Bite-sized chunks of info from Vancouver-based freelance copywriter/web editor Rob Mathison, including recent projects, info/articles, links, and interesting stuff found on the web. And a picture of a doughnut.
I'm available for freelance/contract work.
Gareth Bale vs Inter Milan
Breathtaking. (Bale’s performance and the animation.)
Surely won’t be long before we’ll see this animator used in a Nike or Adidas ad.
Travel Marketing Case Study: Tourists + camera + curious squirrel + Internet + creative thinking + Twitter + someone funny = @Banff_Squirrel
When I signed up to Twitter I didn’t expect a squirrel wearing glasses and a hockey helmet to generate the most entertaining tweets in my feed.
But that’s what’s happened. Credit to Banff and Lake Louise Tourism for recognizing an opportunity and making the most of it.
Update: Squirrel wins Best Online Campaign at the Canadian E-tourism Awards.
Great website - A New Warrior | Greenpeace.
For the first time in ages there’s a Flash intro I actually wanted to watch and listen to, and that had a purpose other than to look flashy. The soundtrack then stays with you while you’re on the site, making browsing feel like a cinematic experience.
The content is great in bringing a famous ship to life, and the whole website works superbly as one big call to action, as well as tackling the problem of how to show people exactly how their donation can help.
There’s the clear overview copy on the home page, making it obvious what the site is for; the sense of urgency generated by the construction percentage widget and the crossing out of items already bought; the very prominent viral Facebook and Twitter buttons; the interactive navigation; the brilliant design and imagery that lets you see the ship built donation by donation; and the donor incentive of being able to help build and become part of the new Rainbow Warrior.
Not perfect I suppose as Flash won’t work for everyone, but superb nonetheless.
What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.
– Burton Rascoe
I suggest everyone who works in any sort of job involving creative thought bookmarks this quote for the next time your other half/boss gives you some stick for staring out the window.
Not that that just happened to me or anything…
Useful stuff #5 - QuickCursor and Safari Reader
When doing a content audit or inventory it’s often necessary to copy and paste a very large number of web pages from a client’s existing site to organize them into one document that’s easy to comment on and edit.
QuickCursor is a small app that lets you select any text in a browser and quickly edit it in your selected text editor - in my case WriteRoom - before dumping it into something like Word to format it.
For pages that have a lot of graphics or frames, I also use the Safari Reader tool in Safari to bring up a clean page of text first. Safari Reader also does a great job of stripping out the text from PDFs, which can be a formatting nightmare.
Instapaper does a similar job of providing a page of clean text, but in more steps. The Readability Add-on for Firefox also works well, but not on PDFs.
Are you sitting comfortably?
I’m working with social media agency Soya Marketing (who take a great story-based approach to social media strategy) on a project just now and was introduced at a meeting as “Web Storyteller”.
Maybe I should grow a beard and start smoking a pipe?
All the talk of stories in marketing these days has also brought back childhood memories of Jackanory.
It’s amazing to think that Jackanory just consisted of a person sitting in a chair reading a book out loud.
That’s the power of a good story though.
“As little as possible, as much as necessary.”
The amount of content you can stick on a website is not limited by paper size or printing costs, which is why people tend to write far too much online.
When asked how much is needed for a particular page or section, I generally reply with something like, “As much as you need to get your message or information across effectively.”
However, this is a much better way of saying it:
“As little as possible, as much as necessary.”
- Brain Traffic Blog
Or points (ii) and (iii) from George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’ essay also put it nicely:
(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Just scroll it.
Seeing more and more imaginative scrolling navigations (eg Ben the Bodyguard).
More:
Web content strategy. Got one?
“Content isn’t king anymore - it’s more like the emperor. Content is the start, middle and end of your online marketing story and is critical to virtually everything you do.”
The phrase ‘Content is king’ has been bandied around for a while as the Web has developed. Despite that, content creation - the words portion at least - would too often be left until the last minute in web projects - even very large web projects.
The content that time forgot
I often found myself being called in after a website’s launch to edit old content that had simply been shoehorned into the new website design. Like an explorer discovering lost tribes in the Amazon jungle, I would find myself stumbling over old content that time forgot.
The best reason I can think of for this is that the visual and interactive capabilities of the Web as a medium pushed written content down the list of priorities.
It also used to be thought that people don’t read online, when in fact of course they do - just differently. And people really didn’t give much thought to who would own or update the content on a regular basis. Or how it could be repurposed to help with their marketing efforts.
In other words, they didn’t have a content plan or strategy.
“Content informs design; design without content is decoration.”
- Jeffrey Zeldman
Times they are a’changin’
Things are changing though. A characteristic of today’s effective websites is clear, well-written, easy-to-navigate and helpful copy and content - see Evernote, Mint, 37Signals, Spotify, Apple and ZenDesk as just a few good examples.
If it doesn’t interfere with the flow of information and fits with the brand, there’s room for some humour and clever lines, but the overall aim is to convey important messages (benefits, features, brand story, calls to action… ) in a clear and engaging way.
As well as the actual words, people are now more aware of the role content plays in the overall user experience on a website, including navigation. I used to do just writing and editing, but these days I find myself getting asked to contribute much earlier in website projects - through design agencies or by the client - so I can conduct an audit and provide an input into navigation labels, IA, content repurposing for marketing, etc.
Keyword research and the placement of keywords in visible page text - while still keeping the copy readable – and within the meta data is also more important than ever.
This seems to be how the role of ‘Web Content Strategist’ (sometimes aka ‘Web Editor’ or ‘Web Content Officer’) has emerged to become a more integral part of web projects rather than an after-thought.
Got a website. Now what?
Like ‘content strategy’, it’s hard to escape the phrase ‘content marketing’ these days. Pretty much any respectable list of digital marketing predictions for 2011 included ‘content’. Here’s one example from E-consultancy.
As well as being integral to website development, content is now a recognized cornerstone of a good online marketing strategy.
That strategy might require content to be produced, repurposed and distributed via email, a blog, keyword-optimized articles, whitepapers, Twitter, YouTube, etc to engage with an audience, drive traffic, retain customers, and generally contribute to the overall marketing effort.
So, do you need a web content strategy?
While a content strategy is essential for larger websites with a lot of regularly updated content, the benefits also apply to smaller businesses and websites - just on a smaller scale.
Whether you are a business, a designer or a small agency designing and building a new website or updating an existing site, ask yourself these questions:
- Who produces the content and when?
- Who plans it?
- Who owns particular sections or subject areas?
- Who approves it?
- Who updates and reviews it?
- Who writes the meta data?
- Who makes sure other content is keyword-optimized?
- Who does the audit and inventory of the existing copy?
- Who writes the style guide?
- Who trains the client in web writing for ongoing updates?
- Who writes the behind-the-scenes yet essential user content, such as error pages, email notifications and other user copy?
- Who produces the blog or email newsletter editorial calendar?
If you are based in Vancouver and don’t know the answers to these questions, a chat with a web content strategist in Vancouver could be a good starting point.
Useful stuff #4 - Pomodoro Technique
Out of all of the ways I’ve tried to keep organized while working on multiple projects over the years the Pomodoro Technique is probably the best for shutting out distractions like a video of a gorilla walking like a man or a dramatic squirrel.
Designed by Italian procrastinator Fransesco Cirillo, the PT uses a timer that looks like a tomato to help you focus on specific tasks and get more stuff done. Strange as that might sound, it works!
All you need is a pencil, a note pad and a timer (Pomodoro is Italian for tomato and a tomato-shaped timer was all Fransesco had to hand when he invented his technique). You list your tasks at the start of the day, prioritize them and then work on them in 25-minute chunks, with a 5-minute break between chunks.
It works best when you have loads of little tasks to work through, although I’ve also found it useful for working through a longer content project that can be broken into sections.
Of course, this being 2011 there is an iPhone app. I got the Mac app, which does the job until I find somewhere that sells tomato timers.
