammar and usage. Pick one, and point to it in yours.
• Focus on issues that keep coming up. Your web writers likely have the same questions over and over. Make a decision, record it, and move on.
• Put someone in charge. The style guide isn't going to update itself. Make sure someone owns it and is accountable for its accuracy, every day.
• Put it online. This is a no-brainer. It's your most accessible, flexible, most cost-efficient option. In fact, a wiki might be a perfect option for your organization. Just make sure it has an owner to oversee its evolution.

Don't forget voice and tone.
I'll add one more pointer:

• Demonstrate your brand voice and tone. I'm always frustrated by brand guidelines that tell writers to be "authentic," "conversational," "professional," "friendly" . . . these words mean different things to different writers, and they're useless when you're simultaneously trying to communicate information that has to be helpful, compelling, actionable and scannable. So don't just describe voice and tone. Demonstrate it. Create a list of words to use, and words NOT to use. Show before and after edits. Point to other websites that capture the spirit of what you're after.

Creating and managing web content is a complicated enough undertaking. Simplify the process with a style guide people will actually use.

Want help creating a web content style guide? Brain Traffic's expert team of web editors and writers would love to pitch in. Contact us.

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Posted in Editorial Strategy, Style Guides and Such, Web Writing