Posts tagged web copywriting

10 really good reasons (no, honestly) for postponing what you could do today about your website content

Walk around client offices and marketing seem to have a spring in their step. Even the guys in IT are whistling ’1000 Points of Hate’ by Anthrax (this is a good sign). But… Well, there’s always a but, isn’t there?

Just sometimes I hear those sit on your hands excuses in some quarters. They may get trotted out just before you press the big fat ‘Go’ button, after all the discovery, auditing, interviewing, planning, workshopping etc has gone on. And, of course, they’re always really, really, really good excuses reasons for not doing something. They’re so good, in fact, that I thought I’d list them here.

1. ‘We can’t start the web project until we’ve…”

This is an excellent reason for not doing something. It’s worth making a real effiort to find another piece of work that requires time / budget and which can be positioned in the way of the proposed web project. Particularly if that proposed web project might take your organisation outside of its comfort zone.

2. “All this background and planning work is fantastic. But we need to spend some time considering the next step.”

Okay, if used in moderation this is fine, valuable even. But, to quote Dionne Warwick: “Weeks turn into years – how quick they pass.” Of course, it makes perfect sense to see any web project as a single, HUGE project that can’t be broken down into sections. It’s a much better idea to think about things really slowly and lose all the forward momentum. With a bit of luck all the prep work will be out of date and useless.

3. “We’re currently advertising for a Head of Interactive Experiential Human Interfacing and all projects are on hold until we appoint and they have a chance to review everything.”

Maybe it’s just me but didn’t you know you were planning to get a new Head of IEH before we started working on this project?

4. “We want to carry out your recommendations but we haven’t got sufficient resources.”

Maybe it’s just me but didn’t you know there were resource issues before we started working on this project?

5. “Thank you so much for all the time and effort workshopping taxonomy, Information Architecture and topic headings but we don’t want to change the current site navigation.”

Yup. That makes perfect sense.

6. “Rather than make some changes now we’ve decided to wait until we can afford a totally new website in a year or so.”

We totally agree. Your site users will be quite willing to wait and it shouldn’t impact on sales or your brand one jot.

7. “You seem to be suggesting that there should be collective responsibility for content creation and maintenance and we can’t just leave the job to… Our people just don’t have the skills or the time.”

Of course you can give people skills, processes and methodologies that help create the time (efficiencies) and also impart a collective shared enthusiasm for the power and benefits of web-based communication. But heck, I’m just messing with your head.

8. “The chairman’s wife does a little creative writing and we’ve asked her to look at the website.”

Okay, I only heard this one used once and that was several year’s back. But it’s still a corker.

9. “We haven’t got the money to do everything we want so we’re not going to do anything”.

Do you want me to pop the toys back in your pram now?

10. “This is David. He’s working as an intern with us over the next six weeks and will handle most of the implementation.”

Hi David. How many pairs of hands have you got?

content strategy, online communication, web content 2010, audit email and web content, content strategy, online communication, writing content for web

Information entropy – ah, hmmm, huh?

A friend of mine recently reviewed a book chapter for me, in which I examined what lies behind the concept of information overload. She asked why I’d chosen not to touch on information entropy. My answer was simple and somewhere along the lines of: “Duh?”

In the physics lab “entropy” is used to described certain states in thermodynamics. I’m no physicist, so bear with me on this one; the lab rats have been doing their best to explain things to me. So, in lay terms, entropy is used to describe

Energy that is no longer available (an example of this would be a car where the brakes have been applied and where energy has been lost in road friction / heat).
The amount of disorder or randomness in a system. Gas, as it whooshes about, being more random / disordered than a solid. (Or a group of adults who get up from the dinner table on New Year’s Eve and start dancing to Jeff Beck and Hi Ho Silver Lining being more random than the same group when sitting and eating.)

Okay, that’s the end of Thermodynamics 101.

But there’s also Information Entropy. This is very different but you need to know about the physics one (entropy as the second law of thermodynamics) so you can ignore it completely (for the time being).

Anyway, you can trace Information Entropy back to the 1940s and Claude.E.Shannon (1916-2001), known as the father of modern digital communications and information theory and his paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (1948, Bell System Technical Journal), which looked at the engineering challenges involved in getting a message from one point to another.

The information content of a message, he theorized, could be reduced to the number of ’1′s and ’0′s it took to transmit it. This idea was gradually adopted by communications engineers and stimulated the technology which led to the binary language that underpins the digital information age. Shannon also coined the term “bit” for a binary digit.

Shannon Entropy, sits within Information Theory, the mathematical discipline that looks at how information is stored, transmitted and reproduced. It measures it, accounting for the possible variables eg a flipping a coin (2 sides) will have less entropy than rolling a dice (6 sides). While Shannon Entropy is strictly applied to the the minimum amount of binary code required to transmit a message from A to B it is also being deployed by non-mathematicians as a way of showing how much information is unequivocally captured within a message (its meaning to the recipient). Shannon himself didn’t get sidetracked by the semantic value (language comprehension and connotation) in the message, just the engineering challenge of transmitting it from A to B intact. In fact, the application of entropy to wider semantic issues of meaning hacked Shannon off quite a bit, apparently.

Time for a joke I think…

Back in the days before email. Way, way, back. People used to send messages via telegram. Such communications were expensive and often charged by the word, so people became very economic with their phraseology. This was particularly evident among professionals who used telegrams regularly – ie journalists.

Back in the 1960s a journalist sent a telegram to the home of veteran Hollywood star Cary Grant. It was a simple question, in theory, designed to establish the actor’s exact age. The telegram read: “How old Cary Grant.” The reply that came back was: “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?” The joke, I believe, establishes the potential difference between the minimum character / bit count for information delivery and minimum required for accurate message comprehension / connotation. It would have been worth paying for the “is”.

You can also argue, well, I do, that the journalist was also applying data compression – the minimum number of words / bits required to convey the information. They fact that the journo failed shouldn’t prevent us acknowledging that they tried. You can also argue, well, I do, that the problem wasn’t the data compression but in its decompression by Cary Grant and what was probably a very knowing attempt to sidestep the sensitive subject of age.

Data compression is useful because it reduces space in information transmission and storage. But, at a language and messaging comprehension and connotation level, we ‘re also trying to apply reduction (compression) techniques so that we can dispense meaning the the minimum space / time possible. On one level this may be a practical desire to reduce issues around “information overload” but that doesn’t explain the phenomenal success of Twitter where the 140 character limit is almost winsome. Data compression at a semantic level is becoming more important if we believe that one key to resolving information overload is to reduce the amount of information people have to deal with. I have an alternative view about this which relates to how we feel about information and this was the subject of a recent survey on this blog. But I’ll save that for another day.

Okay – back into the physics lab

You remember I told you to forget all about the second law of thermodynamics for a bit? Now’s the time to start thinking about it again. What happened with Information Entropy was actually a bit of a hijack. The mathematicians kinda stole the word entropy and messed with it’s meaning a bit, on the basis that most of the population wouldn’t notice or understand. But there are aspects of thermodynamic entropy that are interestingly applicable for information and how it becomes more random / disordered as changes take place. In thermodynamics the classic example involves the ordered structure of sugar crystals compared with the disordered / random nature of sugar dissolved in water.

If you think about information and how it changes, it’s remarkably like the sugar dissolved in water. Over time, different bits of information get de-structured and mixed with other bits. It can become impossible to disentangle this information and restore it to the order of its original components. Looked at one way, this could result in knowledge. High quality information brought together, some bits lost / discarded along the way, but resulting in something different but useful. (It’s also entirely possible that there is a negative outcome possible where poor information is brought together resulting in dissatisfaction and misinformation.)

This makes for a slightly more refined version of the basic knowledge pyramid, which CDA used as the starting point for its Hierarchy of Mutuality and which is loosely modelled on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs*.

* Maslow argued that human beings required basic needs to be met in a hierarchy before they were free to realise themselves creatively and intellectually.

Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs

Knowledge Pyramid

» CDA’s Heirarchy of Mutuality

The question is, where are we going with all this? CDA is currently actively engage in development measurement systems for online engagement. We believe that these have to be a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data to be truly meaningful and that there comes a point where you have to park interpretation of the metrics; dwell times, page views, bounce rates and simply ask “How was it for you?”

Contribute to the debate

I’m currently working on a second part to the article above which will also cover The Triangle of Truth (thanks Clodagh). I’d been interested in any feedback on the argument so far.

» Email me at the lab cdacontentlab@webwordsworking.co.uk

audience engagement, communication training, online communication 2010, content strategy, customer engagement online, online communication, writing content for web

Is it time to go viral?

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.

audience engagement, branding, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication 2009, Angry-gram, audit email and web content, Burger King, customer engagement online, electric sheep, extreme sheep herding, internet users, Kylie Minogue, Kylie Proof video, online communication, Perlico, quack viral, viral marketing, writing for web, YouTube

Make your website take the personality test

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?

personality-montageweb

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 CDA Content Lab website personality test

audience engagement, branding, customer engagement, online communication, online language, web content 2009, audit email and web content, customer engagement online, digital personas, internet users, online communication, websites, writing content for web, writing for web

Are you a warden or a prisoner online?

stanford cartoon

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):

>> Stanford Prison experiment website

>> The Stanley Milgram Experiment

audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, chief content officer, communication training, content director, content strategy, online communication 2009, audit email and web content, customer engagement online, digital personas, online communication, writing content for web, writing for web

Archive as a presentation of your brand

Mad Hatter cartoon

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)

>> How useful is your brand?

>> 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)

>> British Library UK Web Archive

>> US Congress archive program

audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, branding, content strategy, customer engagement, Links, online communication, research whitepaper, Uncategorized, web archive 2009, customer engagement online, financial services online, internet users, online, online language, online writing, searching online, websites, writing content for web, writing for web

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

>> Rahel Anne Bailie, Intentional Design Inc

>> Seamus Walsh, Vazt

audience engagement, auditing websites and emails, branding, chief content officer, communication training, content director, content strategy, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication, Uncategorized, web content content is king, content planning, content roles and responsibilities, content strategy, customer engagement online, online writing, orgnisational change, websites, writing content for web, writing for web

The power of metaphor – discuss

candle-cartoon

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.

audience engagement, customer engagement, digital marketing, online communication, online language, web content 2009, customer engagement online, economic influences on language, online language, online writing, websites, writing content for web, writing for web

The 'strikethrough' as a visual cue – and maybe hypnosis thrown in

I received a marketing email the other day which used ’strikethroughs’ in the text.

strikethrough-up-close3

For a second I thought someone had just pressed ’send’ on an early proof, but I quickly figured out that the strikethroughs were being used as visual devices designed to layer some additional meaning into the text.

I’ve given up hunting about in my email inbox for the specific example but the text went something like this:

strikethrough-sentence1

A bit tricksy? Maybe. But what was rocking my boat was how the strikethroughs were being used as visual metaphors to convey both a thought process and some softer values.

I passionately believe that the way we engage with content is being profoundly changed by the visuality of screen-based media. I’m not convinced that you could use strikthroughs in printed material and achieve the same effect. (Shoot me down in flames now, if you don’t agree.)

I also came across the strikethrough technique on a website trawl recently.

All of which leaves me with a couple of questions. Can visual clues work on a hypnotic level? I’m thinking about the use of negatives in written and spoken language eg: ‘Do not think about pink elephants!’. I know for a fact that everybody who read the previous sentence ended up thinking about pink elephants, albeit briefly. This is because you have to think about whatever the ‘not’ is being applied to before you can not do it.

If you’re still with me, I need to know how people decode the information that is ‘under’ the strikethroughs and how they weight it compared to the replacement words that are not struck through (tortuous bit of past tense, but there you go).

If telling someone ‘not’ to do something actually adds emphasis, then a word under a strikethrough should be more powerful than the word it is replaced by. But I’m not convinced that’s the way this technique is currently being used. So, if you’ve got a minute, tell me what is the lasting image you retain after reading the following:

strikethrough-test-sentence2

Shut your eyes for a few seconds and conjure up an image based on what you remember from the sentence above. Is the image closest to:

Option A

The flowers in the meadow were azure and shook as the storm howled.

Option B

The flowers in the garden were blue and swayed as the wind blew.

Comment through this post or send an email to the lab rats at cdacontentlab@webwordsworking.co.uk

Extra points are awarded if you enclose a pretty drawing based on which image you found the stronger.

audience engagement, copywriting, digital print, online communication, online language, Uncategorized, web content hypnotic langauge, online language, online punctuation, strikethrough

Content Stategy Forum 2010

audience engagement, chief content officer, content strategy, customer engagement, online communication content strategy, customer engagement online, online communication

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