tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-204266232024-02-08T13:09:27.681+08:00ContextAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-56009168478701046242013-04-08T19:39:00.003+08:002013-04-08T19:46:54.024+08:00Can't content marketing also be visceral, rather than merely informative?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look, a book on fashion. How quaint!</td></tr>
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Can't content marketing can't be useful for brands that, by convention, rely heavily on photos and video? Say, for luxury cars? Is content marketing, with a toolbox full of white papers, podcasts, and professional reviews, etc, too dependent on rational decision-making? Can content marketing be adapted to make baser, more emotive appeals to buyers' desires?<br />
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Here's a common fallacy prevents a wider adoption of content marketing: that content marketing can only take the form of objective content; that informative marketing by necessity excludes emotion and the need for creativity.<br />
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Copywriting expert Andy Maslen wrote in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Write-Sell-Ultimate-Guide-Copywriting/dp/046209975X">Write to Sell</a> that people may buy on emotional grounds, but they always want to rationalise their decisions. Just because your prospect can afford it doesn’t mean they will buy it.<br />
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So let’s consider this: when we shop online, do we search the web with an open mind, willing to consider any and all options we come across? Or do we sometimes search with one product in mind, hoping that more information will help us make up our mind?<br />
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People who search on the Internet aren’t seeking 100% objective facts. They seek others' opinions, especially well-considered ones. They don't necessarily hate branded content if it teaches them something new, or provides a solution to their problem. Not to put too fine a point on it, but <i>content marketing’s as much about appealing the modern consumer's need to do research as it is about their real needs.</i><br />
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To get a sense of see how content marketing works for luxury products, we need look no further than traditional media and publishing. Why is there a market for product review-heavy motoring journalism, if all car enthusiasts wanted were tastefully-lighted photos of cars? Why is there demand for behind-the-scenes write-ups of fashion shows and designer goods production, if all consumers cared for were fashion shoots and boutique showrooms?<br />
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Because people don't just buy on reflex or preference alone. Even when the main motive for purchase is ostentation, most people don't immediately buy the product with the most "bling" on it. They read up on critical or user reviews; they consider other options; they visit showrooms to try out the actual product. Research is something people do for almost any product these days, especially now that the Internet has made information so readily available.<br />
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Just as complex products (e.g. smart phones, college education, PC software, books) tend to have buyers who consider product features and capabilities before making a decision, the price tag and the "quality" or "brand cache" built luxury products also encourages customers to do substantial research before putting down their credit card. A considered buying process is part of what makes them feel good about their eventual purchase.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-32127361681758198532013-03-07T17:30:00.001+08:002013-04-08T19:27:12.553+08:00Content marketing needs a better name<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">via <a href="http://www.behance.net/gallery/keep-calm-and-carry-on/2531269">Behance</a></td></tr>
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“Content marketing” is <a href="http://www.agencypost.com/is-there-%E2%80%9Cnon-content-marketing%E2%80%9D/">not exactly the most intuitive term in the marketing industry today</a>.<br />
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It doesn't help that some agencies think there’s nothing wrong with <a href="http://skiddmark.com/2012/11/which-automotive-brands-are-winning-the-content-marketing-race/">slapping the label “content marketing” over everything they already do as an ad outfit</a>.<br />
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It also doesn't help that consultants, who mean to clarify things, explain themselves in such prosaic, self-serving truisms:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>"Content marketing is about engaging the audience" (And traditional advertising aims to bore the tears out of us all?)</li>
<li>"Content marketing is all about quality content" (Whereas traditional marketing is a load of crap?)</li>
<li>"Content marketing is about the content" (Is there any such a thing as marketing without content?)</li>
</ul>
What is content marketing, exactly?<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=20426623" name="more"></a>Here's my attempt at an explanation.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
<h2>
Content marketing is really about search</h2>
If there's any difference between traditional marketing and content marketing, it's this: unlike traditional marketing, where it's mostly about our messages or brand, content marketing is about putting information on the Internet to help buyers with their online product research. "Useful information" is all there is to content marketing.<br />
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Publishing information for potential customers is itself nothing new. Industries like college education, consumer electronics, and intellectual property (books, movies, music, video games) have long produced streams of publisher and critical reviews, writer/creator interviews, retrospectives, etc., to satisfy buyers' needs for information. The enterprise IT industry produces an extensive range of white papers, documentation, blogs, podcasts and videos, to explaining their services to an audience of widely differing technical expertise and decision-making roles.<br />
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The key difference between information-based marketing in the past and today is, of course, the dominance of Internet search engines in product research. Thanks to Google, buyers don't start their enquiry process in your office, or with your salesperson. It starts with Google.<br />
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But content marketing is not search engine optimisation. SEO is only the technical aspect of making sure you have a presence on the Internet; optimising for visibility on Google search results is just a first step. Even if SEO is correctly and successfully executed, and visitors are coming to your website, your website still may not have what is necessary to prove why buyers should choose your product over your competitor's.<br />
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Content marketing is about optimising for a specific buyer behaviour: <i> product research over the Internet. </i>It's about a new consumer expectation: to be able to find information for themselves, rather than be promoted to through ads and conventional marketing.<br />
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">
The foundation of content marketing is text, not visuals</h2>
To extend my argument about the primary of search in content marketing, I contend that content marketing is really about text, not about images and video.<br />
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I know this sounds like marketing heresy, but hear me out.<br />
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In web usability practice, designers often distinguish between two types of user behaviour: search versus browse. Users of all websites use search or browse (or both) strategies to find information they’re looking for.<br />
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The user intent behind “browse” and “search” behaviour is different:<br />
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In “browse” behaviour,<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Users usually start on the homepage, and click through page by page until they find something that they were looking for, or what interests them. </li>
</ul>
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In “search” behaviour,<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Users go straight for the site search box to type in keywords. Their intent is very focused; rather than follow a website’s recommended navigation path, they’d rather spend effort to improvise a keyword vocabulary to find what they want. </li>
<li>Search behaviour doesn’t have to start on your website’s search box. In fact, it usually starts in a search engine. A search engine shows not just results from your website, but all sites that have his keywords. And that’s the point; he’s looking for a good answer, not just the one dictated by your product or brand name.</li>
</ul>
The reason I say content marketing is text-driven lies in how people use search engines. People frame their problem in words, then type these words into search engines. They don’t frame their problems as pictures to upload to Google for answers. (Google image search is great, but that’s besides the point.)<br />
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I’m not saying that visuals (that is, pictures and video) have no role in content marketing. I’m saying that the foundation of content marketing is text because search is currently text-based. Even images and videos must be tagged correctly with keywords--text--before the search engine can index them.<br />
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(I'm also not discounting the role of visual-based social networks like Instagram and Pinterest. But I'd argue that user behaviour on those networks is primarily 'browser', not 'search', and the buyer's journey is somewhat different.)<br />
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Here's a fine opportunity to debunk an old myth that's been foisted on marketers by the web design community: the idea that <a href="http://con-txt.blogspot.sg/2012/08/writing-copy-for-web-vs-print-like.html">people don't want to read on the Internet</a>. Well, if people don't read, how do they expect to do product research online?<br />
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<h2>
Content marketing is about your customer, not you</h2>
So, what better name can we give content marketing? "Information marketing"? "Search marketing"? "Long-form Internet marketing"?<br />
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It looks like there aren't many meaningful alternatives.<br />
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And back to the earlier question: What is content marketing, anyway? Do we have a proper definition of content marketing?<br />
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I think this recent New York Times article provides us with a very good answer: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/business/smallbusiness/increasing-sales-by-answering-customers-questions.html?_r=0">Content marketing is about answering customers’ questions.</a> (Hat tip to <a class="g-profile" href="https://plus.google.com/112670651692744005384" target="_blank">+Destry Wion</a>)<br />
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So to recap: Content marketing is not about making the sale. It's not about persuading people that our product is superior. It's really about showing our customer that we understand of his needs better than our competitors do.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-39953032391653534612013-02-13T02:14:00.000+08:002013-04-05T16:17:19.012+08:00That population white paper, and 6 common content marketing mistakes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br>
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<p><br>
I don't usually write about politics because it distracts from the purpose of this blog. This blog is about content, not so much about public affairs. But the ongoing contention over the Singapore Government’s latest White Paper has important lessons about the place of content and publishing in public relations.</p>
<p>I want to take this opportunity to explain the concept of content marketing to the public relations people that make up the majority of my meatspace professional network. It may not be the biggest example of content-strategy-gone-south from Singapore, but it is the most mainstream in recent memory.</p>
<a name='more'></a><br>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">First, some background for foreign readers</h2>
<p>Most readers of this blog are from outside Singapore, so here’s a brief summary of the situation here:</p>
<p>In January this year, <a href="http://population.sg/">the Prime Minister’s Office released a White Paper</a> that made the deeply unpopular recommendation to continue a net-positive immigration policy. The main justification: economic growth. The challenges: a critically low birth rate, overtaxed infrastructure, and an increasingly xenophobic environment.</p>
<p>Despite widespread criticism of the roadmap described in the White Paper, particularly its projection of a 6.9 million population in 2030, the Parliament has passed it last week. Discussion and criticism remains active online, and a public protest (these things are rare in Singapore) is being <a href="http://forum.channelnewsasia.com/showthread.php?426400-Event-Protest-against-6.9M-White-Paper-moves-to-4pm-instead-of-4-30pm">planned for 16 February</a>.</p>
<p>The White Paper's poor public reception was the result of mistakes common to many content self-publishers:</p>
<h2>Common mistake #1: An inflexible editorial calendar</h2>
<p>Of all the factors that led to the White Paper's negative reception, the one with the biggest impact was probably the unplanned delay to its publication.</p>
<p>Originally scheduled for release in December 2012, the White Paper was postponed due to a local re-election. The result: not only was it released after concrete government measures had already been announced, it followed a defeat at the polls that’s widely interpreted as a referendum on the People Action Party’s unpopular policies. Instead of prefacing a series of major government announcements, such as the new maternity/paternity benefits and new land use plans, the White Paper came to sum up the public’s doubts about the PAP’s national development plans.</p>
<p>The unfortunate timing of the White Paper highlights a risk that’s well known in the traditional publishing and media industries: A lengthy production process exposes the publisher to external risks while production is in progress.</p>
<p>A complete content strategy doesn’t just focus on the question of when to publish. It also describes when not to publish. Content strategists must take care to avoid the sunk-cost problem–no content is too expensive to cancel or withdraw from distribution. Organisations should diversify its risks by adding buffers in its content pipeline and having parallel, concurrent content projects, in case there’s last minute postponements and cancellations.</p>
<p>In the White Paper's case, cancelling probably wasn’t an option. It had already been announced and lined up for debate in Parliament. The result is a high-profile public document, made redundant even before it could be debated publicly, that did significant damage to the Government's public relations.</p>
<p>I agree with Bertha Henson when <a href="http://berthahenson.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/directions-on-day-3/">she said</a>,</p>
<blockquote><em>You know, maybe the G[overnment] shouldn’t have released the report and just quietly ramp up the infrastructure…That population target/projection can be classified as an official secret. We go with central planning. No discussion.</em></blockquote><br />
<h2>Common mistake #2: Underestimating and trivialising the editing effort</h2>
<p><br>
The White Paper had several widely reported mistakes. One was the mischaracterisation of the nursing profession as a “low-skill” job, for which the Government issued a corrigendum (and, from the Prime Minister, <a href="http://www.ttsh.com.sg/about-us/newsroom/news/article.aspx?id=4421">a public apology</a>. The other is about <a href="http://therealsingapore.com/content/dubious-footnotes-population-white-paper">a chart that passes off stretch targets as statistical projections</a>.</p>
<p>Many have asked: How could the document have passed through so many pairs of eyes without them getting spotted?</p>
<p>My guess: the Prime Minister’s Office underestimated the effort needed for content quality assurance.</p>
<p>Organisations that underestimate the editing process typically hold onto a few myths about editing:</p>
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li><strong>Proofreader==editor:</strong> Inexperienced self-publishers often think a “thorough” edit is just about catching spelling and grammar errors, or conformance to style and voice rules. They consider an absence of grammar errors a sufficient measure for content quality.</li>
<li><strong>The primacy of primary research:</strong> Organisations think that information from “the source”—the subject experts, the operations specialists—is always correct. Non-expert editors can't be expected to add value to content by experts, much less fact-check and challenge the data created by them. (Of course, in the mainstream press, editors check content outside their subject expertise all the time.)</li>
<li><strong>“Pre-approved” text: </strong>Large organisations try to improve publishing efficiency by having the specialists supply paragraphs that's already been certified correct. It's both faster and more acceptable to have content that can only be understood by other experts, than to oversimplify things for an audience who wouldn't understand anyway.</li>
</ul>
<p><br>
Underestimating the editing effort is such a universal phenomenon it almost feel silly to finger it as a cause of public communications failure on this scale; after all, "my expert writers gave us ample time to review and fact-check their content" said no marketing department ever. Still, here we have a case of the Singapore government messing up so badly that even <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/microsites/parliament/story/some-pap-mps-had-difficulty-endorsing-original-population-motion-denise-">Members of Parliament criticised its official publication directly in public</a>. Underestimating the editing effort is reflects an underestimation of the impact of poor quality content.</p>
<p>Likewise, high-quality writing and content isn’t just a matter of talent, process and budget. It’s also a matter of organisation culture and how tall its silos are.</p>
<h2>Common mistake #3: Expecting content to sell itself</h2>
<p><br>
Advocates of content marketing often say that good content can help sell product. What’s not said often enough, I think, is that content itself is a product. And like any other product, the content needs selling.</p>
<p>High-investment content, such as infographics, video or research reports, requires substantial lead time to research, write and produce. Unfortunately, for the senior management team that commissions such projects, investment of time and money often comes with magic thinking: the effort put into quality content will always be rewarded. "Isn’t content king?" goes the reasoning.</p>
<p>The creation of quality content that's highly anticipated by its intended audience is not all upside. Taking time to create a long, informative report exposes publishers to more, not less, risks. Lengthy content requires more of readers’ attention, which means a higher likelihood of losing it. Also, when there’s more content to be read, there’s also more content to be scrutinized by readers, and more things for detractors to quote out of context.</p>
<p>Expecting a report (or any sort of high-cost content) to sell and defend itself in the marketplace of ideas, especially when the audience is hostile to your message, is akin to sending tanks onto the battlefield without air and ground support. Not only will you fail to gain ground, you will lose your content development investments.</p>
<h2>Common mistake #4: Mistaking content research for audience research</h2>
<p><br>
Before we talk about the next common mistake, let’s get a myth out of the way.</p>
<p>It’s a common criticism in Singapore that public engagement prior to a major policy announcement amounts to nothing more than a token exercise at engaging the public.</p>
<p>This criticism isn’t entirely fair.</p>
<p>It’s standard practice–<em>good practice</em>–to first use controlled surveys and focus groups to collect feedback, rather than head straight to a public forum for feedback. It ensures a fair representation of views, rather than allowing a bias towards the more vocal stakeholders. From all appearances, I think PMO has made a reasonable effort at when it conducted its surveys with individuals, stakeholder groups and organisations.</p>
<p>Here’s the real mistake, one I’ve seen in the past (though not necessarily here in the White Paper’s case):</p>
<p>While focus groups and surveys are a good practice, we sometimes forget that <em>research isn't the same as public relations</em>. Content teams that are closely involved in the research/engagement process risk coming under the impression they've made a fair effort to reach their detractors out there. They sometimes forget that dissenters involved in the content research/engagement process don’t speak for dissenting voices in the wider audience.</p>
<p>Content research is simply that–an activity that improves the quality of the report/video/infographic. When the content goes public, publishers will have to face the reaction of the audience, regardless of how much preparation went into the content, or how informative it was. What's more, content quality itself doesn't negate the need of selling the content’s message.</p>
<p>In short, I’m saying that a content strategy isn't the same thing as a PR strategy.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">Common mistake #5: TL;DR (Too long, didn't read)</h2>
<p><br>
The Prime Minister’s Office didn't just conduct studies to shape the White Paper. Other government agencies helped in the communication lead-up by publishing a series of information papers…</p>
<p>Did I just say, <em>a series of information papers</em>?</p>
<p>Yeah, until I did my research for this article, I didn’t know about them too .</p>
<p>Wait, you didn’t read these information papers too?</p>
<p>(I guess the low readership of those information papers kinda prefigures that of the White Paper itself.)</p>
<p>To me (and many others I've read and asked personally), the most striking aspect about the White Paper ruckus was how few actually read the White Paper. On the initial knee-jerk negative public reaction, <a href="http://beyondtheemotive.blogspot.sg/2013/01/7-million-people-and-1-soundbite.html">former nominated member of parliament Calvin Cheng noted</a>:</p>
<blockquote><em>In the era of social media, nobody shares 41 page white papers full of technical jargon and pie-charts. They share sound-bites. Nobody posts status updates on Facebook with logical step-by-step explanations but instead, one –liners that shout at you and get shared virally.</em><em></em><em>Nobody will remember anything else from the White Paper and very few would have taken the time to read it.</em></blockquote>
<p><br>
Not only did few people read the document; the length and information-density of the White Paper meant that it couldn’t be effectively shared or syndicated across social networks. In the first few crucial days (hours?) when public opinion about the White Paper was being shaped, most people were talking about it without having read the document.</p>
<p>Long before the communications plan was in place, the format of the content had already determined the trajectory of its reach.</p>
<h2>Common mistake #6: Neglecting to tell a good story (aka Too boring, didn't read)</h2>
<p><br>
More needs to be said about how unfortunate it is that the content lead-up to the White Paper was more information papers.</p>
<p>In this age of social media, it’s hard to overstate the importance of storytelling.</p>
<p>Social media is not an infinitely malleable gestalt media many media gurus make it out to be. Just because you use your Facebook Likes as a mailing list, or your Facebook page like your blog, doesn’t mean your Facebook page actually behaves like a mailing list or a blog. Facebook is behaves like <em>Facebook</em>: it tells a story about your brand and organisation.</p>
<p>Storytelling is the method to the madness of social media. Underlying that mess of status updates, meme photos and inspirational quotes is a story about your organsiation. If you do it well, people go away thinking they know your brand or organisation a little better. Do it poorly and they forget about you or, worse, think your effort at storytelling is meant to hide something.</p>
<p>Here's the deal about using social media to communicate a complex message. Publishers should deliver smaller, simpler complex messages over a period of time. They should not deliver a heavy piece of content (e.g. a 40-page report, or a 20-minute YouTube video) without adequate publicity and lead-up.</p>
<p>Sure, this approach will cause you to lose much control over your message. People may reach their own conclusions before you've had a chance to present yours.</p>
<p>But a long lead-up also lets you answer potential objections as it slowly builds up towards the brand message or call-to-action. By engaging the audience, it lets you to iterate and refine the message along the way.</p>
<p>In a sense, this isn’t content strategy at all. It’s just PR 101, albeit for the age of social media.</p>
<p>Social media is essentially a storytelling platform. If you don’t tell a good story on a social platform, the network will weave a story about you on its own terms.</p>
<p>That, in part, was what happened to the White Paper.</p>
</div><p> </p><div style="text-align: right; font-size: small; clear: both;" id="blogsy_footer"><a href="http://blogsyapp.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://blogsyapp.com/images/blogsy_footer_icon.png" alt="Posted with Blogsy" style="vertical-align: middle; margin-right: 5px;" width="20" height="20" />Posted with Blogsy</a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-7079382139128434432012-11-30T19:14:00.003+08:002013-04-08T21:45:37.615+08:00Obstacles to plain language<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Business writing, as a style, is bankrupt. Today's audience seeks a plain-speaking, authentic voice.<br />
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But this is the funny thing about plain language: While universally acknowledged as a good thing, it 's actually quite difficult to find examples of it in real-life business.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>These are the commonly cited obstacles to the use of plain language:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Misconceptions about what plain language really is. </b>The most common of which is that plain writing is just a matter of replacing complex words with simple ones.</li>
<li><b>A lack of writers who are trained to communicate plainly.</b> Every writer I've met say they're trained to write clearly. Some may even say they write with flair. But I've never met any who's trained to write <i>plainly</i>.</li>
</ul>
<ol>
</ol>
I've suffered the problem of gobbledygook—also known as “business writing style”—for years now. Not just from reading others' writing (i.e. as a gatekeeper) but from vetting my own as well. It's pretty obvious the problem isn't going away any time soon, that throwing more writing training at professionals won’t improve things.<br />
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The true obstacles to plain language, in my mind, lie in psychological, cultural and institutional factors. No brand or organisation can market themselves or communicate clearly unless it reckons with these problems.<br />
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<h2>
First, blame our teachers</h2>
First, let’s get the usual suspects out of the way. That’s right: we should blame our schools.<br />
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The problem isn’t the cliché that those who teach English aren't necessarily the best writers. It's the very way that English is taught in schools, which shapes students’ writing in counter-productive ways.<br />
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What often amazes me about drafts and manuscripts isn't that they're all filled with abominable grammar. (They're not.) It’s how, despite coming from different individuals, departments and organisations, the writing shares the same style:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Sentences have uniform length across the entire manuscript, as if there was an deliberate effort to do so. All sentences have two or more clauses—not a single sentence with just one clause.</li>
<li>Sentences always begin with a demonstrative (this/that/there, etc) or a gerund. You’ll seldom find a pronoun anywhere in the copy.</li>
<li>Sentences never start with a conjunction, or end with a proposition.</li>
</ul>
It's almost as if the whole country was taught to write out of one single, boring style book.<br />
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Speaking of style, many professionals and clients I've worked with know only two "styles"—"casual" and "formal". By "casual", they mean “careless”, and "fit for use only among friends". Conversely, a "formal" style implies "good" and "fit for business". To me, this crude dichotomy explains why, 10 years since the blogging revolution started, organisations still struggle with the idea of using blogs in their business.<br />
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I also often have clients and stakeholders who challenge editorial edits on the basis that “this is not what they teach in school”. Apparently, English teachers cast a long shadow over their disciples.<br />
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More inexplicable, however, is many people's general insecurity over sentences that are "too short". When for clients ask for their copy to be padded out, they often cannot explain their discomfort with sentences and paragraphs that are short.<br />
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In this fast-evolving age of online communications, high-school writing habits are handicapping professionals’ effectiveness. People are blindly applying rules for academic writing to the business context.<br />
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<h2>
The need to impress</h2>
Professionals write in order to impress their boss, their peers, the press, and their competitors, instead of their customers. They use buzzwords because no one wants to be the person who doesn't know how to use them. (Ironically, the same people stand around the water cooler, mocking their colleagues' jargon-laden presentation in the boardroom.)<br />
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Impressing the reader is an unsaid but powerful motivation underlying all business writing. It's not always an explicit, personally driven agenda. People write that way simply because they ‘re expected to—or at least, they think so.<br />
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Professionals also write to impress <i>themselves</i>. Come on, be honest: we all do this. And I don't say this to be snide: Anyone who writes seriously—when they write seriously—makes the effort rise above the chaos of their thoughts. But a common side effect is this: when we have an important idea to share, we're not satisfied at merely communicating the idea. <i>We also want to communicate its importance</i>.<br />
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And so we tell ourselves that plain language has limited applications: "A plain style can only be used to explain simple ideas. It can't explain <i>my</i> <i>big idea</i>."<br />
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<h2>
Silos vs accountability</h2>
No rant about content strategy is complete without the mention of silos, so here it is.<br />
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By necessity, large organisations operate in teams and departments of specialised people. Product development is done by product specialists; marketing, and communications with the customer, are handled by the sales force, the call centre, etc. In other words, we have silos.<br />
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Unfortunately, silos also create the non-optimal situation in which the writers actually know too little about the product to articulate its benefits. This, or those who do know the product get to write about it, and do so poorly.<br />
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Poor writing creates problems downstream. Problems, such as the call centre’s hotlines getting jammed by customers who can’t make sense of the user documentation. Unfortunately, the specialists who wrote the gobbeldygook aren’t affected at all by the customer unhappiness. They don’t feel the cost implications of their poor writing.<br />
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Further downstream, I’ve seen cases in which where customer relations request the writers to be vague on the availability of support channels.<br />
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And then there’s that situation when the lawyer writes your marketing copy.<br />
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Different departments have different functions. People will always have different agendas. When people who are not accountable for the content gets to have final say, you have a communications problem on your hands.<br />
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<h2>
The expert syndrome</h2>
Working with subject experts to develop communications and marketing material can sometimes be fraught with conflict, because experts often perceive plain language writing as oversimplification.<br />
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When writing in plain language, jargon is often replaced, and whole sections are removed. The whole process can be very confronting to subject experts. They often can’t come to terms with the fact that diminished meaning isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially when it's not essential to comprehension or persuasion.<br />
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They’re also uncomfortable when their content is not presented in a familiar format. For example, lawyers are uncomfortable when legal copy doesn't begin with definitions, not realising that no definition is needed once you omit any jargon that needs to be defined.<br />
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Subject experts sometimes wonder if improvements on their content is even possible. They are reluctant to outsource the copywriting because they know that copywriters cannot know the subject better than they do. It will take too much time to get the copywriter up to speed on the subject, and it’ll take too many iterations to get it right. It’s simply faster to do it themselves.<br />
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The reality is that plain, effective writing is full-time work. Just correcting for grammar alone will need sentences and whole paragraphs to be rewritten. But to achieve plain language standards, major edits are often needed: the key idea may have to be replaced, and all the supporting facts realigned.<br />
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Plain language writing is a highly iterative process. Professional writers rarely achieve clarity in one pass, much less non-professional, non-full-time ones.<br />
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<h2>
The solution isn't more education</h2>
I don't believe that sending non-marketing personnel for writing training is a solution to gobblegook. Writing well is a function of time and practice, not knowledge. Taking a one-day writing workshop isn't going to fix one's poor grammar, much less achieve plain language standards.<br />
<br />
Also, non-marketing and communications staff have little incentive for writing clearly. It's not as if they're being graded on their performance in English writing. Honestly though, if clear writing was a problem for an organisation, can anyone blame them for asking, "Why do we have a marketing department for?"<br />
<br />
I do believe, however, that there are solutions.<br />
<br />
<b>Pick the right writer. </b>Contrary to common belief, plain language is not a common writing skill, even among professional writers. If you don't think there's anyone in your team who can write clearly, you should outsource it.<br />
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If you decide that plain language is the way to go, you don't necessarily have to choose a writer who's written about your subject. Plain language transcends genres and subject matter. Instead, look out for writers who have written clearly on complex subject matters. (Ex-journalists excel at this.) Never judge a writer using the yardstick your teacher used on you—the size of your vocabulary.<br />
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A warning is due: competent writers seldom advertise “plain language” skills, because few clients know what “plain language” is. The term “plain language” is, ironically, also jargon—people may well wonder, “Why would anyone advertise that they write boring copy?” So there’s no way to identify plain language writers outside of reading actual writing samples.<br />
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<b>Use analytics.</b> If plain language is a business objective for you, you should measure the performance of your content. Measure all of your content: Not just your direct response mailers, but your website, search engine and social media traffic. Start connecting your content channels with your CRM system.<br />
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If page views on a web page is low, you should find out why and fix it. Or unpublish the page—no one will miss it. Keep your content accountable.<br />
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Don't a token job of your measurements. The whole point of the exercise is let your business units know that the choice of words in your copy isn't a subjective matter, but something that affects the bottom line. Having KPIs in place gives you an objective basis on which you can push back when business units challenge your copy or layout. If there is a conflict, you also have an objective, numberical basis on which you can work out a win-win solution.<br />
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<b>Use a style guide. </b>Pick a sensible style guide to align your marketing and communications. Don't use the Chicago Manual of Style (or whatever you used for your graduating thesis) if you’re not in the academic publishing business. For press releases, use the AP Stylebook or The Economist style. For web pages, use the Yahoo! Style Guide or even a technical writing style, like the Microsoft Manual of Style.<br />
<br />
And for some half-serious fun, include a buzzword ban list in your style guidelines. Remind employees that buzzwords only benefit the people who originally came up with them, who probably did so to explain some new idea. For everyone else, buzzwords are liabilities and to be avoided. Make employees realise that the best way to stand out is to explain their ideas in their own words.<br />
<br />
<b>Have a calendar. </b>You know the story: Product managers who give themselves months to write documentation, but expect copywriters to take no more than an hour to "adjust" or "check grammar". But if you send it back to the experts for clarification and corrections, they accuse <i>you </i>of busting <i>their </i>deadline.<br />
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Businesses often give their marketing departments insufficient time to work on their documentation and marketing copy. To avoid this, set down an editorial calendar for creation and acquisition, and a content audit calendar for reviewing old and existing content. Calendars help keep your business units accountable for publishing milestones, and it keeps everyone’s expectations on the same page.<br />
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The calendar also lets you bill urgent jobs for extra credits, if you have a costing system in place. ;)<br />
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<b>Get your CEO's attention. </b>Get senior managers involved in copy approval. This may seem like adding red tape, but it’s useful if you happen to have a publicity-savvy person at the top of your organisation.<br />
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If you're in luck, bad writing will get your CEO's attention on its own, without any intervention on your part. During my 10 years in the public service, I remember no less than four occasions (in different organisations, remarkably) in which the big boss fired angry send-all emails complaining about poorly written speeches or publicity materials in his inbox. In one particular instance, the boss ordered all policy writers to be sent to speechwriting class--something the corporate comms department couldn't do for years.<br />
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<b>The bottom line? </b>To achieve plain language and clear writing, you have to make everyone accountable for it.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-81497365584539280832012-11-04T17:52:00.000+08:002012-11-05T11:58:02.074+08:00Press releases work perfectly well, thank you very much<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Every now and then I come across articles helpfully pointing out that <a href="http://www.agencypost.com/press-releases-dont-work/">press releases have stopped working, and it's time to switch to a digital content strategy</a>. Sometimes I don't know if marketers in the digital space are just ignorant, or if they are being dishonest in order to push their brand of marketing.<br />
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Press releases are nothing to switch “away from”. A media strategy and a digital content strategy are different things, and if anything they are complementary, not mutually exclusive. Just because you’ve stopped issuing press releases doesn’t mean you’re on the way to SEO and content marketing success.<br />
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More likely, if you didn’t know what you were doing with your press releases, you probably don’t know what you’ll be doing with your content strategy.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<h2>
Press releases are not content</h2>
A press release is not meant for your audience. A press release is a proxy document—a document designed to capture the interest of journalists, not that of actual readers.<br />
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A press release does not have “content” in the intuitive sense (<a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/thedisciplineofcontentstrategy/">Kristina Halvorson’s popular definition of “content strategy”</a> is relevant here.) Reduced to its essence, what a press release is is a message. This “message” is not an airy-fairy thing. It is simply a claim: “Our new product is superior to our competitors.” “Our business will do well in the next year, thanks to prudent management.” Or, “The multiple suicides at our supplier’s plant is not our fault—we have been thorough with our audits.”<br />
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All "content" aspects of a press release—data, quotations, photographs—are subordinate to the message. Content, when included in a press release, is simply evidence to back up the message. (Yes, it's possible to have a press release without substantial information. It's usually what happens when you've in a crisis, when the media is pressing you for an answer you can't give.)<br />
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Press releases work by persuading editors that their readers (not yours) will be interested to know more about your news, or your angle on one. A press release must satisfy the <a href="http://journalism.about.com/od/reporting/a/newsworthy.htm">criteria of newsworthiness</a>.<br />
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Publishing press releases does not make you a content marketer. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZRcwWCI-ss">To be a content marketer is to become a publisher</a>, and to be a publisher, you develop or acquire content to be published on your own website or blog. With a press release, your goal is to have media outlets and bloggers publish news (i.e. content) about you <i>on their platform</i>, using information you've make public in your press release. (Of course they are free to use other sources, such as interviews, independent studies, your competitors, etc. But that's another story.)<br />
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<h2>
SEO has never worked for the press release</h2>
<i><br /></i>
<i>"Press releases lack the ability to engage and create momentum. Unless the press release gets picked up organically by reporters who write original stories about it, the press release itself can actually be viewed by Google as duplicate content and lead to dings."</i><br />
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No kidding. If the only content that gets updated on your website is press releases, it's not your press releases that are pulling your ranking down. It's your lack of content.<br />
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It’s been at least 10 years since we’ve had advice telling people "How to SEO your press releases”, and it’s still as ridiculous as ever. SEO is geared towards the long-tail content—informative pieces that people keep coming back for. SEO is not for one-page documents you write specifically to pique bloggers and reporters' interest. SEO not for answering existing, burning questions, such as whether you've been affected by the fire that burned down your neighbour's warehouses.<br />
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How about optimising press releases for the general audience and not just journalists? Ignoring the fact that this document is no longer a <i>press </i>release, consider this: Does your audience come to your website for news, or do they go to a news website? And: Most journalists and bloggers only use search engines to corroborate news, and almost all of them have established and preferred sources for breaking news. Unless you're big fish in a narrow vertical, or an enormous brand, most journalists do not passively monitor changes on your website, much less search for news about your business on a regular basis.<br />
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If you believe your press releases have been working very well for your SEO, perhaps it's time to consider you've never been issuing press releases correctly in the first place. You've just been very good at <a href="http://readwrite.com/2011/09/26/how_to_rank_highly_on_google_news_study">optimizing for Google News</a>, which is a very specialised (and hard to do) type of SEO. But you should still be congratulated, since inadvertent success is still success.<br />
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Just don’t go telling other people they should SEO their press releases.<br />
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<h2>
Press releases are for pitching</h2>
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No business worth its salt will hire a public relations person whose only skill is to write good press releases. To get mentioned in the media, a public relations person needs to know how to pitch the news story, how to find data to back up their claims, how to identify subjects for media interview requests. They also need to know and maintain good relations with beat and trade reporters.<br />
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It has never been possible to simply upload a press release and expect reporters to flood your phone with queries or republishing requests. Reporters (news agency, blogosphere or otherwise) are not search engines--they do not pick up your press “organically”. You have to go to them.<br />
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Come to think of it, it's the same (though to a lesser extent) for content marketing--it's not enough to upload search engine-optimised content. <a href="http://www.reloadmedia.com.au/searchstrategy/google/whats-the-difference-between-google-penguin-and-google-panda/">Post-Panda</a>, you need to know how to engage your readers--by sharing content on your social network, by engaging readers by replying to their questions. It's not enough to ask them pass your article on. (How sociable.) Or to rate your article between 1 to 5. (How exciting.) Even for content publishers with subscribers, i.e. with readers who pay read their content, they still need ways to sell their content by advertising or syndication. How much more a press release, which is nothing more than a hook for curious journalists and writers?<br />
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There has never been a fire-and-forget marketing or communications strategy.<br />
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<h2>
Is content really king for you?</h2>
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Like all buzzwords, "content is king" easily loses its meaning. Content is king only if it is written and distributed to meet the need of readers. Considered that way, a press release fails if it is not written to meet the needs of the media—it doesn't matter if it has been optimised for Google or Microsoft Bing.<br />
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Likewise, a content strategy fails if consideration for the content itself comes only after that of "getting endorsements" and "obtaining mentions".<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-48775796565247845942012-10-23T14:36:00.000+08:002013-02-22T00:44:44.631+08:00Going viral still isn't a strategy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<p>What does the Singapore telco SingTel, UK sanitation pad brand Bodyform, and the US presidential race meme #bindersfullofwomen have in common? Other than that all three were news items that streamed across my Facebook page last week?</p>
<p>Yes, there's a good reason why I'm leading a blog post with the "What do X have in common with Y" cliché. Honest!</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<p>For the past decade, the public relations and branding professions have been grappling with an existential crisis: the hyperconnected world has made it impossible to control brands and messages.</p>
<p>But on the marketing side of things, people are claiming a stronger-than-ever grip on the minds of audiences. At least, judging by the booming demand for social/viral marketing campaigns.</p>
<p>Just how do marketers claim to be able to deliver viral marketing results? Let's count the ways: <a href="http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/06/11/5-ways-to-get-your-infographic-to-go-viral/">Infographics.</a> <a href="http://www.97thfloor.com/blog/viral-marketing-idea-friday-start-some-controversy/">Controversy.</a> <a href="http://marketresearch.about.com/od/market.research.social.media/a/How-Nonprofits-Are-Mastering-Social-Media.htm">Authencity and human connection.</a> <a href="http://www.omniture.com/offer/728">Analytics.</a> Oh, and <a href="http://www.youngprepro.com/grammar-mistakes/">correct grammar</a>.</p>
<p>It’s funny how the bread and butter of marketing can get so hyped up it becomes the formula for a disproportionately successful campaign.</p>
<p>But the purpose of this blog is not to complain about the state of the industry. (There’s no lack of clients who’s willing to suspend belief, so it’s a conspiracy of the willing, I guess?) I just want to make some observations of some stuff that went viral last week.</p>
<h2>Case study 1: #bindersfullofwomen, the stereotype viral</h2>
<p>If you’ve checked in on your Twitter and Facebook streams this past week, you’ve probably seen the #bindersfullofwomen meme. If you haven’t, this is what happened.</p>
<p>In the US Presidential debate last Tuesday night, candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were asked how they intended to address gender inequalities in the job market. When Romney’s turn to answer came, he talked about how, when he was governor of Massachusetts, he’d gone to women’s groups to help him identify qualified women to fill cabinet positions. In response to his reaching out, the women’s groups brought him “whole binders full of women.”</p>
<p>BOOM! <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/16/binders-full-of-women-tumblr-romney-debate_n_1972345.html">And a meme was born.</a></p>
<p>Here in Singapore, we’re no strangers to such phenomena. If you’re a resident here, you’d remember <a href="http://www.tnp.sg/content/tin-pei-ling-hes-just-friend-not-my-boyfriend">#KateSpade</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7peUggy6knEand">#KeeChiew</a> and, from the pre-Twitter and Facebook days, <a href="http://forum.channelnewsasia.com/showthread.php?170983-Malaysia-budget-gives-women-free-mammograms-vs-Hairdo-Lim-of-PAP......">the Hairdo</a>. I think it’s safe to conclude that this stuff is universal.</p>
<p>It’s interesting how most political memes emerge from platforms specifically created for speakers to connect with their audiences, or to draw attention to important public issues. (In the case of Ms Tin Pei Ling, it was a case of online bullying gone viral–but later on this.) Unfortunately, their words ended up trivialising the very things they were drawing attention to, giving life to sticky, troublesome memes.</p>
<h2>Case study 2: SingTel, the anti-viral</h2>
<p>Earlier this week, a single post on SingTel's Facebook wall achieved viral status. I found this viral remarkable for one unique detail: a singular lack of everything marketers consider essential for a viral.</p>
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<p>That's the post in its entirety. As you can see, there's nothing clever about the post—no snark, no wordplay, no humour. There's no visual, much less an elaborate infographic about how low service standards have fallen.</p>
<p>Yet, this simple, plain Facebook entry went viral. (More details in <a href="http://sg.news.yahoo.com/singtel-subscriber-s-facebook-post-goes-viral-.html">Yahoo! News' initial report, published when the Facebook post reached 250 comments.</a>)</p>
<p>This Facebook post didn’t go viral because of strategy. Sure, the author intended his post to be read. But it’s unlikely he planned for 14,000 Facebook Likes. The complaint wasn’t even a particularly vicious one–it’s just a straightforward complaint about the poor quality of service by a local telco, written in perfectly colloquial (i.e. imperfect) English.</p>
<h2>Case study 3: Bodyform, the timely viral</h2>
<p>Contrast SingTel with our 3rd case study, also a complaint-gone-viral, on the Facebook page of Bodyform, a UK sanitation pad brand:</p>
<p>The story from <a href="http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/maxipad-brand-goes-blood-brilliant-reply-facebook-rant-144500">Adweek</a>:</p>
<blockquote><em>A man named Richard Neill posted a rant on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Bodyform/posts/10151186887359324">Bodyform's Facebook wall</a>, humorously calling out the brand for false advertising—saying his girlfriend doesn't have happy periods like those depicted in the ads, but instead becomes "the little girl from the exorcist with added venom and extra 360 degree head spin." The post has gotten more than 84,000 likes.</em></blockquote>
<br /><br />
<p>What followed was this: Bodyform created and post a video in which a fake CEO confessed to the brand’s “pathological lying ways”. She admitted that real women who have periods don’t smile and laugh while "the blood course from our uteri like a crimson landslide."</p>
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<br />
<h2>Observation #1: The content itself has little to do with a viral effect</h2>
<p>Reflexively, most of us (including me) reach for explanations by first examining the viral or meme’s content. We notice the meme’s absurd nature when the original context is removed; we see a phrase that’s short enough to be compressed into a Twitter hash tag. Oh yes, there they are—ingredients for viral marketing.</p>
<p>These are all fine and good for case studies. But how many of us have created a successful viral campaign from scratch?</p>
<p>For example, memes—the fastest spreading form of viral content—emerge precisely as a way for the audience to take control of the message away from the originators. What’s the point of designing content when the only way it can take off is for the design to be co-opted and abused by an online mob? (Yes, I am talking about crowdsourcing and user-generated content.)</p>
<p>All right, let’s not talk about memes. Let’s just talk about viral content—content that gets spread around with its message intact. Marketers love to focus on showy examples like infographics, social games, videos, Gifs, etc.</p>
<p>If we look at the universe of what actually appears on our Facebook and Twitter streams, it’s plain to see that almost anything and everything can achieve viral status—plain text status updates, clichéd quotes, kitschy wallpapers. Originality and creativity have little to do with it—I keep seeing the same jokes and inspirational quotes from 2 or 3 years ago. (I also wonder why people laugh at movie theatre commercials they’ve seen a hundred times before. But I digress.)</p>
<p>Negative feedback spread especially fast–and intact. This is something marketers tend to forget (cos they don’t usually have to deal with it), but customer service and PR people only know too well: complaints don’t need any adornment to get passed on.</p>
<p>(Now, about Tin Pei Ling's case: that picture of her holding up the branded bag was already a few years old when it went viral during the 2011 elections run-up. Though hardly current, the picture fitted the public's negative perception of her. That picture, along with other artifacts on her Facebook account, was circulated on online forums as fodder for ridicule.)</p>
<p>When creating a campaign, marketers face the real challenge of not knowing if our content and message will shared. Worse: when it does take off, the campaign may well <a href="http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/social-media-marketing/6-twitter-marketing-disasters/">backfire on us</a>.</p>
<p>It amazes me sometimes how the industry gets by with marketing plans with only contingency plans for low CTRs and social indicators, and no plans to deal with social crises.</p>
<h2>Observation #2: It’s much easier to ride on an existing viral trend than to start one</h2>
<p>Not every video featuring a fat man singing in a foreign language can become an international hit. It's near impossible to create a hashtag trend, even when you pay Twitter to promote your hashtag.</p>
<p>Edit (23 Oct 2012, 1300 SGT): Obama's just thrown a meme onto Romney, and it's sticks: #horsesandbayonets. Apparently <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/oct/23/horses-and-bayonets-presidential-debate">he prepared his comments beforehand, and it had a hashtag campaign embedded.</a> Sneaky. See observation #4.</p>
<p>In contrast, it's virtually effortless to spot a trend and follow the gravy train. (Though it's <a href="http://blogs.computerworld.com/17968/worst_twitter_campaign_ever_microsoft_uses_japanese_disaster_to_boost_bing">not without its risks</a>.)</p>
<p>We don't have control over what goes viral. The social network does. But we can join one. Just look at the number of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gangnam+style&oq=gang&gs_l=youtube.3.0.0l10.797.1270.0.2709.4.3.0.1.1.0.82.186.3.3.0...0.0...1ac.1.gj9W6tnv40w">Gangnam Style parodies</a>.</p>
<h2>Observation #3: Everybody's an influencer</h2>
<p>There’s this idea that some individuals on social networks are more influential than others. I don’t think it’s true—<a href="http://www.wired.com/business/2012/04/ff_klout/">not always, anyway</a>. For brands in the mass-market environment, <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/641124/tipping-point-toast">every person is an influencer</a>.</p>
<p>This isn't rocket science. If a piece of content goes viral happen because they come from an influential tastemaker, does it follow that every single item shared by these become viral? No, it doesn’t. Only items that have interest beyond the core group of fans get passed on.</p>
<p>A viral is what happens when content continues to be passed on by people beyond the original audience. It’s not something that occurs in a community (i.e. people separated by one or two degrees of separation, or fans), but a network of people weakly connected people.</p>
<p>Just because Lady Gaga endorses product X on Twitter doesn’t mean that her fans will follow. It simply means that she has many fans, and her public endorsement reaches that many people.</p>
<p>It’s the same with politicians. Politicians are well covered by the media and they are full of sound bites, but not everything they say becomes viral (thank god). Yet they take up a good share of the memes and virals we see online, simply because of their larger public exposure.</p>
<p>Don’t confuse broadcasting with becoming viral. It’s a different mechanism.</p>
<h2>Observation #4: Viral trends are sparked by the zeitgeist</h2>
<p>Tinder makes it possible for fires to spark at any time, but you can always choose the moment to strike a match. In Bodyform’s case, the ad agency tapped into the zeitgeist of the market-aware consumer, people who’s in on the conceits of branding. It’s the same zeitgeist underlying the meme of <a href="http://womenlaughingalonewithsalad.tumblr.com/">women who laugh while eating salad</a>.</p>
<p>All viral content is a matter of timing–content gets shared while they are topical. The implication, of course, is that viral marketing requires brands to execute quickly. This typically requires having a creative agency on retainer, or a nimble inhouse marketing team. It requires the brand (or the brand’s retainer) to be constantly plugged into trends and social analytics, to spot opportunities for a viral campaign.</p>
<p>You don't even need new original content. You can probably rehash old content when the time is right. Again, Tin Pei Ling's case is instructive.</p>
<p>But if you have no content, and you have to start a lengthy procurement process before you start a campaign, you should only stick to predictable marketing targets, rather than shoot for a viral outcome.</p>
<p>Since I mentioned analytics, I should mention a common mistake by businesses: investing heavily in analytics software or services without considering if their marketing processes or policies allow them to respond in a timely fashion. If the marketing department has little flexibility or responsiveness, they shouldn’t invest in social analytics, and they shouldn’t plan a viral marketing campaign.</p>
<h2>Observation #5: Take the long-term view</h2>
<p>Despite the change-is-the-only-constant and everything-is-accelerated environment that we operate in, the fastest moving of all marketing tactics-- viral marketing–doesn't occur overnight. Virals happen in the context of long-term factors—branding, trends, product and service quality and public relations.</p>
<p>It was impossible for SingTel to predict when and which specific complaint on its Facebook would spark off a viral. But the fact that one would eventually happen should be no surprise, even without analytics. Service on the SingTel mobile 3G network has been rough for many months now. And SingTel just made a hugely unpopular decision to drastically lower its data cap–ironically, a measure intended to fix the very problem of overtaxed networks. The viral was a spike in customer discontent that's months in the making.</p>
<p>In the case of #bindersfullofwomen, there really isn’t much to talk about. The Presidential Campaign is designed as a year-long process for the public to get familiar with the candidates and their platforms. Campaign teams are assembled for the specific purpose of seeding conversations and responding to objections. There’s a huge machinery of people and analytics on both candidates’ teams, anticipating and responding to issues. And still Romney got #bindersfullofwomen.</p>
<h2>Observation #6: Viral marketing is doable. But it takes more than just planning</h2>
<p>Despite all I’ve said against viral marketing, I’m not saying we shouldn’t shoot far. We just need to be realistic with marketing objectives.</p>
<p>It’s not realistic to expect any specific piece of content we create or acquire to be eagerly shared by everyone. No marketer or agency can guarantee that.</p>
<p>And if we offered prizes to motivate sharing, it’ll only go as far as the prize budget. This is considered “viral marketing” only in an hyperbolic sense. A viral is, by definition, something that's willingly passed on by audiences, without incentive–that's how a campaign goes beyond the projected ROI. If it matches expectations, a campaign should be considered successful–but it’s not really viral marketing.</p>
<p>In case of Bodyform, it may well be that the original post was a plant. But let’s assume that it’s not. Bodyform’s video response was successful because they were on top of their social media listening, and they were able to execute quickly, in Facebook time, in video even. Bodyform obviously had a close working relationship with their advertising and creative agencies.</p>
<p>Would SingTel have been able to do a spin on the Facebook complaint like Bodyform? Yes, if the customer had considered the SingTel Facebook page a friendly enough space to post a funny barb. Yes, if SingTel’s marketing team (inhouse or retainer) was creative, and had leeway to execute quickly. Yes, if company didn’t always take itself seriously. Yes, <a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1086997/1/.html">if the Singapore public gives local brands the permission not to take themselves seriously</a>.</p>
<p>That’s a lot of what-ifs.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-26681027870685846222012-08-31T15:03:00.000+08:002013-04-05T15:10:06.729+08:00Writing copy for the web vs print [A satire]<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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People don't read print the same way as they read content on the web.<br />
The Web format allows publishers to influence readers' behaviour and perceptions. Through analytics and eye-scanning technology, we know what pages they've read previously, and what they're going to read next. Writers can present information in a logical sequence, supported by peripheral cues.<br />
If you’re writing for print, however, you’re bound by an entirely different set of rules.<br />
<a name='more'></a><h2>
On print, people love to read</h2>
There's been many usability studies done on print marketing and publishing over the years, the most extensive of which were conducted by Professor Nelson Yaacob, and MIT. These are their findings.<br />
<ul>
<li>Readers of print preferred large walls of uninterrupted text. They disliked paragraphing, short sentences, bullet lists, and anything that facilitated reading on the web. Comprehension significantly increased with run-on sentences.</li>
<li>68% of the test subjects read word-by-word when reading printed text. In contrast, the control group's web readers only scanned and picked out headings and phrases. Many of them didn’t even realise that the researchers had filled their handouts with <em>lorem ipsum</em>.
</li>
<li>On average, reading from printed page speeded readers up by 70% compared to the web.</li>
<li>Eye scan tests showed that readers strictly followed the left-to-right reading rule. Large pictures, call-outs, and other features common in both marketing and magazine advertising, were consistently missed or ignored.</li>
<li>Readers showed much higher levels of trust in brands and publishers when reading print marketing than when reading the same copy on screen.</li>
</ul>
Professor Nelson developed a number of content-oriented conclusions:<br />
<ul>
<li>Print users are passive, not active. They spend hours reading information they don't need, and they never search for useful information. They just plough on without any goals.</li>
<li>The longer the text, the more likely readers are to devour it. Since readers read faster on print than on the screen, printed content should have at least twice the word count as its equivalent on the web.</li>
<li>The longer the copy, the more readers will ignore the elements designed to help them scan the text--headlines, summaries, and captions. Such design contrivances only interrupt the reader's flow of reading.</li>
</ul>
<h2>
Strategies for print</h2>
How do we write compelling copy in print for a generation of consumers that’s acclimated by reading on the web? Professor Nelson’s research gives us some important guidance.<br />
<ul>
<li>People trust what they read on print. There are scammers and spammers on the web, but print marketing is grounded in the real world, where people are friendly and your neighbourhood grocers know you by name.
</li>
<li>Print copy must have more promotion and less information. Unlike web users, print readers really eat up hype. Facts only distract them from your claims. Use this to your advantage. </li>
<li>Be creative with your marketing copy. Words on print aren't subject to the requirements of search engines. Use whatever words you need to impress the reader. If they can bother to pick up your 20-page monospaced, text-only brochure, crossing the living room to pick up a dictionary is a trivial effort by comparison.</li>
<li>You can't change copy on print. Remember that you only have one shot to make it count. So make it count. David Ogilvy used to write multiple versions of ads to test with audiences. Drayton Bird wrote multiple permutations of his copy and tested. But hey, it's David Ogilvy and Drayton Bird. They're allowed to do things you can't.</li>
<li>Don’t depend on typography for impact. Typography is a distraction that thankfully happens only on the web. Unlike the modern web press, print typesetting can only handle monospaced type. But that's ok–people aren't as easily distracted by typography on print as they are on the web.</li>
<li>More text, less pictures. It’s easier to impress your reader with words than with pictures. Remember the minimum word-count requirements you had to meet for school essays? They’re there for a reason.</li>
<li>Readers of print marketing material have all the time in the world. They appreciate the effort and expense you've put to into writing and delivering that flyer into their hands. They will read it as if it’s a letter from their friend. </li>
</ul>
Remember there's only one model for writing for print–<a href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/print-vs-online-content.html">and that's the newspaper broadsheet</a>. When writing copy for print, don't make your every word count–make your readers count your words!</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-47017856581031707662012-08-01T17:50:00.002+08:002012-08-16T01:11:47.077+08:00In content management, beware the 'Talker'<p>I've just read a <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/the_best_sales_reps_avoid_talk.html?cm_sp=blog_flyout-_-cs-_-the_best_sales_reps_avoid_talk">HBR blog describing a customer profile that salespeople need to avoid: the "Talker"</a>. Talkers are people whom, despite being a friend of yours (or your product); despite strong connections with purchasing decision makers; despite repeated assurances of assistance, somehow fail to close the deal for you.</p>
<p>This passage, in particular, struck a chord:</p>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">There is a troubling paradox in the Talker. This profile embodies much of what sales leaders tell salespeople to seek out in the ideal stakeholder: they are accessible, they provide great information, they act as a hub for networking, they are pro-supplier — the list goes on and on.<br /><br />In the end, however, these very traits ultimately harm their credibility inside the organization. The access they grant to the supplier and their energetic backing of that supplier results in doubt amongst their peers. Indeed, our data show that Talkers are anywhere from four to six times less able to build consensus for a purchase compared to Mobilizers.</blockquote>
<p>
This reminded me of the KM (knowledge management)/content management/Intranet projects I've been involved in before. For some reason, there was always at least one "Talker" leading the project.</p>
<a name='more'></a>
<!--<h2>
The right guy for the job</h2>
<p>
I've mentioned before that <a href="http://con-txt.blogspot.sg/2011/11/factory-model-vs-social-business.html">I've been involved in a few Intranet or knowledge management projects</a>–all of which failed to deliver on the promised benefits. But it wasn't for want of a "right person for the job" that these projects failed.</p>
<ul>
<li>
The project leaders were all considered uniquely qualified for the job withinin the organisations. These weren't just self-appointed experts, or volunteers on a "cross-departmental" project; they had their names in the right boxes on the organisation chart. They were considered "champions" in innovation or KM.</li>
<li>
They had high-level support from the management. They got approval for both budget and time before the project started. The big boss was there to give a speech at the kick-off; he even wrote a memo to all staff asking for their coorporation.</li>
<li>
They knew the right people. Not only did they manage communities of practice in the organisation, they also seemed to know vendors who provided such suitable tools and consultant services.</li>
</ul>
<p>Yet, this is what happened (Details have been mixed and reconstituted to obscure names and organisations):</p>
<ul>
<li>
Stakeholders were assured their various concerns would be addressed at the appropriate phase of the project. That time never arrived. Instead, the project leader said it was too late to address these issues, and they would have to be addressed in the "next round of enhancement."</li>
<li>
Whenever content gaps emerged, the responsiblity for plugging them was dropped onto the laps of unsuspecting (and hitherto unnamed) "department representatives"</li>
<li>
Stakeholders raised usability and technical issues directly with the vendor, who in turn did nothing while they waited for guidance from the project leader.</li>
<li>
Meanwhile, the project leader was a busy man. When he wasn't busy fighting for the buy-in that everyone had taken for granted, he was in frequent meetings with management, assuring them that the project was on schedule.</li>
</ul> -->
<h2>The right person for the job?</h2>
<p>
I've mentioned before that <a href="http://con-txt.blogspot.sg/2011/11/factory-model-vs-social-business.html">I was involved in a few Intranet or knowledge management projects in the past</a>–all of which failed to deliver on benefits for users. But it wasn't for want of a "right person for the job" that these projects failed.</p>
<ul>
<li>
The project leaders were all considered uniquely qualified for the job within the organisations. These weren't just self-appointed experts, or volunteers on a "cross-departmental" project; they had their names in the right boxes on the organisation chart. They were considered inhouse "champions" for innovation or KM.</li>
<li>
All of them obtained early support for their projects from management. They got approval for both budget and time. And they made sure their organisations knew it: In all cases, the big bosses gave a speech at kick-off, and wrote a memo to all staff asking for cooperation.</li>
<li>
They knew the right people. They managed communities of practice in the organisation. They also knew vendors who provided the right tools and consultant services.</li>
</ul>
<p>On paper, there were all signs that things would go well. The projects were being done by the right people, doing the right things.</p>
<p>But on the ground, perceptions (and thus realities) were quite different. (Again, all examples are reconstituted from memory to obscure real persons and organisations.)</p>
<ul>
<li>
One project's leader was the anointed "champion" of organisational KM. He was a huge evangelist for KM and innovation within the organisation. He organised a lot of workshops. He also frequently invited colleagues to presentations by vendors and consultants–so frequent that we began to wonder if we were working on our existing project, or we were part of an RFP evaluation committee for the latest content management system or a social media listening tool.</li>
<li>
Another project had a knowledge manager who found out the hard way that his "knowledge" was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it made project planning with his retainer-hired information architect a lot easier. On the other hand, his knowledge wasn't matched by experience. He had unrealistic expections about the change management effort needed, and his vendor found it necessary to remind him that he was over-ambitious in terms of project scope.</li>
<li>
Then there's this other KM "champion", whose "championship" was just a euphemism for "isolated". He's utterly alone in his perfectionist ideas about what his organisation needed. If you spent any time with this KM champion, you'd have heard his every idea about what direction to take the organisation. You'd also know there was no hope in hell he could execute it, because the only way he could do it was to do it alone. But his boss was kind enough to create a role where his dissatisfaction with the status quo would hopefully result in something useful–<em>the role as Intranet revamp project lead</em>.</li>
</ul>
<p>In all these cases, knowing the practice of KM, and familiarity with vendors and products, worked against the project leaders. Management and team members alike didn't know enough about KM to challenge them, but that didn't stop them from having doubts. This created a lot of questioning, backtracking and strategy deviations along the way. That expertise would work against the expert seems paradoxical, but I've seen it enough to think there's a pattern here.</p>
<h2>Dealing with 'Talkers'</h2>
<p>In retrospect, I think it didn't really a matter of who was leading the project, or what qualifications he possessed. It was politics that guided the projects' trajectory–something that's not really within any project team's control.</p>
<p>But there are some strategies that both inhouse and external content strategists can deal with these unspoken, opaque obstacles.</p>
<p>
<p><strong>1) Get facetime with the real stakeholders.</strong> Project leaders are never the big decision-makers. In fact, given that Intranets and KM are complex solutions, no single person will be able make all the decisions. <em>You have to talk to all of them.</em></p>
<p>There will be many types of stakeholders: some who do the content publishing; some who are the domain experts writing or vetting the content; and some who do no content work, but make the big decisions anyway.</p>
<p>Don't think of this task as an obstacle to progress. You need stakeholders on your side, and as soon as possible.</p>
<p>If you don't, you can be sure they will emerge later in the project, challenging all the design decisions the team has accummulated along the way.</p>
<p>But if you do miss a stakeholder during earlier project phases, (or in some cases, they absent themselves until late in the project) you can still remedy the situation. Ask your project leader to arrange a face-to-face with them, to take them through the design process and to understand their concerns.</p>
<p>(By the way, identifying the stakeholders is itself a huge subject; I'm still a student myself, so I've to leave this topic for a future time.)</p>
<strong>2) Business needs and facts first; features and content later.</strong> In any digital project, both clients and stakeholders will focus on features. They will suggest additional features based on something they have seen or read somewhere else, without consideration for whether additions are relevant or helpful.</p>
<p>The solution is two-fold.</p>
<p>First, always focus on business needs. Not just at initial planning meetings, but even when you have progressed far enough to present mock-ups. Keep referring to business needs, even ad nauseum, and what each feature is meant to address.</p>
<p>Second, back up your design choices with data and best practices. You should have accummulated white papers, style guides, case studies early on in your project. When questioned, dust these off and present them again.</p>
<p><strong>3) Manage your clients' and stakeholders' expectations.</strong> As mentioned, KM/content project leaders are often appointed the project because they are considered the most knowledgable within the organisation. If you are an external KM or content strategist, don't assume the client is on your side, sympathetic to the way "things are done in the industry". Knowledge does not equal experience, and they may have strong but mistaken ideas about what can and cannot be delivered. (I know I still do.)</p>
<p>
Do this by clarifying clients' thinking in their requests. For every feature requested, ask about their goals.</p>
<p>Suppose they want a wiki. Ask them why they want a wiki. If they answer that "everyone should have the ability to edit the pages," but "ease of publishing" is the stated business goal, you should check if he has a content team that is experienced in editing and managing wikis.</p>
<p>
<strong>4) Document your process, and then some.</strong> This is an obvious point, but one that we all need to be reminded.</p>
<p>Content architects sometimes cave to clients' request to simplify the content process, even when they know it will affect the content's quality. For some reason, the requirement for IT documentation (such as functional specifications) is so taken for granted that we'd question the client's sanity if they didn't want it; yet no one blinks when content documentation is skimped on.</p>
<p>This is a mistake. Just because your client or stakeholder thinks content maintenance is less esoteric than IT and doesn't need to be documented, doesn't mean that they understand how content works. Even within the industry, the terms "taxonomy", "content strategy" and "style guide" all mean different things. I had a colleague once who thought a section on common grammar mistakes was unnecessary in a style guide because he thought "common mistakes" was the "ones everyone already knew about."</p>
<p>Unless your client is in the publishing business, they won't understand the process and labour cost of content management. Make sure your methodology and process is documented. Clearly define what your deliverables are, and make sure this list of deliverables is signed off.</p>
<p><strong>5) Do a content inventory.</strong> If you are working on a large website, assume no single person will know where all the content is–<em>even when some person claims that he does.</em></p>
</p>There are many reasons for this. Poor information architecture (lots of orphan documents). Distributed publishing responsibilities. Content that is not even on the web, e.g. print brochures. The list is long.</p>
<p>Make the case for a content inventory, and make it early in the project. An inventory is very helpful for many things–identifying gaps between business needs and customers, content planning, and identifying content domain experts.</p>
<h2>
A conceit</h2>
<p>You may have noticed by now that this problem of "Talker" project leadership is really a conceit--whether or not the project leader is a "Talker", you'll always need a robust process to guide a content or knowledge management project. Content and knowledge management is a complex task, requiring both high-level management support–and a person/team who knows how to pull stakeholders together.</p>
<p>
Compared with user interface and visual design, information architecture and content strategy is much more political in nature. This is because, unlike visual design, stakeholders's involvement in content management continues long after the product is launched.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-10599342744668108702012-06-25T17:18:00.002+08:002012-07-30T23:24:51.326+08:00Seriously, what's so wrong with "click here"?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1YfTYDARWv6JnXVoMdGuZ-cXftgYoySK_4QMih4hyphenhyphenInDgeJ0izoegmVqOjPaLD3bZVews66itAmtvcjDrDWxIXMONrwXxX5LTK_Gk-FHzSs06-U1fojRjVCMY2s1iHrtnGA2g/s1600/button3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1YfTYDARWv6JnXVoMdGuZ-cXftgYoySK_4QMih4hyphenhyphenInDgeJ0izoegmVqOjPaLD3bZVews66itAmtvcjDrDWxIXMONrwXxX5LTK_Gk-FHzSs06-U1fojRjVCMY2s1iHrtnGA2g/s400/button3.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image via <a href="http://365psd.com/day/318/">365psd</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="background-color: white;">Over the past week, several publications and aggregators I follow have been ripping into the practice of using "Click here" as hyperlink text. This struck me as a little odd--"Click here" has been verboten in web design practice for as long as I can remember. I'd hardly consider it a buzz-worthy subject.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">And is "Click here" really so bad as to warrant repeat hazings? I certainly avoid them myself, but I was never fully convinced that the alternatives I came with was much better.</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="background-color: white;">So I did a little secondary research. Interestingly, it seems that whether "Click here" is tasty link bait or web design hellspawn depends on whether you ask a copywriter and a designer. And man, I can tell you that designers are </span><i style="background-color: white;">passionately</i><span style="background-color: white;"> against the use of "Click here".</span><br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="background-color: white;">"Click here" vs usability</span></h2>
The main usability argument against "click here" is the self-referential nature of the
wording:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="background-color: white;">"Click" focuses too much on the mechanics of using a mouse, and creates dissonance for readers who are using other types of input, e.g., track pads, touch screens.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">"Here" just marks a location on the screen. It says nothing about what comes after the link. And if it's buried within paragraphs of inline text, the user would have to try the link before he can continue reading. That slows down reading and buyer action.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="background-color: white;">These criticisms of "Click here" are taken as self-evident. Almost all usability practitioners accept this wisdom without question.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Meanwhile, m</span><span style="background-color: white;">arketing copywriters, whose work are measured against click-throughs and conversions, have observed for some time that <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/link-right/">"Click here" does have occasional uses</a>. In fact, <a href="http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30124">in direct marketing</a>, the much-reviled "Click here" tend to generate more click-throughs than more aesthetic alternatives.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Why is this the case? I'd love to test this myself, but my guess is that users have become so used to "Click here" that it's become a design pattern--a convention that users come to expect through prolonged exposure, even if they were't the best approach to begin with. </span><br />
<br />
Interestingly, I haven't seen people having problems interacting with links labelled "Click here" on touch screens. Perhaps it's because "Click here" links tend to be dressed up as buttons, rather than rather than left naked as text links. But more on that later.<br />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white;">"Click here" vs SEO</span></h2>
<span style="background-color: white;">"Never name a hyperlink 'Click here'" is also considered a basic rule in SEO (search engine optimisation). This is because your page's ranking on search engines is based on 1) how many links there are to your page, and 2) how relevant the wording on those links are. You can't get more generic, nondescript and irrelevant than naming your links, "Click here".</span><br />
<br />
I certainly agree that relevantly-worded links is basic to SEO--"basic", as in "rudimentary and inadequate". When someone tells me "Click here" hurts SEO, my immediate impression is that they last did SEO years ago, when <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067687/Google-Panda-Update-Say-Goodbye-to-Low-Quality-Link-Building">keywords and the number of links mattered more than the content itself</a>.<br />
<br />
In my <a href="https://plus.google.com/105693462293115610684/posts/QXphgfveqQQ">Google+ complaint</a> against <a href="http://www.uxforthemasses.com/click-here/?replytocom=548">a particularly UX snarky piece about the subject</a>, a commenter remarked:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The "Click Here" title on the link wouldn't matter at all, for instance, if it led to a landing page or sales/lead generating microsite, which it's probably going to a lot of the time - that's not something you want discoverable organically, anyway. And it wouldn't matter much more for anything else - links to are hardly the only thing spiders use to rank a page. </blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In other words, how well your content and information architecture maps to the customer journey or purchasing funnel is a bigger factor for clicks-through than your links' wording. If a mere "Click here" link could wreck your SEO, there are more serious things that's broken on your website.<br />
<br /></div>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white;">"Click here" vs </span><span style="background-color: white;">accessibility</span></h2>
The one criticism against "Click here" that I fully agree with is its negative impact on accessbility. If you have a long directories of links, each ending with "Click here", what visually impaired users get when they call up a list of hyperlinks is a <a href="http://www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/jus/2012february/lazar7.html">dreadful list of meaningless Click-here's</a>.<br />
<br />
But why is "Click here" is singled out while its cousins are ignored? What about "Read more"? "Continue here"? How is "Before" and "Next" better than "Click here"? All such microcopy pose accessibility problems, yet none of them get as much flak as "Click here".<br />
<br />
Obviously, the sensible thing to do is to name hyperlinks after the destination page's. But <span style="background-color: white;">what happens if the title cannot be used?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">There are many such scenarios:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">The link is inline, but the title doesn't fit properly into the copy</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">The destination page's title is unnecessarily long, grammatically incorrect and so cannot be used in its original form. Lots of <a href="http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10200p.nsf/ListOfEServices?OpenForm">government online services</a> have clunky titles that don't work as outbound link copy.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">The link is to an object rather than </span><span style="background-color: white;">a html document. Examples include</span><span style="background-color: white;"> a zip file, an executable, etc.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
Clearly, some form of contraction is necessary for such links. Even if it's not "Click here", it'd be "Download file" or "Export document". And none of these alternatives are contextually self-sufficient for users of screen readers. The solution, clearly, is not, "Avoid all microcopy in the body". The problem can only be solved at the meta-document level, i.e. by adding title attributes.</div>
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
"Click here" is here to stay<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></h2>
<div>
If copywriters and UXers were to reach a consensus, (first we'd have to find an open-minded UXer--a Diogenic effort <span style="background-color: white;">for me, </span><span style="background-color: white;">so far), I think it'd be that microcopy like "Click here" should be reserved for calls to action. That would keep the occurence of Click-heres to a minimum--assuming, that is, that designers understand there should only be one primary call to action on any given page. (In other words, this is an issue of content architecture, not copy.)</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Of course, being a call to action, it should be a button rather than a link. <i>I don't think any designer would have quarrels with using short text for buttons.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Which reminds me: I think there's nothing wrong with self-evident design elements. Red buttons on heavy machinery tend to have some variation of the word, "PUSH", and it's never occurred to me that the designer was being too obvious.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Will "Click here" continue to be used on the Internet? It's certainly much less common than it used to be.<br />
<br />
But I think the wording will stick around. Given how outdated metaphors have persisted in UI design--for example, <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1019573/save-icon-still-a-floppy-disk">floppy disks representing "Save"</a>, or steam locomotives in road warning signs--I have a feeling that "Click here" has a good chance of surviving the post-PC, post-mouse era.<br />
<br />
A better chance than, say, having the words "Tap here" or Swipe across" entering the vernacular of the keyboard-and-mouse world.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-55292741445278118552012-06-13T19:09:00.001+08:002012-07-31T00:44:29.471+08:00Responsive web content case study: gov.uk<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0vgWQQWLl8m3kkm3NlkuiQiEh4CHglFzyVcfeVDeQ1zzdIzegcJzfnOJmbsv5MhU1eI2-g6ViH-3sY_n2oWTscJOCzsN1L0ELUB0fmvhf6cN_r9l1Xd_-Kp4QW8pg9b3iNozj/s1600/govukhome.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0vgWQQWLl8m3kkm3NlkuiQiEh4CHglFzyVcfeVDeQ1zzdIzegcJzfnOJmbsv5MhU1eI2-g6ViH-3sY_n2oWTscJOCzsN1L0ELUB0fmvhf6cN_r9l1Xd_-Kp4QW8pg9b3iNozj/s400/govukhome.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
One of the websites my colleagues and I have been paying attention to is the new <a href="http://www.gov.uk/">UK government beta website</a>. Clients have been asking us to think about what design lessons we can draw from it.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Here are some comments I've heard:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"How did the UK government manage to describe government content in such simple language?"</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Is there some special design principle they're using that we didn't know about?"</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"This is the British we're talking about. Of course they know the rules of English better than we do--that's how they came up with this content!"</blockquote>
That last comment was a striking reminder of the lingering post-colonial anxiety we have in Singapore over all things related to the English language. I found myself persuading people (to little effect): No, British English is not a special class of English. It's just <i>English</i>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
Copy on gov.uk looks and reads the way it does is not because it had something essentially British about it. Rather, it's because of three factors:</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>The copy was written so that <i>the less literate can understand it</i>. Hence the simple words, and the short sentences.</li>
<li>The copy was written for <i>usability</i>. This means it was designed for people who are not digitally literate. The sort who wouldn't know the difference between "sign up" and "sign in".
</li>
<li>The copy was designed to work with <i>responsive design</i>, i.e., a layout that adjusts itself to both desktop and mobile screens. There's just no luxury for the long paragraphs that governments worldwide seem to prefer.</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
It certainly looks better</h2>
If nothing else, the generous praise for the gov.uk project has led me to two conclusions:<br />
<Strong>1) Shorter always looks better.</strong> As web usability experts love to say, "Users don't read. They scan." For a text-heavy website, gov.uk certainly reads very well. And when I say that it "gov.uk reads well", what I really mean is, "it's easy to skip the stuff that I don't need."<br />
<br />
gov.uk is also easy on the eyes. Even though the content was specifically written for the mobile screen, the lack of clutter makes gov.uk's content look good on the desktop screen as well.<br />
<br />
Most people write copy for how it reads. Very few people write for how it looks. But on the web, especially the mobile web, that's exactly what it's supposed to work.<br />
<br />
<Strong>2) Shorter is always possible.</Strong> Public services tend to excuse their poor content on the grounds that government content is exceptional-that it's important to explain things in detail and full accuracy. Supposedly, users will never accept anything less than the complete detail--even though it's ultimately only middle-men and lawyers who can make sense of it all.<br />
<br />
The extensively user-tested gov.uk project (and its predecessor, direct.gov.uk) put this self-serving myth to rest. The UK government has concluded that the British public really does want clarity and simplicity in public communications. It also shows that clear communications is possible if there is political will in the organisation.<br />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
But how does it read?</h2>
Its modern design aside, how well does the content on gov.uk read? Surprisingly, not as good as the theory promises.<br />
<br />
For example, despite the emphasis on short sentences, there's still plenty of run-on sentences. They're certainly avoided the problem of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice">comma splices</a> (because they seem to have removed most of the commas!), but plenty of run-on sentences lay about:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You will be responsible for Council Tax and can include part of the cost in the rent you charge. You must tell your council if having a tenant means you’re no longer entitled to a single person discount. (<a href="https://www.gov.uk/rent-room-in-your-home/rent-bills-and-tax">source</a>)</blockquote>
There's also indiscriminate use of common copywriting principles, particularly the rule of the second person, and the active voice. For example, this passage on the rights of disabled parents:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="text-align: left;">You shouldn’t be denied fertility treatment because you’re disabled. (</span><a href="https://www.gov.uk/disabled-parents/your-rights" style="text-align: left;">source</a><span style="text-align: left;">)</span>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="text-align: left;">The sentence seems to have been cast this way because 1) the writer wanted to lead the sentence with the word "You", and 2) they read somewhere that <a href="http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/wordsuggestions/shallmust.cfm">the legalistic sounding "shall" should be replaced with "should" or "must" in order to be clear</a>.</span><br />
<br />
But "should" makes it a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_statement" style="text-align: left;">normative statement</a><span style="text-align: left;">. It suggests that fertility treatment is subjectively desirable for the disabled, but not necessarily a right grounded in objective law: "You shouldn't be denied fertility treatment because you're disabled. Yeah, we sympathise."</span></div>
<br />
The sentence could have been easily fixed with basic copywriting rules, like making the actor the subject of the sentence:<br />
<br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width: 500px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th scope="row"> Original</th>
<td><span style="text-align: left;">You shouldn’t be denied fertility treatment because you’re disabled. (</span><a href="https://www.gov.uk/disabled-parents/your-rights" style="text-align: left;">source</a><span style="text-align: left;">)</span></td></tr>
<tr><th scope="row">Edited (by stating the actor, i.e. hospitals or the doctors)</th>
<td><span style="text-align: left;">Hospitals are not allowed to deny the disabled fertility treatment.</span></td></tr>
<tr><th scope="row">Edited (if you must use active voice and the 2nd pronoun)</th>
<td><span style="text-align: left;">Hospitals cannot deny your request for fertility treatment just because you're disabled.</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
There are many other examples:</div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="color: black; width: 100%;">
<colgroup><col style="width: 50%;"></col>
<col style="width: 50%;"></col>
</colgroup><thead>
<tr><th scope="col">Original</th><th scope="col">Edited</th></tr>
</thead><tbody>
<tr><td>You can’t get debt advice from an Official Receiver. For debt advice contact Citizens Advice or the National Debtline. (<a _cke_saved_href="https://www.gov.uk/contact-official-receiver" href="https://www.gov.uk/contact-official-receiver" style="text-align: left;">source</a>)</td><td>Official receivers cannot give you debt advice. If you need debt advice, contact Citizens Advice or the National Debtline.<br />
<br />
(Sentence leads with the real actor, rather than "you")</td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="text-align: left;">If you're travelling from outside the EU, you only have to pay [customs duty] if you go over your allowance. (<a _cke_saved_href="https://www.gov.uk/duty-free-goods/overview" href="https://www.gov.uk/duty-free-goods/overview">source</a>)</span></td><td><span style="text-align: left;">If you're travelling from outside the EU, you only have to pay [customs duty] if you go over the maximum amount allowed by the law.<br /><br />(Passive construction clarifies what "allowance" it is we are talking about*)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<br />
* Oh, and by the way, the passive voice is not evil. Use it when <a href="http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/FederalPLGuidelines/writeActive.cfm">the law is the actor</a>.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Problematic lists</h2>
Writers have been advocating the use of more vertical lists on the web for years. This is because people tend to "scan" when reading text off a screen. Vertical lists helps readers focus on important points.<br />
<br />
In accordance with usability orthodoxy, yes, we do get lots of vertical lists on gov.uk. But most of them look like this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb8YHsdyubPDJIWTixQ0p8fKpZTwCPgEs6GrwNl89Ly3pu1S4pXRIEDLaxYmcaB6FYlVseaW4aWeg6FeqXcgkufBMdTg3bNtfX9jI-_A4rQ2F_JmzxYqEfkYrL8Pr5IC-Wggme/s1600/Duty-free+goods+cropped.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb8YHsdyubPDJIWTixQ0p8fKpZTwCPgEs6GrwNl89Ly3pu1S4pXRIEDLaxYmcaB6FYlVseaW4aWeg6FeqXcgkufBMdTg3bNtfX9jI-_A4rQ2F_JmzxYqEfkYrL8Pr5IC-Wggme/s1600/Duty-free+goods+cropped.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">(<a href="https://www.gov.uk/duty-free-goods/overview">source</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The problems, in brief:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b><b>Lack of parallel structure. </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">The list items variously start with "if", "when" and "you". Instead of starting each item at an identical point, the reader is forced to start over cognitively with every bullet point, as if each item is a new paragraph.</span> </b></li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>The list doesn't flow (but the style suggests otherwise).</b> Ending the lead-in sentence with "and" is misleading--the vertical list isn't actually structured anything like a single sentence. The reader would just stumble at the end of the first sentence (where a period should be) and find himself having to start again.</li>
</ul>
<div>
In the print world, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends using sentences to lead into a vertical list, as well as using punctuation and conjunctions in vertical list items. This technique allows a writer to preserve the flow of prose while taking advantage of the scanability of a vertical list.<br />
<br />
This convention has carried over onto the web. The <a href="http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/FederalPLGuidelines/writeLists.cfm">Federal plain language guidelines</a> say it best: "Use parallel construction. Make sure each of the bullets in a list can make a complete sentence if combined with the lead-in sentence."<br />
<br />
This may all sound very strange to most copywriters--none of us has had to learn a special style called "lists", not even when we were in college. The fact remains that the vertical list is not a straightforward style. It even has its own set of <a href="http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipjan97.htm">rules for punctuation</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/false-series-parallel-construction.aspx">There's an easy fix, of course.</a> But the best solution would have been to write the whole thing as plain-old paragraphs:</div>
<br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="width: 100%;">
<colgroup><col style="width: 50%;"></col>
<col style="width: 50%;"></col>
</colgroup><thead>
<tr>
<th scope="col"> Original</th>
<th scope="col">Edited </th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="vertical-align: top;"><b style="text-align: left;">Customs duty</b><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This is a tax on goods produced outside the EU and:</div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>you don't have to pay it if you're travelling from the EU</li>
<li>if you're travelling from outside the EU, you only have to pay it if you go over your allowance.</li>
</ul>
</td>
<td style="vertical-align: top;"><b style="text-align: left;">Customs duty</b><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Customs duty is a tax on goods produced outside the EU. You have to pay customs duty if you are travelling [into the UK] from outside the EU, and you go over the maximum amount allowed.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
You do not have to pay customs duty if you are entering the UK from an EU country.</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
The vertical list as cognitive see-saw</h2>
One particularly egregious example of a vertical list is the page on minimum wages. It deserves its own section in this blog entry:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBws6uLdoYQpl2sCQ049-JIgoZaDufsSN0DiH0WjLzW0SoNQZxlCJ1r0AJQCgz4LxegQ3m453nedRdSxIdCkRsDf-9xfNoLdRfzGNRO8fBzU0UbcznSl5tALlHoyEq6ej8flhl/s1600/min-wage+cropped.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBws6uLdoYQpl2sCQ049-JIgoZaDufsSN0DiH0WjLzW0SoNQZxlCJ1r0AJQCgz4LxegQ3m453nedRdSxIdCkRsDf-9xfNoLdRfzGNRO8fBzU0UbcznSl5tALlHoyEq6ej8flhl/s1600/min-wage+cropped.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">(<a href="https://www.gov.uk/your-right-to-minimum-wage/workers-entitled-to-the-minimum-wage">source</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The whole list reads like a series of equivocations. Apprentices qualify for minimum wage BUT it depends on their age and IF they are in their first year of apprenticeship. Workers gaining work experience (don't all workers?) can earn minimum wage but they, by the way, can be unpaid. Workers temporarily working outside UK can earn minimum wage too, but <i>only if they usually work in the UK</i>. (Isn't "temporarily" clear enough?) <br />
<br />
Vertical lists can only present one dimension of information. They cannot properly accommodate two dimensions, e.g. an item name and item descriptions. It's obvious that a table would have been better:<br />
<tr="">
</tr=""><br />
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="color: black; width: 500px;">
<thead>
<tr><th>Eligible categories</th><th>Remarks</th></tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td>agency workers</td><td><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td>apprentices</td><td>1st year apprentices only; age limit applies</td></tr>
<tr><td>trainees/workers on probation</td><td><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td>work experience workers</td><td>paid and unpaid</td></tr>
<tr><td>piece-rate workers</td><td><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td>commission workers</td><td><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td>homeworkers</td><td>exclude business owners</td></tr>
<tr><td>disabled workers</td><td>excludes therapy activities</td></tr>
<tr><td>agricultural workers</td><td>agricultural minimum wage applies</td></tr>
<tr><td>seafarers & offshore workers</td><td><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td>workers temporarily working outside the UK</td><td><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td>foreign workers</td><td><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
So why was a vertical list used in the first place? Perhaps it's because tables are notoriously <a href="http://dyn.com/responsive-css-table-design-in-practice-web-development/">difficult to implement in responsive design</a>. But to avoid tables just because they cannot reflow well on a small screen is no good reason to compromise <strike>readability on a bigger screen</strike> reader comprehension. Even an undecorated <a href="http://css-tricks.com/utilizing-the-underused-but-semantically-awesome-definition-list/">definition list</a> would have been better.<br />
<h2>
Good design doesn't fix bad copy</h2>
You might be wondering: Why am I picking on copy on gov.uk? Isn't the website still in user beta? Isn't criticising copy on a government website, of all things, like... shooting fish in a barrel?<br />
<br />
Let me clarify, in case I haven't been clear enough: I think gov.uk is awesome. The massive information architecture of its predecessor, direct.gov.uk, was already a marvel. Now, they're going to convert a few thousand pages of text content into responsive design. Hats off to the UK Government Digital Service.<br />
<br />
I wrote this entry because it's been suggested to me that gov.uk is proof that copy on a responsive website is exempt from conventional language rules. That the fragmented style used on the site points the way for English content development for a new generation of mobile-savvy users.<br />
<br />
That conclusion... can only be made by someone who <i>hasn't actually tried to use the copy</i>. I did. And I'm glad I'm not a minimum-wage worker in the UK in search of the rules governing my pay.<br />
<br />
The true measure of usability is determined by users actually trying to follow instructions on your website, not a bunch of usability experts checking the amount of white space your pages have when viewed on a smartphone.<br />
<br />
I agree with the adage that, on the web, "Users don't read. They scan." But what happens after they are done scanning, when they've found something that's caught their attention?<br />
<br />
<i>They read.</i><br />
<br />
Content on large websites is typically buried under verbiage because their owners hide behind the excuse that more text means being more "informative". When the content is as radically reduced as on gov.uk, the deficiencies of poorly worded copy stand out <i>because there's so much less of it</i>.<br />
<br />
Mobile users have notoriously lower tolerance for usage difficulties than desktop computer users. Reducing information workload and having shorter, more concise copy is certainly one step in the right direction for usability.<br />
<br />
But it would be a mistake to think that was all there is to it.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-22979306594437594792012-05-08T13:24:00.000+08:002012-07-30T18:57:37.615+08:00This is where I go crazy with infographics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
While on a current project, I was asked to find opportunities to include infographics into the content mix. Being new to this whole infographics thing, I wondered if this print-medium artifact, which has really gotten popular this past year, really worked on screen from the usability perspective. I decided to do some research on Google to find out.<br />
<a name='more'></a>The result? Nothing. There were no studies made about web usability and infographics. Instead, there were lots of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-qbf5lsFH0">infographics about infographics</a>. (Warning: Loud YouTube video). I still had no idea when to use infographics, or its place in a modern content strategy. So I had to dig some more.<br />
<br />
Eventually, I found a satisfactory answer. Short version: Use infographics when it takes too many words explain things.<br />
<br />
Long version? Let's take a look.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Use infographics when you're dealing with real, physical objects</h2>
The idea is simple: when describing a physical object, show a picture of it. The description of Solomon's Temple may have been inspired, but nothing beats showing its <a href="http://knightsoftemplar.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/solomon-temple.jpg">physical form, dimensions and colours</a>.<br />
<br />
This is the most traditional, but most fundamental use of infographics. Infographics in this class include the cross-section, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploded_view">the exploded view</a> and yes, the map.<br />
<br />
Land is as physical as things can get:<br />
<div class="visually_embed_bar">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Hispania_sVI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="277" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Hispania_sVI.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Map of mediaeval Spain by <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nanosanchez">Nanosanchez</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
The trend is moving towards including not just one, but several diagrams to explain subject matter. The modern digital infographic is self-contained, with a header and even lede copy; the diagram is designed to be distributed on its own. In other words, <i>the infographic is a replacement for the text article.</i> An infographic, as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_picture_is_worth_a_thousand_words">the Chinese saying goes</a>, is truly worth a one-thousand-word-count copy.<br />
<br />
This modern infographic explaining the technical elements of roller derbying is so good, it's practically a storyboard for an equivalent video. (Hint: Content spin-off<br />
<br />
<div class="visually_embed" data-category="Sports" rel="infographic">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img class="visually_embed_infographic" height="640" rel="http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/HOWROLLERDERBYWORKS_4fa2dee7031cc.jpg" src="http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/HOWROLLERDERBYWORKS_4fa2dee7031cc_w587.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="305" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Infographic from <a href="http://visual.ly/how-roller-derby-works">visua.ly</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<br />
<h2>
Use infographics when you're dealing with abstract concepts</h2>
When you're deailing with an intangible concept, such as time, data, or a combination of both, i.e. longtitudinal data, you should also use infographics. It's the direct opposite use case: the more non-physical and abstract the idea is, the more useful infographics will be.<br />
<br />
This is what most modern infographics focuses on: visualisation of data. Infographics in this class include graphs, timelines, processes.<br />
<br />
A flowchart explaining the Credit Card Interchange:<br />
<br />
<div class="visually_embed" data-category="Business" rel="infographic">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img class="visually_embed_infographic" height="400" rel="http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/whatisinterchangeagain_4efb22217235e.png" src="http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/whatisinterchangeagain_4efb22217235e_w587.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="380" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="visually_embed_cycle">Infographic from <a href="http://visual.ly/">visua.ly</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<a href="http://visual.ly/node/16222" id="visually_embed_view_more" target="_blank"></a><link href="http://visual.ly/embeder/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></link> <script src="http://visual.ly/embeder/embed.js" type="text/javascript">
</script></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
A timeline showing the declining political influence of city dwellers in the United States:<br />
<br />
<div class="visually_embed" data-category="Politics" rel="infographic">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img class="visually_embed_infographic" height="243" rel="http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/Election2012ShrinkingCitiesinPresidentialDebates_4f0376fd05449.jpg" src="http://visually.visually.netdna-cdn.com/Election2012ShrinkingCitiesinPresidentialDebates_4f0376fd05449_w587.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Infographic from <a href="http://www.citylimits.org/" target="_blank">citylimits</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="visually_embed_bar">
<a href="http://www.citylimits.org/" target="_blank"></a> <link href="http://visual.ly/embeder/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></link> <script src="http://visual.ly/embeder/embed.js" type="text/javascript">
</script></div>
<br />
<br />
Modern computers and the advent of big data have also made more abstract forms of infographics possible. Interestingly, these often take on one of most traditional of infographic forms, the map:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrpkPruiXZb2Xly8ZS7oVR3TL52yRszQrlvDyjMsFsg6Jj2wfstvIMWulwU8hPNA0FXwXgw_zuU6yNqorl4aL_mRibjeFK3R9_l3tcnlGEO2IdlT4Or3vDsB-T25KlJpANzNyN/s1600/mapping_wikipedia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrpkPruiXZb2Xly8ZS7oVR3TL52yRszQrlvDyjMsFsg6Jj2wfstvIMWulwU8hPNA0FXwXgw_zuU6yNqorl4aL_mRibjeFK3R9_l3tcnlGEO2IdlT4Or3vDsB-T25KlJpANzNyN/s400/mapping_wikipedia.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image from the <a href="http://tracemedia.co.uk/portfolio/mapping-wikipedia/">Mapping Wikipedia</a> project</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h2>
Use of infographics in content strategy is challenging</h2>
It's easy for anyone to show you what infographics are good for with prepared examples. (You might have found the preceding examples a little on the obvious side.) It's quite another thing to effectively use infographics in your content strategy. That my little research turned out almost no objective study of online infographics' effectiveness (and ironically, plenty of infographics about infographics) tells me several things.<br />
<br />
<b>1) The possibilities of infographics are also constraints.</b> Infographics were supposed to be a way of extending the limitations of text. Now, they sometimes become an end in themselves. Opportunities for effective use infographics are actually <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographics">very limited</a>; the information they convey must typically conform to specific typologies (like the ones above) in order to work well. Yes, there are exceptions. But are they good?<br />
<br />
This is not to deny the fact that infographics are very good at drawing attention. <i>But it's only good at drawing attention against a backdrop of text.</i> When your content strategy requires your infographic to stand out against a backdrop of other pictures (say on Pinterest), the choice of metaphor on your infographic is a little like picking a band for the maiden voyage of the Titanic.<br />
<br />
Text is, by far, the more flexible and malleable content option, both from the perspective of content creation and SEO. <br />
<br />
<b>2) Infographics are expensive. </b>Like almost all online content, people underestimate the effort and cost of creating an infographic. Traditionally, it takes a dedicated art unit inside a newspaper to have the expertise to consistently create high quality infographics. (And reader expectations for infographics in a newspaper are decidedly high.)<br />
<br />
These days, clients pay a penny to a generalist freelancer, or worse--an inhouse artist--and expect the same quality. Not going to happen.<br />
<br />
<b>3) Infographics is part of a viral content strategy.</b> When a type of content is costly to produce, it is not viable to create them on a sustained basis. What we have here is a viral content strategy: an expensive piece of rich content that attracts reader attention and motivates them to pass it on others.<br />
<br />
In other words, you need social media in the mix as well. Adding infographics without social sharing buttons is an epic fail.<br />
<br />
If your intention is just to improve usability, consider scaling down the complexity and complexity of your infographics. You shouldn't worry that your modest, plain flowchart looks different from something produced by <a href="http://jess3.com/">JESS3</a>. It serves a fundamentally different purpose.<br />
<br />
<b>4) Infographics is part of a content curation strategy. </b>Creating infographics requires raw material. Material such as that wall of text and those Excel tables your infographics is supposed to replace. More than the creative resources required, pre-existing content or data is essential to infographic design. Few organisations outside the newspaper industry have the constant flow of raw content and data required to churn out infographics on a sustained basis.<br />
<br />
The solution? Curate infographics created by others.<br />
<br />
What if you can't do this, say,
because your organisation or client forbids carrying/endorsing content published by 3rd parties? Answer: an "infographics-based content strategy" isn't really a option for you.<br />
<br />
<b>5) No one will tell you you're doing infographics wrong.</b> Like in all fads, the environment is split between people who have the know-how and are exploiting the new market, and people who don't have know-how and are tentative about adopting the new technique. Since few vendors do both web design and infographics, companies typically commission vendors specifically to do an infographic. This is a good thing. We need specialists who are good at what they do.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, a graphic artist--which is often exactly what a designer of your infographic--can't tell you whether it's a good idea from a content strategy or UX perspective.
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-21058868836702673802012-02-05T03:04:00.003+08:002012-07-30T18:39:32.202+08:00User expectations for government content<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8lIYayhwHq43MF5bSRFhyphenhyphen_gFs0dn9IO2CiQXx7VG03SHaUW7yBAs-_JIxvBXPbdVIEGsJmgAwsvr2uIMmGb01P_DkL57jCZheEuVATqmI5V4XT2ufq_B4LSiX0nDeYBUwyJNA/s1600/ecitalpha-home.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8lIYayhwHq43MF5bSRFhyphenhyphen_gFs0dn9IO2CiQXx7VG03SHaUW7yBAs-_JIxvBXPbdVIEGsJmgAwsvr2uIMmGb01P_DkL57jCZheEuVATqmI5V4XT2ufq_B4LSiX0nDeYBUwyJNA/s320/ecitalpha-home.png" width="320" /></a></div>
The Content Marketing Institute has just published <a href="http://www.contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/01/creating-content-that-serves-the-public">helpful article on content development for government entities.</a> If you are a inhouse content developer with a governmental organisation, or if you have a government client, you will find many useful tips inside the article.<br />
<br />
This reminds me that I ought talk a bit about my current project: <a href="http://alpha.ecitizen.sg/"><b>alpha.ecitizen.sg</b></a>.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
We launched the <a href="http://alpha.ecitizen.sg/">eCitizen Alpha website</a> at the start of the year with skeletal content, mainly to test the information architecture and functionalities with users. Content development is going on, and my colleagues are working hard to launch the website later in 2012.<br />
<br />
<strong>(In the meantime, please visit and <a href="http://alpha.ecitizen.sg/ContactUs.aspx">give us your feedback!</a>)</strong><br />
<br />
The research phase of the project has so far been very enlightening. Although I've worked on several other government web content projects in the past, this is the first opportunity I've had to test many assumptions I held about government content and end-user expectations. In many cases, I was surprised to be proven right, given how our findings ran contrary to many best practices in the content marketing.<br />
<br />
Here are some user feedback based on our early prototypes.<br />
<br />
(These interpretations of user feedback are my own, not that of my employer or my colleagues. Please take note!)<br />
<br />
<h2>
Finding #1: Content should be both clear AND visually compelling</h2>
Governments tend to have a bias towards content development in text. This is because the written word is the lifeblood of bureaucracy, and much of their information assets--policy papers, press releases, etc, already exist as text. Publishing as text rather than video or graphics simplifies the process of content repurposing.<br />
<br />
For the eCitizen project, we found that users demanded both clarity and visual interest. Graphics were not just good to have--<em>they were absolutely essential.</em> Despite my best effort at clear and catchy titles, some pages were skipped over and missed by users, for one simple reason: they lacked graphics above the fold.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Finding #2: Content should be comprehensive</h2>
Our users gave feedback that they wanted their content to be comprehensive. Although there were complaints when there was too much content (e.g. too much focus on exceptional cases), users preferred to complete their research on the Internet, and not have to deal with call centres and emails.<br />
<br />
One interesting side effect of this expectation is that they didn't like aggregated content, which is a common practice in content marketing. They wanted their answers to be found on our website, so that they needn't visit other websites, or to verify the authenticity of content on disparate sources.<br />
<br />
Another artefact of this need for comprehensiveness was users didn't like titles that started with "Top 5 tips" or "10 best resources resources". "Why only 5 tips?" one test user asked. "I want to know everything the government can do to help me deal with my situation!"<br />
<br />
<h2>
Finding #3: Users hate silos</h2>
A common challenge that governments face is ownership of content. When policies and services span multiple organisations, content writers are reluctant to publish about processes that their organisations do not administer. The approval process becomes more complex. Keeping such information up-to-date is much more challenging.<br />
<br />
The result? Content that describe processes halfway, using hyperlinks to hand off to another agency's website.<br />
<br />
Our test users often did not make distinctions between government agencies, particularly for less-known policies and online services it wasn't clear which agency was in charge. They preferred to think of such content as coming from a single monolithic entity called "The Government". Content that directed them from website to website created a frustrating user experience.<br />
<br />
Organisational silos are a common problem for any web project involving large organisations. Information architecture and content development are major tasks. If you are working on content that spans multiple government agencies, make sure you (or your client) has a clear idea about who owns the content, who approves the content, and a strategy for engaging stakeholders. If not, the content strategy should include activities for stakeholder engagement and change management.<br />
<br />
The biggest takeaway from this ongoing project is a truism: no two content architecture projects are alike. We should always keep our assumptions in check, and find out as much we can about our client's business as well as user expectations.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-88055817027576390732012-01-31T12:42:00.002+08:002012-06-25T17:22:00.358+08:00Surprise: When the message is not the medium<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The idea of hiding features for users to discover is common to both content and platform, but the execution is quite different. In software, an easter egg must be well-hidden. In content, they must also be hidden--but in plain sight.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white;">Easter eggs in software design</span></h2>
<span style="background-color: white;">When I was a GCE A level student, I used to spend hours with my classmates discussing about what easter eggs to include in our graduating programming project, rather than do some productive planning. We loved the idea of hiding signature in our finished products, like the painters of old did on their canvases.</span><br />
<br />
Just as developers love to include easter eggs in software, users love to find them. Of course, users love well-designed features that are presented upfront. But hidden features that they discover for themselves are a different user experience altogether.
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUgqxvdHrC8dveTdwoCqjkcGV2288W0IkffeJ4bnI3cXAAShp7CHNgL24zxKBmxUJ-MHhyphenhyphenSz7zdiVnzgBAajLPpUDBPiNz-cAzpWoi9ITCnOmR1BRMnZB0gEgxyrroaUTce_sR/s1600/wp7-emoticons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUgqxvdHrC8dveTdwoCqjkcGV2288W0IkffeJ4bnI3cXAAShp7CHNgL24zxKBmxUJ-MHhyphenhyphenSz7zdiVnzgBAajLPpUDBPiNz-cAzpWoi9ITCnOmR1BRMnZB0gEgxyrroaUTce_sR/s1600/wp7-emoticons.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In Windows Phone 7, the messenger Live Tile's emoticon design changes when you have more than four unread messages. But you won't know it if you check messages frequently.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Aaron Walter, UX designer for Mailchimp, <a href="http://thinkvitamin.com/design/emotional-interface-design-the-gateway-to-passionate-users/">describes the connection between user and developer this way:</a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sometimes the emotional connection we make with our audience through design is less visible. There’s a magic about hearing a favorite song on the radio that playing it on your iPod just doesn’t have. The difference is the surprise discovery.</blockquote>
<br />
It's odd when you think about it, but hidden features can be part of the UX.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Some people won't get it</h2>
The positive user experience of easter eggs is double-edged. For an easter egg to work with some users, it must necessarily exclude users who don't find it, and <i>those who have found it but don't get it</i>. Again, Aaron Walter:<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As is true in real life, showing emotion in design has real risk. Some people won’t get it. Some people will even hate it. </blockquote>
<br />
Easter eggs will inevitably confuse someone. And user confusion is always bad news in UX.<br />
Of Jakob Nielsen's list of top 10 information mistakes, <a href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia-mistakes.html">half of them are navigation related</a>. And these navigation mistakes are often the result of "designerly" elements, such as:<br />
<ul>
<li>invisible navigation elements intended to encourage user "exploration";</li>
<li>inconsistent navigation, designed to introduce "variety"</li>
<li>metaphors and unconventional labels</li>
</ul>
Do you remember all those Flash-based websites that require you to mouse across the entire screen in order to discover clickable elements? Where the entire website is a big easter egg basket? <em>Yeah, me too.</em><br />
<br />
But the worst kind of easter egg, in my mind, are those that take the form of message dialogs. Funny and clever messages can used by developers and hackers alike, and harmless messages can be indistinguishable from ominous warnings. <a href="http://www.wptavern.com/should-easter-eggs-in-wordpress-be-removed">Wordpress, for example, has a particularly pernicious specimen that's panicked developers' clients</a> who mistook the CMS easter egg for a virus attack. It's episodes like this that highlight the wisdom of Microsoft formally excluding easter eggs in its programs as part of its Trustworthy Computing Initiative.<br />
<br />
These are my rules for software/web easter eggs:<br />
<ul>
<li>Never put easter eggs get into the way of clarity.</li>
<li>Never let easter eggs get in the way of task completion. </li>
<li>Never confuse easter eggs with advanced productivity features. If you're adding a feature to enhance productivity, you should document it. Don't take a perverse pleasure in designing deceptively simple products (I'm looking at you, Apple), and leaving features undocumented. I'm never in the market for "missing manuals".</li>
<li>Make sure that easter eggs are recognisably easter eggs. In particular, don't leave hidden messages. Users may not be able to distinguish your clever message from that of a hacker.</li>
</ul>
<h2>
What about 'easter eggs' in content?</h2>
Writers have long been including hidden references in movies and literature as a way of delighting audiences. There's something to be said about the pleasure of recognising a hidden reference in a book and movie, even in this jaded era of endless parodies and winking self-reference. Like a shared secret between writer and reader, it creates a feeling of pride and exclusivity--<i>you're an insider, a person in the know</i>. Those who haven't read the source material won't get it, even if they know something's there.<br />
<br />
Concealing "easter eggs" in your copy, however, isn't the same thing as hiding them in your app or website. <br />
<br />
A common mistake of non-professional writers is to bury their allusions and hidden references in the body copy. The result is a passing metaphor or reference that won't catch readers' attention, much less delight them.<br />
<br />
How about making your metaphors in your body copy more obvious? Yes, you can do that. But <a href="http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/2009/02/tone_it_down_a_little_would_you.html">extended metaphors are risky.</a> And <a href="http://clear-writing-with-mr-clarity.blogspot.com/2010/10/few-amusing-examples-of-mixed-metaphors.html">mixing metaphors is just... sad.</a> Not only is clarity compromised, readers are distracted by your effort to impress them.<br />
<br />
Yes, I'm saying that metaphors and allusions should be avoided (or at least, kept to a minimum) in your body copy.<br />
<br />
Your "easter eggs" should be in the headline instead.<br />
<br />
The caveat, of course, is that you must make your secondary meanings (allusions, puns, etc,) obvious for your secondary, "in-the-know" audience, while still catching the attention of those who won't recognise it.<br />
Baltimore Sun's John McIntyre <a href="http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/2012/01/what_the_dickens_1.html">explains it as such:</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The allusion must work on its own, not depending on the reader’s catching an echo. For the reader who does, the allusion is an additional treat, a lagniappe.</blockquote>
<br />
Right. A <i>lagniappe</i>. I guess the easter egg metaphor doesn't work that well for copywriting, after all.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-66031599035548101542011-11-23T15:31:00.001+08:002012-07-30T18:40:39.645+08:00Who needs a lede?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPg6lRH-uxnqDBhX0PvxHBPb1WfsCAMGo9IQFIIwQMNRjqEL48EfXt_DEIrwSF07c6dLBSGviHC754TxG5GBp2P6QtSvJ0X24uqZbu8cPkpTWe-nQeBd0D5jwB-xemzh5u-E2a/s1600/56286_Guillotine_md.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPg6lRH-uxnqDBhX0PvxHBPb1WfsCAMGo9IQFIIwQMNRjqEL48EfXt_DEIrwSF07c6dLBSGviHC754TxG5GBp2P6QtSvJ0X24uqZbu8cPkpTWe-nQeBd0D5jwB-xemzh5u-E2a/s1600/56286_Guillotine_md.gif" /></a></div>
Copyblogger founder Brian Clark has <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/5-simple-ways-to-open-your-blog-post-with-a-bang/">a classic piece on how to open your article with a bang</a>. Those tips in his blog are basic strategies that belong in every writer's toolkit. (Or at least, we should all know them so that we can avoid the cliches).<br />
<br />
They can be summarised as follows:<br />
<ul>
<li>the Question Opener ("What's a good way to start articles?")</li>
<li>the Anecdote Opener ("'I'm really tired of this,' said Robert Scoble as this interview started.")</li>
<li>the "Picture this" Opener ("Imagine: Wouldn't it be grand if all your readers paid you a dollar?")</li>
<li>the Shocking Statistic Opener ("Study: 95% of your readers are bored")</li>
<li>the Analogy Opener: ("What does your dog and my fruit basket have in common? Answer: Nothing.") </li>
</ul>
I happen to hold a somewhat contrarian view on the subject of ledes. I don't think blog content needs to have ledes at all.<br />
<a name='more'></a>(Yes, I call these things "ledes" what most people would call openings or introductions. <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lede">An artifact of my newsroom days.</a>)<br />
<br />
<h2>
Ledes don't serve a purpose that can't be fulfilled elsewhere in the body</h2>
The purpose of a good lede is to sustain reader interest. But because blog entries are not that long, (not as long as newspaper articles, at least) readers were never going to stay long in the first place. If the purpose is to draw audiences to read the content in the first place, that's the job of a title (hed), not the lede.<br />
<br />
If the intent is to frame the situation or context of the article--it's that most traditional lede of all, <i>aka the introduction</i>, I'd argue that a well-written article should paint the complete picture for the reader by the time it's done.<br />
<br />
Here's three reasons why I feel we should think out of the box, and avoid ledes as much as possible in blogs: <br />
<br />
<b>1) Readers want you to get on with it. </b>The best examples of lede-less content I know comes from The Economist. Stories dive right into the central issue, and readers don't have to go through<a href="http://starting%20in%20the%20middle%20of%20the%20action/"> lengthy, Wolfe-sian stories like in many American newspapers.</a> It doesn't even bother to give the background--editors at The Economist know that its main audience are paying subscribers and avid news readers who's probably already up-to-date with the news, and hungry for deep analysis from the word go.<br />
<br />
<b>2) Ledes tend to be cliched and tiring. </b>Popular lede styles are exactly that: overused. Unique ledes take time to craft. Why not spend that time honing the logic of your story, or getting a better anecdote? Also, body content tend to be more different from article to article than ledes are. <i>If you lede with the body</i>, <i>it's the most straightforward way to craft a unique lede.</i><br />
<br />
<b>3) <i>in media res</i> is one of the best ways to capture reader interest. </b>Starting in the middle of the action is a popular narrative device in movies and long-form fiction. It gets readers curious and excited quickly. It works in non-fiction as well.<br />
<br />
It even works in the realm of pictures and photographs.<br />
<br />
When I started used Facebook in 2007, it did something to profile photos I hadn't seen elsewhere before: it <i>cropped </i>thumbnails instead of <i>resizing </i>them. Despite that users couldn't crop their photos as they wished (at that time)--the crops <i>actually looked good</i>. I found that I didn't need to have whole portraits of people before I got curious. In fact, those square, awkward crops actually created visual interest, and encouraged me to check out strangers' profiles.<br />
<br />
I think the same goes for content--no one really insists that every article must be like the three-act Aristotelian drama, with a beginning, a body, and an end. It's the key message that counts.<br />
<br />
Someday, I should write a separate entry to argue why you shouldn't have to close your article.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-30190107959735194332011-11-11T00:56:00.000+08:002012-06-27T01:57:43.358+08:00The 'factory model' vs the social business<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For some reason, I have been roped in KM (knowledge management) projects in almost every organisation I've ever worked in. All of them have failed. (No fault of mine, I swear.)<br />
<br />
Years later, when Web 2.0 came around and the Intranet-based wiki became fashionable, it felt like déjà vu all over again.<br />
<br />
It's recently occurred to me why social media hasn't taken off in the enterprise space. It's because of the factory model.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="background-color: white;">What is this "factory model"? It's a way of organising processes and resources in an organisation, centred around building standardised, reusable "parts": documents, code, skill-sets, everything. The goal is to optimise everything, and to minimise cost.</span><br />
<br />
The factory model doesn't just apply to the manufacturing sector. It can apply to any business that makes use of highly specialised, modular and repetitive processes, and puts its products together like an assembly line. Most software companies, for example, have factory-model operations.<br />
<br />
The factory model is the dominant way businesses today are organised.<br />
<br />
The factory model is also why most social media initiatives fail.<br />
<br />
<h2>
The factory model is anathema to enterprise social media</h2>
Social media cannot thrive in environments that are over-optimised for cost. When workers are timelogged too closely, they concentrate on their project, leaving no time for non-core activities. No one would spend time working on things that are not reflected in their work appraisal report.<br />
<br />
Let's suppose <span style="background-color: white;">that management adopts a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy for social media.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> Better still, let's s</span><span style="background-color: white;">uppose </span><span style="background-color: white;">management officially endorses </span><span style="background-color: white;">social media (and many managers would say they do, for fear of being seen as too unprogressive), time spent blogging and enterprise social media can be easily seen as waste of time. No one would want to be seen as too active on the Intranet blog if it can be used as evidence for downgrading their work performance.</span><br />
<br />
I've even heard of cases where management--quietly or actively--looked out for social media stars among the rank-and-file to showcase as proof of the organisation's progress towards becoming a "social business". Did these companies succeed in their clever plan to produce teams of social media experts without even trying? <span style="background-color: white;">By and large, they didn't. It did surface a handful of social media or web content enthusiasts, </span><span style="background-color: white;">but that was it. There was no company-wide shift to social media, nor did a knowledge-sharing community emerge</span><span style="background-color: white;">.</span><br />
<br />
Richard Templar's best selling "Rules of Work" contains gems such as, "Volunteer carefully" and "Never let anyone know how hard you work". These are golden rules--for the old economy, not the new one. If I were working in an "old economy" business jumping onto the social business bandwagon, I'd remind myself of a 3rd rule (also courtesy of Templar): "Know that you're being judged at all times."<br />
<h2>
Social business is harder than KM</h2>
After more than 10 years of the KM movement, we now know that <a href="http://stevedenning.typepad.com/steve_denning/2010/07/why-do-great-km-programs-fail.html">most KM projects fail, even when they are great.</a> And social media is an order of magnitude harder. Not only does the social media team need to encourage staff to contribute, they also need to maintain staff engagement and sustain the community. The team must often deal with managements' fear of dealing with criticism as well.<br />
<br />
Most companies make ill-judged assumptions when hopping on the social media bandwagon:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="background-color: white;">They assume altruistic motives in their staff; they assume that everyone in their staff can write and participate if correctly motivated.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">They assume that community-based content would be high-quality, just like professionally copywritten materials.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">They were naively optimistic about their tolerance for social media gaffes and disasters</span><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;">They underestimate the effort needed for change management, or the organisation-wide disillusionment that came from that last organisation development project.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<h2>
Can corporate cultures be remade?</h2>
The only way social media can thrive in an organisation built on the foundations of the factory model and short-term profits is when it literally bifurcates its organisation culture--by separating a business unit to focus on research, product development, and--yes--blogging. For example, have the corporate affairs department drive social media, as part of its internal communications. That department alone will have luxury to read and share ideas. On the factory floor, it's business as usual.<br />
<br />
This is not as radical as it sounds. Even in old economy initiatives such as Six Sigma, an expert team must first be trained in the methods, before facilitating the process throughout the organisation. In Six Sigma, the core expert team does the thinking and the talking. The rest of the organisation just takes orders.<br />
<br />
The alternative to creating an alternative structure to facilitate socially enabled business is to remake the organisation culture. Which is near impossible, and not worth the marginal benefits that social media offers.<br />
<br />
<h2>
It's hard to choose the road not taken </h2>
As social media continues to mature and become even more ubiquitous among consumers, we'll see a generation of true knowledge workers. They will be even more comfortable with the web than the current generation, and they will have an extraordinary level of personal transparency and high thresholds for privacy. These people will be ideal for social-centric organisations.<br />
<br />
But it will be very hard for traditional organisations to attract members of the "socially aware" generation. Not merely because these young employees won't be allowed to blog/tweet/facebook--that would be too facile a reason--but traditional businesses are filled with repetitive, brain-deadening tasks designed to minimise cost and extract maximum value from their staff--tasks such as <em>social media</em> and <em>knowledge management</em>.<br />
<br />
Big, brand-name companies are creating positions that promise to give job candidates latitude and opportunities to drive social media within their organisation. But would good candidates join them? It's just easier for them to join an organisation that already has a reputation for its open culture.<br />
<br />
Have you seen those statistics and infographics that say more organisations are adopting social media? I doubt they mean anything.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-38273150735794076352011-10-27T17:29:00.000+08:002012-01-21T00:57:27.546+08:00The influence of Influence on your bottomline<a href="http://corp.klout.com/blog/2011/10/a-more-accurate-transparent-klout-score/">That new algorithm that Klout has just launched</a> has routed the Klout scores of many users (including mine), creating a furore among many people. My naive reading is that people are declaring Klout is useless to them, not because its utility or lack thereof, but because the lowered score bruised their egos. If the change had created an inflation of scores instead, my guess is that opinion would have been much more divided.<br />
<br />
The effectiveness of Klout aside, I think a large part of this anger is rooted in a persistent misunderstanding of the difference between public relations, influence, marketing, and sales.<br />
<br />
Influence in social media is primarily a measure of relationships between peers. Specifically, it's a measure of the flow of ideas, an indication of <em>whom is spreading ideas to whom</em>. It's nothing to do with sales performance.<br />
<br />
Social media influence will only affect your business directly if you're in the business of idea commerce: for example, if you're a consultant. If you're pushing products, social media influence is at best a rough proxy of brand awareness, right there at the rim of the the so-called sales funnel. And then, it's only if your market has a very narrow sales funnel--both buyer and seller are within the same tight circle, so that sales driven strongly by your reputation in the community.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, if you're in a commoditised business (say, you run a small cafe) and new business relies entirely on awareness and people finding you, Klout is pretty much meaningless.As <a href="http://marshallk.com/why-klout-is-really-and-truly-valuable">Marshall Kirkpatrick recently observed</a>, Klout can be a great tool for finding people. But that's exactly it: yes, it's useful for finding <em>people</em>--not products. <br />
<br />
Use the right tools for the right purpose. And stop waving that <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=epeen">e-peen</a> around.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-24610455801623971622011-10-18T23:04:00.000+08:002012-07-30T18:44:07.039+08:00Stop the sorry waste of ink<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Have you ever read brochures being handed out at booths in exhibitions and conventions? Typcially, they are<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>filled with copy on product features</li>
<li>packed with "value propositions" that are nothing more than concatenations of <a href="http://benparr.com/2011/10/bad-buzzwords-for-pitches/">buzzwords</a></li>
<li>plastered with aspirational pictures of happy people at home or at work. Or with exciting, industry-specific stock pictures, say, photos of <em>racks of servers</em>.</li>
</ul>
I have no idea how effective these brochures are, even though I've even written some of them myself. I do know that a lot of them are left in bins, venue washrooms, and on the exhibition floor. I also don't really know why we continue to produce them. But I do know that our sales forces continue to ask for them.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
When I used to work in public affairs, business units sometimes asked me and my colleagues to create content, not because they knew what they need it, but because it was “standard practice”. ("You did brochures for my colleague the last time, didn't you?")<br />
<br />
The same phenomena happens in the web content business as well--except we tend to inflict the purposeless creation of content on ourselves.<br />
<br />
We often feel compelled to create filler content, simply because the site architecture has many boxes left unfilled. We also feel compelled to write obvious, "click on a link to go there" types of introductions knowing full well that no one's reading. It's just there for "consistency", "best practice" or whatever we call it.<br />
<br />
We need to stop writing unnecessary content. We should make up our minds never to write another paragraph that wastes our readers' time, or write another line that does not clarify in our customers' mind what our product can do for them.<br />
<br />
<div>
Here’s my rules of thumb for saving ink on the web:</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>Speak directly to customer's needs. </strong>If you're selling a tool to help businesses manage customers records, don't lede your copy with it's a game-changing product that will revolutionise the productivity of their salesforce. Hackneyed, buzzwordy copy is a sure way to get humans and Googlebot alike to ignore your content. This applies to all media--press release, marketing brochure, web page header, whatever.</li>
<li><strong>If I need to explain why my readers might find some information useful, it’s probably not. </strong>Only in very few circumstances will readers bookmark for reading later. And that’s only when it’s really specific. If it’s generic, it’s my homepage they’ll bookmark. My two-page instruction comprising a one-page apologia is a waste of space.</li>
<li><strong>If I need paint a scenario, I should consider publishing a case study, or telling a story instead. </strong>A case study will help users because they want to know in a concrete way if it fits their need, and because they want to know if my competitors are using my products successfully. A story is similar, but the goal is to engender empathy for my organisation’s philosophy, cause, messages.</li>
<li><strong>If some branches for static content are very short, it’s telling you it should be trimmed off. </strong>Either consolidate the remaining content, or convert the article into a future article, i.e. make it dynamic content.</li>
<li><strong>If it’s branding that I'm after, I don’t use text. </strong>I'd use images instead, and use them boldly. I'd reserve text for the absolute essentials: URLs, addresses, contact information, product specifications. Yes, it's much cheaper to produce copy. Quality images take resources and money to buy or produce. But I shouldn't save my budget on this.</li>
<li><strong>Keep marketing, sales, and engagement separate. </strong>Explaining this point will take a whole book, but this is the gist: even if I'm right in the assumption that people do many things on my site, chances are they don’t do it in the same session.</li>
</ul>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-65963282503826039152011-10-13T16:20:00.000+08:002012-07-30T18:42:33.589+08:00The sympathetic design of Steve Jobs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Of all the obituaries on Steve Jobs, <a href="http://mobile.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/10/steve_jobs_dead_how_the_apple_founder_changed_the_world_.html">Slate published the one that I wished I wrote.</a><br />
<a name='more'></a>The money quote:<br />
<blockquote>
Jobs’ best talent was his ability to spot the pain points in every technology he touched. He could look at anything and tell you why it sucked.</blockquote>
Five years ago I had my first experience with an Apple portable device—the iPod Touch. It was, as Jobs often said onstage at MacWorld, a magical experience. But what fascinated me wasn’t the technology—the capacitive screens, the gesture designs, the low-power processors that I didn’t know was under the hood. My fascination laid in how the little black tablet seemed to understand my past and present frustrations-- the styluses I lost over the years, the street directory photocopies I carried to navigate unfamiliar areas, the concentration I expended to tap/write out letters on a tiny screen, while standing on a moving train.<br />
<br />
What is it that makes Apple’s designs so good? To me, what stands out is the tremendous amount of sympathy for users that’s in Apple products.<br />
<br />
A good design is sometimes said to anticipate users’ needs. It’s a metonymic expression, of course: that anticipation is really the designer’s, not the design’s. In iterating the content and the interface, the designer has already experienced users’ frustration, and eliminating these pain points in the design.<br />
<br />
Jobs famous mantra was, “There must be be a better way.” News media's obituaries of Steve Jobs often included this quote as evidence of his unique genius. It’s not. It’s neither unique or complicated. It’s simply an echo of what any user would say, when forced to take a step more than he knows is necessary for his task.<br />
<br />
The genius and triumph of Apple was to challenge the engineering mindset that giving users more “control” or “value” means giving them more features. Until Apple, the definition of a better product was one with more options, longer and deeper menus, and larger wordcount. Designers and consumers everywhere owe a debt to Steve Jobs for showing that there is a better way.<br />
<h2>
How poor design comes about</h2>
This leads me to the problem I really want to address: what happens when designers lack sympathy? The answer: many things. The list is endless, but I’ll just cite a few common bugbears in content development: FAQs that nobody asks. PDF application forms that omit fax numbers. Shipping and Handling information that appears only after you reach the online shopping cart.<br />
<br />
Without sympathy for users, UX and content design is susceptible to two kinds of biases.<br />
<br />
The first is the business bias—designs which primary objective is to minimise cost and effort for the business owner, not the user. This one doesn't require much explanation: product and campaign failures that result from underinvestment of time and resources are plenty enough.<br />
<br />
The second is the presentation bias—the tendency to optimise design for making an impression, rather than for creating a positive experience. This is a situation I came across very often when I used to do public relations: business units often asked me to impress readers at the expense of clearly presenting the information readers actually sought. Without clarity of content or design, I needn’t even discuss issues like branding and authenticity.<br />
<br />
The lack of sympathy for end-users and audiences is a problem to which there isn’t a good solution. Templates and checklists can only do so much. Before we blame users for perfunctorily completing our checklists, consider how it’s common to see perfunctorily designed checklists. No matter how many checks we put in place, we won’t solve the problem of the designer and the product manager who just wants to get the design out of the way.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20426623.post-6048494847436144632011-09-29T14:35:00.000+08:002012-07-30T18:42:53.312+08:00Join the Google+ tribe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmUaKgO-Esc2Tr7DngQD-Ou-vJc-DcQ__kI4obvLODjDWQa39iAdQpYoM5og-sVvqGbxxnMqVQgp56idbmTxYG3kme2B6G2pwf-zHIos4HUdENn6v_KHoUz5kkDgfdbiNVqNw0/s1600/google-plus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmUaKgO-Esc2Tr7DngQD-Ou-vJc-DcQ__kI4obvLODjDWQa39iAdQpYoM5og-sVvqGbxxnMqVQgp56idbmTxYG3kme2B6G2pwf-zHIos4HUdENn6v_KHoUz5kkDgfdbiNVqNw0/s320/google-plus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Now that I've used Google+ for three months, I'm finally at the point where I feel comfortable writing about the social platform. I'd also like to make a case for why you would want to use Google+, and what you should use it for.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<h2>
Facebook vs Google+</h2>
The obvious question on everyone's mind: which is better? Facebook or Google+?<br />
<br />
At first blush the question appears premature: both Facebook and Google+ are in the midst of rolling out major changes. <a href="http://mashable.com/2011/09/22/facebook-f8-live-video/">The new Timeline interface that Facebook announced at f8</a> will be rolled out to all users when we exit September. Which platform will be better come October? Should we just wait and see?<br />
<br />
I believe the biggest changes to Facebook have already happened: improved Friends Lists, real-time updates, the Subscribe function, that scary "<a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/frictionless_sharing_pros_cons.php">Frictionless Sharing</a>". The much-discussed Timeline will only affect the presentation of our personal profiles—otherwise, the features we see on the current Facebook will pretty much be the same in October.<br />
<br />
So: which is better, Facebook vs Google+?<br />
<br />
A better question: Why would anyone want yet another social media platform?
<br />
<br />
<h2>
The obstacles</h2>
When Google+ first opened to invites late June, the question was, Why would we want to move our friends from one network to another? Our Facebook network was built up slowly over the years by sending and accepting individual invitations. It would be a long, hard process to leave Facebook for another network, and to get others to do so.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://fernstrategy.com/2011/01/14/is-facebook-worth-50b/">It’s the fax machine analogy</a> all over again: the first fax machine was essentially worthless, but once a second fax machine was installed, suddenly two organisations could exchange documents. As the number of machines in use increased, the value for everyone with fax machines increased. Now that everyone has a fax machine: why would I get another technology and platform, even if it were given to me for free?<br />
<br />
Part of the answer to that question is, you’re probably already on Google+, whether or not you asked for it. If you’re a user of Google Calendar or Gmail, you would have seen your name up in the upper-left corner of the page. Thanks to this auto-inclusion, <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393640,00.asp#fbid=kb6KOxYIlAr">Google+ has 50 million users</a> as of this writing.<br />
<br />
Now the only question is, what good is 50 million users to connect with when none of which are your friends?<br />
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<h2>
The new, old way to find friends online: Make them</h2>
Whether by chance or design, Google has sidestepped the question—for the power users, at least. Google+ users have been getting incredible mileage from Google+ by not bothering about their real-life friends.
Google+ has made it extremely easy to finding interesting or relevant people to connect to.<br />
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First of all, Google+ adopts the Twitter model of one-way connections. That is, no permission is required from the other party before you make a connection. If you wish to read someone’s regular updates, you simply subscribe. That’s it.
Like Twitter, geography and existing connections are no barrier—you don’t have to know someone who knows Guy Kawasaki in real life to read the ideas posted on his stream. Just type his name into the search box and hit Follow.<br />
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In other words, you can grow your network as big as you wish. As quickly as you wish. You're only limited by your attention span, and your ability to find interesting people to connect with.<br />
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Why would you connect to people other than your friends?
This is probably a big question for you, if you wish to just connect with friends over the Web. But for creative people in search of an audience—writers, photographers, marketers, entrepreneurs, Google+ is an incredible tool for connecting with their muses, their peers, and the newsmakers. It’s like Google+ was built to help people rapidly assemble their tribe.<br />
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Google+ even lets you share entire lists of people whom you follow with your buddies, colleagues, even to the public at large. Just imagine: your friends can share their entire rolodex! I now have the ReadWriteWeb editorial team in a Circle—RWW’s Editor-in-Chief put the list up yesterday for all to follow.<br />
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To summarise: On Facebook, you curate the content shared by your network. On Google+, you curate the network. This might seem like a gimmicky way of saying we’re facing a challenge managing the massive content output of a large existing network on Facebook, but on Google+ we’re still busy adding friends.<br />
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But I suggest a different way to look at it: use the platforms according to their strength. And the strength of Google+ is the number of creatives that are on the platform.<br />
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If your aim is to connect with people who share your passion and your interests; if you wish to grow an audience and take your message as far as possible—you want to be on Google+.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03303628501990751391noreply@blogger.com0