Posts Tagged writing for web
Mentoring – is it different for women?
Posted by Lab rat in mentoring, online communication on October 11, 2010
I was at a meeting organised by Amanda Davie at Reform, which looked at the need for a mentoring scheme aimed specifically at women working in the digital industry.
It was a great meeting.
I met some great women.
The mentoring potential in the room was awesome.
Ah, if only I was 30 years younger and had just one of those women going into bat for me. I could have invented facebook, or, at the very least, been running Microsoft.
I’ll tell you how the scheme develops over the coming weeks, but, in the meantime, the meeting got me thinking about the whole area of mentoring, whether women need specific schemes and what is it about the nature of digital disciplines that might make women less, or more, enfranchised?
I started to think about my early year’s in the newspaper industry. One thing I remembered was that, when I started out, I was my own worst enemy. I remember attending an interview and saying that I had ambitions to work in the magazine industry. Why? I was asked. Because I thought that it would be easier for a woman to get on in magazines than in newspapers, I replied. I was in a room full of blokes, all with newspaper backgrounds, and you could have heard a pin drop.
The fact is I’ve seen women struggle through glass ceilings only to pull the ladders up behind them to prevent other women getting through. I’ve seen men and women extend the hand of support and give me and others, opportunities that I can only wonder at in retrospect. They had faith. They gave us a chance. They gave us the confidence to give something new (and scary) a go.
And I suppose that’s what we all need – faith, opportunity and confidence. And, I suspect, that’s what good mentoring comes down to.
I distinguish mentoring from other types of ‘help’, such as old boy networks. Old boy networks are predicated on something different entirely. They’re based on giving someone a leg up because they happened to go to the right school (or be the ‘right’ gendre).
Modern mentoring is all about spotting the potential in someone, or coaxing out that potential, so they can be the best they can be. In that respect, perhaps women are more able to spot potential in other women. And as digital disciplines are relatively young, the women who have experience in them are even more valuable (as younger industries don’t have a large population of veterans to call on). These woman have seen their areas of expertise evolve at a breathtaking pace. In some areas they may well be the minority gendre. They recognise the issues – a lack of confidence, perhaps; lack of technical training, concerns around combining work and family…
I mention the latter but this is not about women needing different mentoring because they also make babies. Some women have families, some women don’t. It may be part of what makes you, you. It certainly isn’t all of what makes you, you. Not by a long chalk. But a mentor could just as easily be dealing with someone who wants to combine a fulfiling professional role with time to volunteer in the charity sector.
The fact is I warm intuitively to the idea of women, such as the ones in the meeting I attended, using their experiences, empathy and objectivity to mentor other women. And, as a woman, I set great store by my intuition.
» Find out more about Mentoring Women in Digital on LinkedIn
Is it time to go viral?
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, branding, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication on November 8, 2009
Viral campaigns have been front of mind for me recently. I’ve suddenly been struck by how a great idea isn’t always the right idea. There may be a profound difference between what works as a viral campaign and what works for you as a brand / business / organisation – ie the audience that is most likely to engage with a viral and, most importantly, pass it on, aren’t necessarily the ones who are going buy what you sell. And… under those circumstances, is a viral still worth doing and why?
Take the 2001 ‘Proof’ campaign starring Kylie Minogue and which was considered too raunchy for the cinema audiences for whom it was conceived. It’s had more that 350 million hits on YouTube since then.
While conceived as a cinema ad it has proved itself extraordinarily viral. The question is – how many people who’ve watched this on YouTube (and it has now been named the best celebrity viral ad of the decade by online content distributor GoViral) are now wearing Agent Provocateur undies?
I understand that a lot of chaps may have rushed out and bought undies for the women in their lives (one or two may have bought velvet upholstered bucking broncos as well) but is that good enough, given how much a viral campaign of this type costs to create?
Remember, I’m just asking questions at this stage. I’m hoping you’ll have at least some of the answers. The most I’m going to offer up later in this article is opinions.
Okay, now let’s take a look at one of my personal favourites…
These sheep crack me up. There is no day of chaos in the office that cannot be improved by spending a few moments rewatching this one. But the truth is that no matter how many times I look at it I do not feel moved to go out and buy a Samsung LED TV.
According to its creators, the:viral:factory, it has featured on Sky, ITV, ABC, The Sun newspaper and The New York Times… But while demand for LED TVs is set to grow to around 90 million units by 2013 (39% of the total market), Sharp seem to be taking the high ground – in the UK at least. They’re on track to sell around 2 million LED TVs in 2009 and predict a massive 10 million sales in 2010. » Source
With no electric sheep in sight, Sharp are selling successfully. But that doesn’t mean they’re sitting back with their feet up.
As early as July 2008 Sharp was encouraging younger Hong Kong office workers to send viral messages to their friends through a mini site, ‘Where’s my pixie’, promoting its Aquos TV range. They’d targeted this segment (25-35) because they were predisposed to go online and research prior to making a purchase. The characters in the viral were designed to demonstrate picture quality. And as far back as September 2007 Bob Scaglione, Sharp Consumer Electronics Marketing Group senior VP, announced the launch of its “most aggressive advertising and brand campaign in our history”. Earlier this year Sharp launched (and aggressively advertised) an new generation of Aquos TVs, replacing more expensive models.
Here comes the opinion…
Virals are like diets. Every now and again one comes along that catches the public’s attention and seems to get results. But the fact is that the only true way to lose weight is to burn more calories and consume less calories. A stonking good diet, when it forms part of an overall health and fitness regime (squeezing off that extra 5lbs before Christmas, say), may well make a difference. Used on its own… chances are any benefits will be transitory.
So, what should you ask yourself before getting stuck into a viral campaign?
1. Is it enough to create on simply ‘get the word out’?
2. What succes criteria should you / can you attach to it?
3. Where is the budget coming from (are you paying Peter with Paul’s stash and are other marketing initiatives likely to suffer)?
4. And where does you viral sit both practically and strategically when you look across your entire marketing landscape? (This can include blogging about the viral – so make sure everybody’s out of their silos.)
If the strategic and brand accord is that there’s room in the mix for a good viral – you don’t need Kylie writhing on plum plush to be successful.
A viral can be a picture (including a discount voucher), a simple game, an email, or even a phone message.
Irish internet and phone company Perlico created a ‘quack’ viral. If you rang the company you were given this amongst your options: “Press three to hear a duck quack.” Through word-of-mouth and email, the company received 70,000 extra calls in the campaign’s first three days and added what the company described as “a significant number of new customers”.
Don’t park your brain
It’s all very exciting, but the most important thing at this stage is sanity checking your creative juices using people who are outside the campaign team. I suspect this didn’t happen with the » Burger King Angry-gram
You also need to decide if the target for the viral is the direct target for your business or if the aim some form of ripple influence where the viral recipient influences your ultimate customer group? An example of that approach is »L’Oreal’s ‘Every mum is worth it campaign’ from March this year
You need to be prepared for a number of things, including the viral element becoming dissociated from you and your brand and taking on a life of its own. If you (or your CEO) find loss of control unacceptable – maybe viral isn’t for you.
The other thing you really have to understand is why people share things and accept things from people they don’t necessarily know that well – and not just as this applies to the internet (quaint word, but I still love it).
People do things because they make sense at the time. Online is also disinhibiting, so people will share (and accept) things, including links to raunchy Kylie videos, which they might baulk at sharing face-to-face. So the reason to share a viral must be clear. Its humour must be instant and universal and any essential usefulness immediately obvious.
And Christmas is a great time of year for a viral. Which reminds of the music channel that created a viral of a boy unwrapping a Christmas present. It was a light sabre which he wielded with gay abandon – until he cut grandma’s head off. Ho, ho, ho – or no. no, no? You decide.
Make your website take the personality test
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, branding, customer engagement, online communication, online language, web content on September 3, 2009
Your website is just like any other member of your team… Okay, they don’t draw salary (in quite the same way) and they don’t turn up at the Christmas party clutching half a bottle of tequila. But they represent your organisation, its products, services, values…
The question is – what type of personality have you got fronting the most important doorway and window onto your organisation’s world and what kind of job are they doing?
Here in the lab we’ve created a personality test for your website. It’s fun and easy to do but it may also reveal some interesting facts about your site and the way it represents your brand.
There are 6 possible types. Is your website an ‘aging’ rock star, ‘Pretty Woman’, the technical genius, the selling dervish, the librarian or the gardener? And what do these personality types reveal about your site?
In our PDF you can read more about each type and how these personality traits may represent themselves (and you) online. Oh and it’s totally free as well as fun.
The ‘face’ of online delivery
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, communication training, customer engagement, online communication on August 7, 2009
Increasingly organisations understand the importance of creating the right Tone of Voice (ToV) for their communications. That tone needs to be ‘modulated’ for online delivery, where communications must be conversational and reply-focussed. Organisations are beginning to understand even that these days.
But when we converse with people face-to-face so much of what we infer and derive is based on visual cues rather than verbal ones. Online, what’s the equivalent of maintaining eye contact? As well as tone of voice think – the face of delivery.
This came to me this week when Mark Tyrrell, a very talented hypnotherapist and hypnotherapy teacher (I was lucky enough to attend one of his courses a couple of year’s back) Tweeted a New Scientist article about how we’re more likely to think other people are attractive if they’re looking straight at us and smiling.
A study at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, UK, paired nearly identical photos of computer-generated faces, with smiling or disgusted expressions. The pairs only differed in where the irises were pointed: straight at the viewer, or off to the side.
Hundreds of participants then rated the faces for sexual attractiveness, and (what I’d like to focus on) for ‘likeability’. Both men and women found faces looking straight at them to be more attractive and more likeable, even if the faces looked disgusted (though smiling faces were preferred). I think we’ll leave the sexual attractiveness of websites for another day.
I think this face of delivery is very important online because of the conversational and even intimate nature of the communication.
- We know that a brochure is not an exclusive communication (even if our name is lasered at the top).
- A letter may be personal but it isn’t (generally) intimate.
- Online communication is an intimate space because of the way we engage with the delivery system – leaning in to our computer, cradling our Blackberry in the palm of our hand…
Reviewing web content against the above – starting with the visuals
So, online, how do you give your tone of voice eye contact and a smiley face? And, when you’re reviewing web content, what measures might you use to determine the face of your current online delivery?
One place to start might appear to be the visuals you use. Ideally they should be of things and people who ‘connect’ in some way with your business. Be aware of simply purchasing shiny toothed smiley faces from an image catalogue. There is something about model poses and a trick they use, pointing their eyes at the camera but allowing their gaze to soften. This widens the iris – in theory more attractive – but reduces the intensity of the eye-to-eye engagement.
I’m also very grateful to Richard Sedley at cScape for drawing my attention to a study that looked at how web users attention could be drawn to different parts of the screen by using the eyeline of the person in a photograph. Eg if you wanted somebody to look at a product / product offer, have someone else in the ad’ looking in the direction of the offer.
The question here is: do you want to engage with the user (in which case do you want the eyes on the screen to connect with the eyes of the user), or do you want them to be drawn to a product or service offered on the screen (in which case should the eyes on the screen connect with the product or service)? Something to ponder
But don’t stop with the visuals
But the more I thought about it the more that focusing on the visuals alone seemed to be missing the point. When we port a concept online we have to rework it for the new space. It pays not to be to literal in your interpretation of offline best practice for online. All of which begs the question… what is the ‘face’ of your website and who is it focusing on?
Welcome to my hypothesis…
I reckon the face of your website is your Home page. And in the case of larger sites, you may have several web personalities grouped together, so you might also have ‘faces’ on primary landing pages – such as the start of a big section. I’m a great believer in treating your website with the same respect and governance you would any other member of your organisation, so logic dictates that the Home page is the face. (What do you think?)
So, above and beyond the basics of a good Home page; clear layout, clear and consistent labelling, easy to follow nav, good tone of voice… how do you assess the eye contact?
Here are the basic proportions of a human face:
- traditional rules of proportion (Disagree? Take it up with Vitruvious) show the face divided into six equal squares, two by three
- the upper horizontal section ends at mid-forehead
- the lower at the base of the nose
- the eyes rest on the horizontal centre, the mouth on the centre of the lower third.
Just for fun I then overlaid these proportions on some web Home pages I liked or solicited from others who didn’t know what I planned to do. I situated the top of each Home page at the forehead line.
What I find interesting is just how much important stuff is going on in the mid-face section, around the eyes . And much of the very practical information – including links, T & Cs etc – lines up with the mouth area.
So, lab rats, where are you going with all this?
Firstly, check out how much interesting stuff is going on in and around the eyes above (about the only exception is Philips).
The lab rats are still working on this one but I strikes us that, in terms of the way you evaluate your web (and particularly, Home) page real estate, you might want to draw a smiley face on your wire frames.
1. Is there something your users can make ‘eye contact’ with – a responding human face, other strong visual, focusing information?
2. Is there a face-like quality to the page? (Keep in mind that faces are not totally symmetrical.)
3. How do you ‘feel’ when you engage with your Home page?
Not only is very engaging information concentrated around important facial elements on our examples above, but this content is written and displayed in a very ‘likeable’ way. I don’t think you should disregard the basics, including the role of the F Pattern.
But… it makes you think.
Useful links – each one takes you away from the lab, so we’ve opened them in new windows for you
>> The cScape Customer Engagement Unit blog (CDA are CEU members)
>> Mark Tyrrell’s new website – Uncommon Help
Useful links within this blog (we want to keep you here, so they open in the same window)
>> Reply-focussed communication
PS I’d be very interested to hear about the role of ‘eye contact’ and conversational tone in Asia where the rules for appropriate interaction are different.
Are you a warden or a prisoner online?
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, chief content officer, communication training, content director, content strategy, online communication on July 20, 2009
The Stanford Prison Experiment looked at what happened psychologically when you placed some people in positions of power and other’s in positions of vulnerability (wardens and prisoners). Irrespective of their previous internal moral ‘clock’ – how would they behave?
The simulation carried out by Stanford University in the summer of 1971 was ended prematurely because of the impact it had on its university participants. Those students who were given the role of prison guards showed themselves capable of brutality. The students consigned to prisoner roles became stressed and depressed (as if their confinement were real).
Stanford, and the earlier Milgram experiment conducted at Yale University, opened up interesting questions, not just about the deeper, darker side of human nature but how we behave when we assume a role, or are put into a certain situation. As psychology professor Phil Zimbardo, who led the Stanford research team, puts it: “Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behaviour, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.”
Okay, now the digital communication segue…
While I’m not suggesting that digital content ‘controllers’ will ever resort to beatings and electric shocks, there is often a divide between those who police the content and those who do not. These schisms can exist between online content commissioners / editors and content producers / authors. Or between active members of the content team and ‘the rest’. The rest being anybody in an organisation that doesn’t take an active role in web, email, digital messaging strategy, development and delivery. It can also exist between on and offline teams (marketing, editorial, brand…).
The Stanford experiment didn’t end prematurely because the research team had learnt everything there was to know, but because they became alarmed at how quickly the abuse of roles and situations occurred.
So in any situation where there is authority and lack of authority there is the opportunity for abuse.
I can’t make over entire organisational hierarchies on the basis of the above premise, but I can suggest discreet changes to the way online content oligarchies are handled. That may seem a small change but just think about the influence your online content has on your brand and therefore on how wider audiences perceive your organisation. Plus online is relatively young and still relatively fluid. In-house content processes are not set in stone. Change them while you still can.
Where to start?
Who are the content controllers and what power do they have? A healthy content process has checks and balances in place reflecting different content steers. This shouldn’t be a cumbersome process but a light matrix approach to ensure that core organisational values, the needs of marketing and sales, corporate information, plus the rigours of online execution and presentation are held in balance.
When changes are made to online process and / or presentation – a new website, extensions to email campaigns etc – who is consulted (and who isn’t)? It’s hard for people to be all fired up about the company website if the only time they’re consulted about it is retrospectively: “Oh, the new website launches in 3 weeks. We need your new page content ASAP. Did you not get the email?)
How do you regularly test the water in terms of existing content processes and how they are viewed internally? Zimbardo points out that at some stage there is a shift from what’s reasonable to what isn’t. How would you know if this shift happened within your organisation’s digital content process?
If existing online content processes and manifestations aren’t working, do people (outside any content claque) feel empowered to say ‘this isn’t working’ or ‘our new website is rubbish’? If the emperor is in the buff you need to know quickly. Online is everybody’s business.
Checks and balances
A qualitative content audit can throw up weaknesses is existing systems. It needs to be carried out by an external team (but this could involve different departments or areas of online activity critiquing each other’s work).
Content should be reviewed against organisational values and Tone of Voice, online ambition and audiences. You may want to read an earlier post on personas (I’ve popped the link at the bottom of this post). I’ll work up a personality for any site I’m reviewing (as if it was a flesh and blood member of the team). If your website sat at the next desk, would you share your sandwiches with it?
I also came up with this acronym. I think you should be answering ‘yes’ to 6 out of 9 points.
1. Can a wide range of people within your organisation suggest a digital change and / or refinement and know someone will take notice?
2. Have they got a clear idea about who to approach if something isn’t working right – broken website links, poorly coded emails, spelling mistakes online… (or know where to find out)?
3. Are new digital projects only embarked upon after a well-rounded opinion-seeking process and shared collective understanding?
4. Little digital errors (page not found, spelling errors, broken links…) rarely happen.
5. Large digital errors (website down, email campaigns producing little or no response…) rarely happen.
6. Everyone takes an interest in what rour company is doing digitally, even if they’re not actively involved.
7. No faction, department, skillset, business unit, or organisational activity feels excluded (frozen out).
8. Guards need walls. Are the processes and decisions made about how your brand is communicated online done in clear view?
9. Eyes (2), ears (2) mouth (1). Is your organisation watching and listening to what’s been done and said online rather than simply talking about it. You should watch and listen more than you speak.
Internal link
>> More about personas
>> The 7 ages of content maturity table (towards the end of this post)
Find out more about the Stanford and Milgram experiments (I’ll open these links in a new window):
Archive as a presentation of your brand
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, branding, content strategy, customer engagement, Links, online communication, research whitepaper, Uncategorized, web archive on June 17, 2009
In Alice in Wonderland the Mad Hatter is doomed to live his life at tea time. He and his companions cope by moving round a giant tea table, leaving behind the detritus of their last repast in order to begin again at a new place setting.
I sometimes feel the web is modelled along similar constraints. I ponder the detritus we leave behind in terms of useless links and even more useless pages, while we’re guzzling Darjeeling somewhere else. Like the Mad Hatter we’re doomed to live life in the present tense and there isn’t time to tidy up what’s gone before. Which brings me on to the subject of archiving (‘At last!’ exclaimed Alice).
Some organisations have embraced archiving. But often there’s a clear driver. For example, they have archivable product of intrinsic value. The US Congress digital preservation program, designed to preserve political historic context and the British Library web archive, come to mind. I select these 2 at random and don’t want to get drawn into commenting on their execution. Newspapers and libraries have always archived and are therefore predisposed to do so digitally.
And, within the context of this blog, neither do I want to get into the technical developments that enable archiving. What interests me is why so many of us are Mad Hatters? What’s the mindset that prevents us engaging with archive projects and what are the implications for brands?
Businesses are becoming increasingly aware of how important their online touch points are, not just in terms of sales and information but as an extension of brand. At CDA we talk about usefulness as the essential online brand attribute. Online, people don’t want marketing messages. They want facts and information, fueled by clear navigation, that allow them to get on an do.
But what do businesses do about content that’s no longer current?
1. The simple answer would seem to be: take it down.
For much material that probably makes perfect sense. If it has no intrinsic value, even as a matter of record, then it can probably go.
But you need to be asking some pertinent questions around this and not acting in haste (because it’s the easiest solution). These questions should exend to considering links that inhabit the pages you are considering taking down – not just out from them but links in from other pages and other sites. Sites that may well belong to other organisations and are therefore are outside of your direct control. (CDA recently undertook a BBC archive project where link evaluation was the critical factor.)
2. Plenty of content can probably be kept digitally but not made available.
I remember being told about a tobacco company that keeps everything on the basis that they don’t know where their next class action is coming from and they can’t afford not to have a record of everything they’ve said and written (web is just a part of that).
3. But there is also a great amount that should be archived in a way that still allows public access.
An easy example is past copies of annual reports and accounts.
But a publicly accessible archive also stands testament to organisational longevity. Even at a subliminal level this is an important brand attribute, particularly in financial services and the public sector.
So, I hear you thinking, we’ll keep all these pages up then? Ah, if only life was that simple. Pour me another cup of Darjeeling and I’ll explain.
The web, like the Mad Hatter’s tea party, exists in the here and now. For online users it is forever tea time. They’re looking for content that will allow them to do things now and are evaluating against personal criteria that allow them to make judgements about this in the fastest time possible. A matter of seconds. They expect web content to be current because they are.
Archive pages need to evidence the fact that they are archive in nanoseconds. They also need to evidence that they’re still up there because they’re useful in some way. Obviously a date helps but is it really clear? Explore some of the dustier corners of mega sites and you’ll find all sorts of pages, PDFs, printer friendly versions that seem to exist outside of time and space.
And there is a clear governance issue here. Take the hypothetical case of a health site that over the years has written and commented on various reports relating to diet, including how many eggs we should eat. (I choose eggs because the guidelines seem to go up and down like Topsy. I have no idea what they currently are but I’m healthy and I like omelettes.)
And this health organisation has done some pretty impressive work over the years; collaborated at a government level and the like. To take down the older reports would mean their online presence is diminished. Plus, they are a valueable site for research and student traffic who want to access this past material. Password protecting a whole load of content would be counterproductive in terms of this traffic (having considered this approach thoroughly) and also reflect badly on their brand. They’re a public health organisation.
But say I’m an overweight man in his late 50s with heart and collesterol issues. In an attempt to look after myself I visit this health website and download information about diet. But in my haste I download previous advice on eggs. Six months down the line I’m facing a coronary bypass and there’s a leaflet in the doctor’s waiting room about no win no fee legal advice.
Now I have no idea what the legal argument would be in this case. But up until the end of last year I was Chair of Governance for a small UK NHS organisation so governance and duty of care are things I feel very strongly about. Could something like this never happen? Or is it just a matter of time?
So, I hear you thinking, we’ll take all these pages down then. Ah. Cut me a slice of cake and I’ll explain.
This brings me back to an earlier point. Your past is part of your brand. If you were at a dinner party with someone who refused to talk about anything that happened pre-2008 you’d be a little suspicious. Wouldn’t you?
So archiving has to be about striking a balance. It’s about governance, curation, usefulness and record. If you have sites and pages languishing out there because it’s just too complicated to consider doing something about them, well… have you met my friend the Mad Hatter?
Useful links (that take you to CDA main website pages)
>> Brand usefulness – help not hype
>> How people use language to search online
Useful links (you’ll leave the blog and CDA, so we’ll open these in a new window for you)
Content is King (sort of)
Here’s a question – if content is king, how come it hasn’t got a seat on the board? Or a top of the range company car? How come content doesn’t sit in on senior management team meetings? Hm?
At best most organisations treat content rather like a middle manager that everybody believes has been promoted beyond their competence. Nobody disrespects them to their face but neither do they give them any real power. And they certainly don’t need to keep content in the loop.
I know what you’re thinking. The Lab Rats have got a bee in their bonnet and are blowing it up out of all proportion. (Can you blow up a bee? Isn’t that apian cruelty? Ed.)
Okay, the title ‘Content Manager’ is a fairly common one, but Content Managers are very rarely – if ever – at the top of the management food chain. And what about Content Directors? Visit one of the big jobs’ websites, put Content Director in the search engine and see what comes up. See what I mean?
Yet everybody pays lip service to the fact that content is critical. Content is what allows us to engage with and shape the experiences of our customers, prospects and users. Content is what we use to create conversations online. It’s what we use to create usefulness – ‘this is how to buy in our online shop’, ‘this is where you download the form you need’, ‘here’s how this website / email /digital message will enable you to do what it is you want to do’.
But we still treat content as something that just needs to be sliced and spliced. Content is something we control – not something that exerts control in its own right. We ‘chunk it’, ‘cut it’, ‘edit it. We approach content with mental scissors (or buy in scissor expertise to keep content under control).
(The sound you can now hear is a million Content Managers, and one or two Content Directors, hammering at the lab door and baying for my blood. A few of them are waving scissors. This could turn nasty.)
So I need to state here and now that if I ruled the world content would be supreme commander and Grand Poobah in every organisation. When the CEO played golf on Saturday he’d invite content to tee off with him. Content would have dinner with Alan Sugar and Barack Obama regularly. I rate content, okay? Put the scissors down.
Why Content needs a seat on the board
Content and its keepers must be elevated is we are to truly exert its power to communicate and influence. Those who control it within organisations need to conduct peer to peer conversations at the higest level; not just about its use but its governance, budgets, its strategy and the wider social responsibilities that come with publishing and broadcasting. Particularly when the platform is as powerful as the internet.
The larger and more influential the organisation the more critical that its key content personnel are recruited and deployed at the most senior level. (This should be so for all organisations, not just the farsighted ones.) This is especially pertinent for public sector, goverment and quasi govermental organisations whose brands are also trustmarks for people seeking advice or reassurance. To ensure content is relevant, accurate, up to date (or suitably archived); to ensure is is adequately budgeted for and considered at a strategic level, it needs its own big cheese.
I’ve just joined a Google Group on Content Strategy. At the moment I’m just observing from the corners of the room but I’ve been struck but some of the arguments (and who’s doing the arguing). Serious hitters, every one. For example, Rahel Anne Bailie, Content Strategist / CM Consultant, Intentional Design Inc, who observes how the customer value proposition may suffer if those developing the content are taken outside their knowledge base and not supported into new skills and knoweldge sets (which is, I think, increasingly likely to happen as we harness a growing range of socio-adaptive, potentially vetuperative, user-centric platforms).
We need to bring on our content keepers, so that they are mixing on a daily basis with higher management and boardroom echelons. This is the level at which serious strategic skillsets are traded and mashed. Get content into that arena and we are creating (for the future) more rounded senior people who understand content as well as they do a balance sheet. Your current CEO may well have previously been a Director of Finance. Might your future CEO once have been the Director of Content?
Content and what happened with HR
I’m tempted to draw some parallels between Content now and the position of Human Resources / Human Capital some years back. HR has a much higher profile these days. It reflects the fact that organisations became increasingly aware of both the potential and potential risk that was encapsulated in people. And not just senior people, but the employee driving a van or working the post room. It’s the same with content. It’s very easy to get excited about the content for the ‘big, new website launch’ or the ‘bumper annual report’, while that PDF languishing at the back end of some deserted, 4th level down, sub-page heirarchy, (out of date and poorly worded), still has the ability to bite you on the corporate bum and shame your brand.
So, I’m wondering, could you interpret an organisation’s content maturity, in part, from the seniority of its content keepers? (See my visual musing below: 7 ages of content maturity within orgnisations, with apologies to William Shakespeare.)
The maturation of HR function wasn’t just about watching out for the bad stuff that could happen – unfair dismissal claims, workplace bullying and the like – but also about providing the structure and support that enabled an organisation’s human capital to be the best it could be. HR maturity (and increasingingly senior titles for HR players) brought with it huge leaps forward in terms of equality and diversity, mentoring, workplace learning… Oh the wonder if content was treated and respected in the same way.
Seamus Walsh of Vazt, also part of the Content Strategy Google Group, sent out the rallying cry ‘Has the time come for a Chief Content Officer?’ at the end of April this year. It was his clarion that prompted me to join the group (that and the very bossy co-founder of CDA). As Walsh put it: “Enterprise content is a corporate asset, yet it is one of the only assets that is not represented on the executive leader team. I firmly believe that an ‘enterprise content strategy’, with gap analysis can help a company be more effective and efficient. Frankly, I think removing IA role out of IT and moving in into the business in an executive capacity will do the trick.’
So far there are about 33 messages triggered by Walsh – not all gung ho by a long chalk. One concern is that as debates about roles can quickly become political. The implication being that the thoughtful conversations about content and its management will be dismissed as talk designed to facilitate greasy pole climbing.
Another message that caught my eye was someone saying that they wouldn’t want to go into a job as a Chief Content Officer if the organization didn’t already have high content values. Just appointing someone senior with a fancy title doesn’t change orgnisational structure or culture. What we’re talking about here (well, what I’m talking about here) goes deeper than simply a title.
I believe that senior content appointments could have a profound influence on our industry. After all, it is acknowledged that leadership plays a major role in organisational change. Why shouldn’t content leadership have as important an influence?
Me? I’m holding out for the title of Grand Poobah.
With due credit to the big hitters and the Content Strategy Goggle Group
>> Content Strategy – Google Groups
The power of metaphor – discuss
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication, online language, web content on May 8, 2009
I was lecturing to a room of health professionals the other week about how to handle vast quantities of information . This is not simply a question of moving and storing the stuff, but getting the right bits of it into the right hands. The health service is awash with data, much of it designed to shore up government aspiration. If you want data to become information, and from there get turned into knoweldge that is used and enthused over, you have to distil and present it in an engaging fashion. That’s why I was discussing metaphors.
I wanted to understand what metaphors this group of bright young health service leaders used when talking about knowledge. Your choice of metaphor (about anything) can say a great deal about how you view what you are talking about. There’s some very interesting research about metaphors, including work done amongst physicists, who were concerned that the traditional metaphors used to describe energy were inhibiting the way students grasped some newer scientific concepts, such as quantum mechanics ( David T. Brookes and Eugenia Etkina ).
In the Netherlands, Daniel G Andriessen, noted how many Western metaphors for knowledge equated it to ‘stuff”. This is pretty sad. Knowledge should be fluid and energic not stuff. But that got me thinking…
When clients approach large digital projects, such as a new website or email programme, they often approach the content as STUFF. This stuff has to be moved around and put into piles. It has to be ‘loaded’. The task itself is daunting. People don’t want to deal with the STUFF. STUFF is boring.
So, what metaphors do you use to describe content? Is it ‘stuff” or is it something more dynamic and fluid. If you’re a provider of digital services, what metaphors are your clients using to describe aspects of a digital project? Listen out for them. They may speak volumes about what sort of client they’re going to be.
Using metaphors online
The other aspect of metaphor I’m currently exploring is the way it can be used in online content.
Some of you are aware that I’m obsessed by the how the human brain engages with content offered via a computer screen, as opposed to traditional print medium. A University of California study, featured in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry last year, found that a simple task like searching the web enhanced brain circuitry in older adults.
Brain scans on volunteers aged between 55 and 76 showed that both searching the web and reading books produced evidence of significant activity in regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities.
However, the web search task produced significant additional activity in separate areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning – but only in those who were experienced web users.
The researchers hypothesised that this was due to the sheer range of choice available online compared with the pages of a book and that users developed these skills over time. I don’t know about you, but stuff like that makes my skin prickle.
I also believe that the sheer visuality of the medium engages the brain in different ways, triggering skills that we first developed when drawing in charcoal on cave walls, or carving ornate pictograms inside temples and tombs.
Is metaphor the chimera that straddles both language and image?
Our general advice to clients is keep web copy simple. Avoid the clever and be very cautious of the humorous. People on the web are seeking knoweldge at speed and have no time to decode your wit.
But can the right metaphor enhance the speed at which a web users grasps a point? Could it give them a fast visual cue and trigger the parts of the brain your words cannot reach?
Me? I haven’t made my mind up yet. But it’s worth giving some brain time to.
Welcome to web content 101
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, copywriting, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication, online language, web content, web copywriting training on January 29, 2009
They say that fish don’t know what water is because they swim in it. Content is the same. We swim in it and therefore don’t really think about it. After all, we all have reasonable writing skills, which we employ effortlessly in everything from writing a Post It note through to creating a huge website.
But how you employ content online is a very specific harnessing of your writing skills. Users don’t hold it at arm’s length and read it. They are immersed in it as part of a deeply personal, interactive experience. Online content is the environment for web users. They may not even be aware of it – ‘Oooh look, there’s some content on that page!’ – but without it (just like the fish swimming in water) they couldn’t get where they want to go.
I recently gave an interview to Dave Chaffey about the essential issues a print copywriter has to consider when writing for the web. Dave is an author, consultant and trainer specialising in e-commerce and e-marketing education and guidance. The interview’s now up on his website. Take a look and come back to me with any comments.
If you’ve arrived at the CDA Content Lab from my interview on davechaffey.com, please take a look around. You may find the links below particularly useful as they cover the topics mentioned in the interview:
Online language pathways (on main CDA site / opens in new window)
More on personas and scenarios for web and email (this blog / opens in same window)
Can I also draw you attention to:
Auditing for websites and email (CDA main website / opens in new window)
Web copywriting workshops and training (CDA main website / opens in new window)
All of us here at the lab have a huge respect for Dave and his site is a valuable resource. If I was going to point you to one thing on it would be his e-business book, which will help you develop a robust strategy for improving e-business and IT activities.
Dave Chaffey’s e-business and e-commerce management book (davechaffey.com / opens in new window)
Paper phrases
Posted by Lab rat in audience engagement, copywriting, online communication, online language, user analysis, web content on October 3, 2008
Back in the days when communication relied on a cleft stick, paper was the perfect format. It beat cave paintings and even clay tablets in the portability stakes. It was – depending on the servant holding the stick – reasonably fast. Eventually a whole system was built around moving paper about. The fax machine may have introduced a non-paper stage but it was, to all intents and purposes, PIPO – paper in, paper out.
We built our skill with written language around this wonderful medium. We bound it into books. Men in brown robes and tonsures used exquisite caligraphy to create copies of the bible. We developed machines that could print onto paper. There were both desk top versions (typewriters) and mainframes – giant printing presses turning out books, magazines, academic journals, newspapers and catalogues for swimwear.
We came up with protocols for laying out words; upper and lower case, underlining and indenting. Red ink, black ink and green ink. Purple prose. Colour and position had specfic meanings. Overturning or advancing a protocol took time. Be too forward in the layout of your business letter and people might asume you didn’t know how to lay one out (or you were too unsuccessful to afford a decent secretary).
But computers and the internet have changed all this. The range of fonts and colours at our disposal are infinite. Images can be added with ease. With so much choice, it’s harder to proscribe and restrict. We can place text vertically, or upside down if we’re so moved. And if we come up with some particularly clever idea it can be copied by others in a nanosecond. Nobody’s right. Nobody’s wrong.
But while we’re all having great fun exploring the visual nature of the medium we can still end up turning out the same old paper phrases, first used back in the days when upright typewriters thumped and rattled. In large and small organisations, tensions can develop between operational areas (meaning) and marketing departments (messaging) when it comes to how products or services are described online.
So here’s my SMART benchmarking tool, designed to quick-test your content for paper phrases:
Source What was the source documentation for the web content? Was it brochure, a press release, a product blue print… Where the source material came from will influence the language that finds its way online. The more internal the document the more likely it is to contain paper phrases and inhouse language.
Method How was the source material turned into web content? Simply subbing source material to make it shorter won’t turn it into good web copy. Ideally you want to review the source material, put it away and then write from memory, only returning to the source to check facts. The more complicated the material, the more important it is to atomise and reconstite the content, rather than simply edit. Subbing often leaves in paper phrases.
Approval Who gets to sign off on the content and why? The best approval processes incorporate compliance and legal perspectives early on, rather than as a final stage, when formal langauge may be reintroduced and everybody’s too tired to argue. Some of the worst give the final say to senior management.
Review When the copy has been signed off and published online it should always go through a final discreet review about a week or so after publication. Once the pressure is off and the deadline has been met, it’s suprising how easy it is to refine and improve what you already have. And if you’re more relaxed, so is your language. Small changes should not require a further approval process.
Test You may be convinced you’ve written spot-on, online copy but the only person who can really tell you that is your site users. Check site metrics looking for pages that people are leaving to soon (boring) or spending too long on (complicated). Make changes and check again. Then make changes and check again.