When it comes to communication, few things are as important
as the words we choose. Especially in written communication.
And although most writers pay close attention to how things
are worded when writing web content, there is one kind of writing that tends to
get overlooked or downplayed as being less important.
That is microcopy.
Not only is quality microcopy vital to making sure that your
content is understood, it is also an important factor in engaging people and
increasing both the usability and likeability of a website.
This interesting blog from
Prototypr gives a great explanation of what microcopy is and why it
is important. It also gives some fantastic tips for improving the microcopy on
your own website.
If you have browsed the internet lately, you have probably noticed that when you attempt to access HTTP sites, you get a scary-looking warning about possible security risks.
You have also probably noticed that more and more companies are switching from HTTP to HTTPS.
But what is the difference? And why is it such a big deal?
Well, we found a great article from online.marketing that explains everything you need to know about HTTP and HTTPS.
In the article, they explain the differences between the two, the security risks you are taking when you are accessing an HTTP site, and how moving from HTTP to HTTPS can influence your site’s SEO and Google rankings.
They also provide detailed instructions on how you can move your site to HTTPS.
It’s no secret that shorter paragraphs on web pages makes for easier reading.
But, did you know that shorter webpages are nearly 60% more usable?
Additionally, tweaking your copy and re-writing it to be more concise, scannable, and objective can increase the usability to 124%!
According to this interesting article from Wylie Communications, by simply cutting down on the amount of words you use and getting rid of some of the unnecessary clutter, your readers actually retain more information and are far more likely to read through your entire webpage.
The article also gives some great pointers on how to make your webpage more Web and Mobile friendly.
Much has been written about crumbling infrastructure throughout the United States.
If it’s not roads and bridges, then it’s internet networks and dated telecommunications infrastructure.
But not so much has been written on the effects of aging on internet content.
The internet has been around long enough that many sites have compiled years of content and supplemental pages.
How do companies and universities manage updating and creating content for huge, often unwieldy sites?
A large content production or migration project can appear daunting at first.
Anyone who’s worked on one of these projects for the first time inevitably has come out the other side with a laundry list of learnings.
From architecting new structures to staffing a writing team large enough to complete the project in a timely fashion to hand-holding subject matter experts and ensuring an efficient workflow, large content project managers will have had to work through the bottlenecks common to such large-scale projects.
If we consider the content as the “baby” and the platform as the “bathwater,” you can see how the various iterations of these projects might look:
If you chuck the baby, then the scope of the project involves producing all new content to populate your current platform.
If you chuck the bathwater, then you’re looking at a content migration project where the biggest challenges become identifying content you want migrated to a new platform and new content you want produced (an example being your company’s desire to migrate your content and data to the cloud).
If you’ve chucked it all, or perhaps have no baby or bathwater to begin with, then your challenges multiply.
Obviously, there are subtle variations to each of these scenarios.
And while there are plenty of marketing firms that can handle large-scale content management, when it comes to actually producing the living, breathing content that your users will consume, the task of creating compelling and cohesive content on a large scale can prove challenging without a well-honed writing team in place.
Assembling Your Team
Even if your company employs a third-party marketing firm to handle content production and management, many marketing firms don’t staff a large enough writing team for such large-scale projects.
So, the first issue that needs tackling is ensuring coverage of the sheer manhours required to produce large amounts of high-quality content while maintaining an attentive focus on cohesion.
It’s not enough to simply hire 10 or 15 writers and divide up the work.
Those writers need to form a fluid team that works well together, understands the broad scope of the project, and can converge to meet a common goal.
Project managers will be the critical hub for these types of large-scale projects.
Not only will they be involved with staffing a cohesive writing team, but they will also be instrumental in attaining consensus for the style guides that need to be produced, in drafting training materials and process documentation, and in assisting through the decision on what to repurpose and what to scrap.
Project managers are also key to keeping a project on budget and on schedule.
Wintress Odom, Owner of Houston-basedThe Writers for Hire, says “To ensure the project stays within scope, each individual writer needs to understand how much time they have allotted per writing task, else ‘small’ overages on individual tasks can add up to hundreds of extra work hours.”
Extra works hours can equate to budget overruns and missed deadlines.
Oh. And, of course, you need an editor.
At the risk of going over the top with the proverbs, when it comes to editors, you might consider that too many cooks spoil the soup.
Odom says, “For large projects with multiple writers on a team, it’s important to have a single editor.”
She qualifies this by explaining that a single editor will have the entire vision of the project within their scope, and by introducing multiple editors, there’s a good chance the rate of inconsistencies in tone, content, and style grows exponentially.
Together, the project manager and editor will oversee the writing team and ensure stuff gets done on time.
Ramp Up
At project inception, one essential key Odom identifies is in ensuring the initial architecture takes into account not only the form the project is to take, but also in preemptively constructing a chain of command that will streamline the decision-making process and save time and headaches down the road.
For such a large-scale project, everyone involved has to be on the same page.
This is done by documenting workflow and review processes before a single word gets written.
Process documentation can range from the bare minimum to quite extensive.
On a large project, you might find the need for some or all of the following:
Writer and stakeholder training on project-specific software
Odom stresses the need to have most of this in place before starting a project. “You are bound to tweak processes as you go along, but starting a major website overhaul without key procedural documents is a costly mistake.”
The one exception? Surprisingly, the style guide.
“If a company doesn’t already have one,” says Odom, “trying to create one before the project is somewhat ridiculous. You can’t possibly anticipate all of the nuances you’ll run into, from capitalization preferences on company trademarks to oxford commas.”
Odom suggests recording preferences – building a living style guide – as the project progresses. Then, completing a front-to-back edit just to implement style guide decisions right before launch.
One last invaluable tool for allowing the writing process to flow much smoother is the key messaging platform.
Most larger companies have this valuable marketing tool already.
It’s a master marketing message document, covering the company’s branding as a whole as well as each individual product and service the company offers.
The key messaging platform provides cohesion across all marketing mediums and ensures not only consistency in branding and style, but also a roadmap to avoid multiple content producers from having to reinvent the wheel.
Thankfully, the internet makes available a wealth of prompts and tools for creating effective key messaging.
Workflow
Throughout her career, Erin Hanson, Content Marketing Manager at Autodeskin Northern California, has had to learn many lessons through trial and error.
Earlier in her career, Hanson was charged with the daunting task of overhauling content for the entire University of California at Berkeley extension course catalog, a project which ended up taking over two years.
To give you a sense of what one of these large-scale projects looks like, consider just a handful of the tasks Hanson had to manage for the university’s site overhaul:
Drafting and distributing requests for proposal for third-parties
Gap analysis for requirement gathering from student information and records
Gathering information on each field of study’s course descriptions and certificate programs
Creating and managing content hubs for each of those fields of study
Conducting student interviews—one in each field
“The bottlenecks,” Hanson describes, “were everywhere. To begin with, there was a lot of data, old systems that needed to be shut down, migration to plan out and the need to get sign off from academic stakeholders.”
For Hanson, now at Autodesk, the reliance upon technology to manage large scale content cannot be understated.
She uses a wealth of technological trappings such as digital asset management software and other browser-based search tools to manage an immense workflow.
Odom agrees on the use of technology in workflow management and recommends using a task-based workflow process to track the current status of each website page.
This type of system means that a stakeholder can see any page’s progress at-a-glance.
The system also makes it easy to see where pages might be held up – scheduled for a subject matter expert interview, waiting on technical content review, or stalled due to an unanswered question.
A proper workflow management system will also allow for per-task conversations, feedback, and communication.
The alternative is corresponding and trading files through email or a less sophisticated file-sharing system which Odom dismisses as “a total mess.”
Working With Subject Matter Experts
Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels
High-level subject matter experts aren’t always in great supply.
Realistically, the ones in your company likely have some of the best and most relevant insight into the content you’re producing.
However, relying on in-house subject matter experts to produce content may represent a general misalignment of goals.
Consider:
SMEs don’t have time. A subject matter expert is likely fully immersed in their job responsibilities and may not prioritize their assigned content production duty.
SMEs are not always good writers. These folks may be the best at what they do, but when it comes to articulating that for the rest of us, they may not be good enough writers.
SMEs have different goals. Marketing department and corporate bonuses are often built on key performance indicators, many of which are deadline driven. SMEs, on the other hand, may have an entirely different set of KPIs, in which case they’re not incentivized to work within the timeframes your content production project demands.
As an alternative to relying upon in-house subject matter experts to produce well-written content, try using those SMEs as mini-editors.
It takes far less time for an SME to make themselves available for a brief interview, and to review and comment on content created by someone else than it would take for them to sit down and craft new content from scratch.
When interviewing SMEs, Odom recommends modifying communication styles and setting clear expectations.
The discourse style of an enterprise developer is bound to be markedly different than a financial advisor, for example.
When working with SMEs, Odom has found that “Some people just don’t do well with pre-call preparation. They need to react to your questions off-the-cuff. Others want prep questions and campaign briefs to feel comfortable.”
Finally, one of the most important elements of creating large amounts of content quickly lies in being able to shepherd those SMEs through the writing and editing process.
Relationship building becomes paramount as there will inevitably be the occasions when a SME is dragging his feet in getting back to you.
Conclusion
Whether you’re migrating and repurposing large amounts of content or you’re charged with scaling a new project which might feature tens of thousands of pages, you’ll want a clearly defined plan of attack and a staff of qualified writers. Tweet this
But perhaps the greatest dividend to having completed a large-scale project is that you now have a team in place that’s fluent in your culture, your subject matter, and your goals.
Odom agrees.
After working on a large project, “We now know how all those departments work, we know all their key messaging. We just happen to be offsite.”
There was a time when adding the right keywords to your website copy would go a long way toward boosting its Google ranking—where the Google algorithm places your site in search results.
But today, keywords do little to help in that area. Driving up Google rankings is a complex, constantly changing process.
On the bright side, your site’s content can have a huge effect on your search engine optimization (SEO) success.
So how do you create content that will help your business get the web presence it needs?
Wintress Odom, owner of The Writers For Hire, has some tips to get you started.
Listen to her latest radio interview on The Price of Business by clicking the play button below.
The award-winning television drama “Mad Men” fed viewers much more than a weekly dose of suspense and eye-candy. Though the focus sometimes drifted more to Don Draper’s sexcapades than his creative mind, the show still gave an intriguing peek into the inner workings of an advertising agency.
The Art of Emotional Appeal
The tourism industry would do well to pay attention to some of the marketing strategies that Sterling Cooper Draper Price employed during the show’s seven seasons. For instance, Don was a master of crafting emotional appeal. “This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine,” he said of a Kodak slide projector, “It’s called a carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels, around and around and back home again to a place where we know we are loved.”
The efficacy of such emotional appeal applies to much more than slide projectors. Emotive appeals work particularly well in the tourism industry, where destinations have spun their wheels with straightforward marketing techniques, targeting consumers’ rational purchasing-power, for far too long.
Vacation Time and Stress-Management
Americans have a track-record of exceedingly poor stress management. In addition to financial and health stressors, the widespread use of smartphones has brought twenty-four hour workplace connectivity and an unending barrage of horrific news headlines. You would think a chronic stressful lifestyle would send employees running for the hills come vacation time. But a recent Harris Interactive survey presented the startling finding that American employees only use 51% of their eligible paid vacation time and paid time off.
Yes, you read that correctly. Chronically stressed employees are leaving vacation time sitting on the shelf. They want vacations, need vacations, and have the means to take vacations. All that lacks is an effective tourism industry appeal, motivating enough to cause Americans to break through their fog of stress and take the action of booking a vacation.
And guess what? Bulleted lists reciting a destination’s most recent million-dollar renovations won’t spur the apathetic consumer to action. What these potential tourists- ripe for the persuading- need is carefully constructed marketing content brimming with emotional appeal.
”
Emotional Content Standouts
Major destinations are waking up to the value of using emotional appeal in marketing campaigns. Most notably, Las Vegas employed the incredibly successful tagline, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” refining its image as a hedonistic escape from the boundaries of daily life.
And the longest running tourism campaign in history, “Virginia is for Lovers,” began back in 1969. In the ensuing years, Virginia has capitalized on the marketing value of those words- posturing itself as a romantic getaway filled with warmth and charm.
But emotive content goes beyond concise taglines. The New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau recently launched a campaign to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The CVB sent out an emotionally-charged series of e-mails, thanking travel industry professionals for their coverage of the city and highlighting its advances in the decade since Katrina.
The president of the CVB kicked off the campaign with an e-mail containing this message: , “So as we look back at what happened here 10 years ago, we want to give thanks to all of you who took us in when we had no place to go, helped us tell our story when we had no voice, helped us rebuild our homes and our city from ruin, celebrated our victories, showcased to the world what makes our city so special, and those of you who simply came to be our guests as we put the pieces back together. In the next nine days leading up to the 10th anniversary of Katrina, we will be sending you a short video, showcasing some of the improved aspects of New Orleans.”
Tugs at the heartstrings, right? And it creates, or renews, an emotional attachment to the city, drawing visitors in more than a simple list of “improved aspects” ever could. Note in his message where he thanks writers who “helped us tell our story.” That’s the goal of effective emotionally driven tourism content– telling the unique story of a destination.
Finding the Right Words
So how do you find the magical, emotive words that will lure droves of tourists to your destination? It’s actually a combination of careful research- discovering where your intended audience and your unique offerings intersect- along with meticulously crafted written content:
Evaluate where your revenue lags. Do you need to boost business during the week or on weekends? During peak times or off-season? Having a concrete goal in mind will help you focus on the proper audience.
Pinpoint your ideal tourist. Based on your revenue assessment, you should know whether you’re looking to attract more mid-week business travelers, family weekenders, or retired snowbirds. Familiarize yourself with the profile of your intended audience.
Discover the desires of your audience. What motivates these people to travel? Are they seeking escape, adventure, serenity, or relaxation? Hone in on a specific emotional motivation.
Review the offerings of your destination, searching for particular experiences that will appeal to your audience’s emotions. You don’t have to highlight your destination’s entire range- specific and well-defined focus on an emotionally appealing experience is in order.
Carefully craft your content, highlighting your chosen experiences in a fashion likely to appeal to your chosen audience. Take care to tailor your writing style to the vernacular of your audience. Genteel retirees aren’t likely to respond well to copy littered with hipster slang, while millennials magnetize to key-words tailored to their generation.
Maintain consistency across all modes of communication. Don’t cast your destination in one light on Facebook while presenting a different image in print brochures. Find your identity, articulate it well, and stay true to your message.
Such a strategy holds great potential for payoff. After all, the travel and tourism industry has an annual economic impact of around $6.5 trillion U.S. dollars, worldwide. And a Choice Hotels International survey found that Americans plan to spend 8% more on leisure travel and 5% more per trip in 2015 than they did the previous year.
With carefully-crafted, emotionally-driven content, you can ensure that a good chunk of those $6.5 trillion dollars lands squarely on your destination’s doorstep.
So, I bought some shoes from Zappos.com last month, and the day after I placed my order, this fun little confirmation email landed in my inbox:
“Yay” is right. Zappos took something that could have been bone-dry and made it fun and funky.
Especially when compared to this sturdy, functional-not-fashionable confirmation email from another (Problem? I don’t have a problem. I like shoes. A lot. Stop judging me!) online shoe retailer:
See the difference?
The second one is . . . fine. It works. At the end of the day, I still know all the important stuff, like the tracking info and the order number. But, well, it’s sort of like choosing the clunky, orthopedic walking shoes over the sexy, peep-toe pumps.
The email from Zappos appealed to me as a writer because it was a much-needed reminder that you can inject a little fun into almost any copy. As a customer, it just made me smile.
So, what do you think? Do little things like this matter to you? Have you seen any great examples of fun copy lately? Let me know!
As promised, here’s the second installment of my series on packing more punch into your prose. In Part 1, we talked about using strong verbs, ditching the adverbs, and the benefits of active sentences. Those are essential points to keep in mind if you want to inject some life into your writing.
