A new resource in French

A new resource in French
I'm very happy to have received a copy of L'écrit Web, by Joel Ronez. Even with my primitive reading ability in French, I can see it's a well-organized and well-designed book for webwriters. I'm putting Joel's site in the list of Web Writers and Editors.

I'm very happy to have received a copy of L'écrit Web, by Joel Ronez. Even with my primitive reading ability in French, I can see it's a well-organized and well-designed book for webwriters. I'm putting Joel's site in the list of Web Writers and Editors.

Everything you wanted to know about Copyrights


Web text versus web copy
Sometimes it pays to ego surf. I just checked myself on Google Blogs (using the chronically misspelled version of my last name). The search came up with some intriguing notes on a blog called Information Squid: AEAChicago2007 - “Writing the User Interface” by Jeffrey Zeldman. The notes are just that, clearly jotted down as Zeldman was speaking, but they convey a lot. Just at the end I found this: how...

Sometimes it pays to ego surf. I just checked myself on Google Blogs (using the chronically misspelled version of my last name). The search came up with some intriguing notes on a blog called Information Squid: AEAChicago2007 - “Writing the User Interface” by Jeffrey Zeldman.

The notes are just that, clearly jotted down as Zeldman was speaking, but they convey a lot. Just at the end I found this:

how do you reconcile people-read-less with SEO[search engine optimization]?

cutting the fat and natural language help both

so does using markup so important words are in headlines

can sometimes get funding for editing content by saying will help SEO

what are some questions to determine what’s brand-appropriate?

discovery process. what materials have you already produced
about yourselves?

what do you know about your stakeholders? compare with real users.

there are no good books about copy

there are good ones about writing for the web, but they don’t address
these issues - i.e. Crawford Killian, Writing for the Web
Zeldman is thinking of writing this

pronouns in copy? used to be more we, now with blogging more I

Of course I'm delighted about the compliment from Zeldman. He's one of the best thinkers about the web and on the web. I would love to see (and buy) his book on web copy. But the field isn't entirely empty. Nick Usborne has done some real pioneering in this field.

Web copy is text designed to sell; text designed to inform and persuade is also copy. So the two genres overlap to a considerable extent.

That last note about pronouns reflects an important point. Good copy in any medium needs the "you attitude," in which the writers pay more attention to the reader than to themselves or their organization. (The We We Monitor, also listed in Webwriting Resources, provides a useful reality check on corporate egomania.)

So to the extent that web writers in general, and web copywriters in particular, talk about themselves, they put themselves at a disadvantage.

But the "I" of a corporate blogger may evade this hazard. We turn to such an individual when we want a relationship with an informed person who clearly wants a relationship with us. So he or she can rant on about "I think this" or "I wonder about that" and still maintain our interest and respect.

I've seen this happen on a couple of my own blogs. Ask the English Teacher is almost entirely user-driven: The posts are based on visitor questions about English usage, and my answers reflect my own (sometimes cranky) views on good usage. (Some commenters beg to differ with those views, I'm glad to say.)

On H5N1, which is essentially a clipping service about avian flu, some visitors credit me with far more authority than I have. A few even email me to ask when the pandemic will start. This is actually a little scary. So when I do venture an opinion, it's usually with the reminder that I'm an elderly Canadian teacher of business writing, not an epidemiologist.

The key seems to be to convey, both verbally and nonverbally, that the corporate blogger really has the customer/visitor's best interests at heart. Verbally, the text should be clear, simple, suitable in tone, and you-oriented. Nonverbally, the site itself and the text layout should be inviting, navigable, and full of "good news surprises" like links and other resources that the visitor finds useful.

If anything, the nonverbal aspects of the site are likely to be more persuasive than anything we actually put in our copy...because when people sense a clash between the verbal message and the nonverbal message, they believe the nonverbal message every time.

An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media
Via Editor & Publisher, an excellent column by Steve Outing—an old friend and colleague with a lot of experience in online content. The experience hasn't always been happy, but Steve has learned (and taught) a great deal about it. Case in point: An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media. Steve describes the shutdown of his own efforts to create an online community whose members would create most of the content, and...

Via Editor & Publisher, an excellent column by Steve Outing—an old friend and colleague with a lot of experience in online content. The experience hasn't always been happy, but Steve has learned (and taught) a great deal about it. Case in point: An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media.

Steve describes the shutdown of his own efforts to create an online community whose members would create most of the content, and then goes on to analyze similar issues elsewhere:

If you look at the content that's on Backfence.com (and you can, since the servers are still running; there's just no new content being added to the site), it's predominantly press releases from local community groups, or local event announcements. Backfence staff did contribute content, but often of the same variety. There was some great content on Backfence.com, but to my eyes the bulk of it was pretty dull.

I see the same thing when I look at YourHub.com. The editors of YourHub can easily point to some great content that's been posted to the sites. But just as with our Enthusiast Group sites, the overall experience is a lot of average stuff punctuated by a lesser amount of great content.

As destination sites, I don't think that Backfence or YourHub work. My company's sites didn't work, which is why in hindsight I realize that a much higher level of professional content needed to be added into the mix. Quality matters.

Key in on that word, "destination," for a moment. If you're operating an online service that's keyed to user or citizen content submissions, I encourage you to think about how to utilize that content beyond just a destination website.

I don't expect YourHub-like sites to ever become huge traffic draws if they rely too heavily on user submissions. The quality just isn't there for them to be interesting -- especially in an Internet environment where there is so much high-quality news and information available elsewhere, for free.

It's a fine article with plenty of insights that web content developers should reflect upon.