On Blurbs and Summaries

On Blurbs and Summaries
Via Poynter Online, a lively and link-rich article by Chip Scanlan: B is for Blurb, S is for Summary. Blurbs can be very effective at drawing readers into the whole story.

Via Poynter Online, a lively and link-rich article by Chip Scanlan: B is for Blurb, S is for Summary. Blurbs can be very effective at drawing readers into the whole story.

Content Marketing: Treat Your Information Like a Product
Part 2 by guest author Joe Pulizzi, Junta42 How to turn off your customers... The fact is that consumers are turning away from anything that directly markets to them without first having a relationship with your brand. It's very difficult,...

MySpace Website Traffic Generation: Drive Massive Traffic Using MySpace
One of the most popular social networking site on the web is MySpace. MySpace is a place that attracts massive traffic from search engines and repeat traffic from millions of visitors from their mem... [Author: Murtuza Abbas - Site Promotion - February 04, 2008]

The Branding of Barack Obama
Here's a fascinating article in Newsweek that web writers and editors should ponder: Why the Obama "Brand" Is Working. It's an interview with designer Michael Bierut. Excerpt: How else is Obama's design different than what has come before--or what rival campaigns are doing? He's the first candidate, actually, who's had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it's more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker...

Here's a fascinating article in Newsweek that web writers and editors should ponder: Why the Obama "Brand" Is Working. It's an interview with designer Michael Bierut. Excerpt:

How else is Obama's design different than what has come before--or what rival campaigns are doing?

He's the first candidate, actually, who's had a coherent, top-to-bottom, 360-degree system at work. Whereas, I think it's more more common for politicians to have a bumper-sticker symbol that they just stick on everything and hope that that will carry the day.

The thing that sort of flabbergasts me as a professional graphic designer is that, somewhere along the way, they decided that all their graphics would basically be done in the same typeface, which is this typeface called Gotham.

If you look at one of his rallies, every single non-handmade sign is in that font. Every single one of them. And they're all perfectly spaced and perfectly arranged.

Trust me. I've done graphics for events --and I know what it takes to have rally after rally without someone saying, "Oh, we ran out of signs, let's do a batch in Arial." It just doesn't seem to happen. There's an absolute level of control that I have trouble achieving with my corporate clients.

Then if you go to the Web site, it's all reflected there too--all the same elements showing up in this clean, smooth, elegant way. It all ties together really, really beautifully as a system. 

Is Obama's stuff on the level with the best commercial brand design?

I think it's just as good or better. I have sophisticated clients who pay me and other people well to try to keep them on the straight and narrow, and they have trouble getting everything set in the same typeface. And he seems to be able to do it in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Houston and San Antonio. Every time you look, all those signs are perfect.

Graphic designers like me don't understand how it's happening. It's unprecedented and inconceivable to us. The people in the know are flabbergasted.

Meanwhile, over at Salon, we get an intriguing analysis of the candidates' logos.

Reality-Web: Keeping it real for readers
Why is some blog content better than others? The real question is what makes a blog post effective for your business. You want to entertain and educate at the same time, of course. Many blog authors do one but not...

Blog Writing: What would you like to learn?
I've got my head buried in books as I am researching ideas for an advanced blog writing class. My question is this to readers: What would you like to learn that would make your business blog writing easier, faster, and...

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.