Improving web content: First let’s kill the banter

Kill the banter.

Is there anything worse than poor web content? How about aggressively reducing your reputation with banter content? Welcoming readers and telling them how delighted you are to announce a launch.

“Welcome to our site! Oh, we hope you find its improved design helpful.”

Not helpful. Anything less than a direct appeal to readers’ intelligence and limited time will be wasted effort. Introductory text on landing pages is often much too long. It should be a bull’s-eye to actionable content. Instead, it’s often a very obvious reminder of another website to avoid.

Increase usability

Brief introductions increase usability by explaining the purpose of the remaining web content. But keep it brief. Introductory paragraphs are usually one block of web writing that users are determined to skip. Their eyes are eager to move to actionable content:

• Bulleted lists
• Product features
• Hypertext links

Remember that people only care about answering their questions and solving their problems as quickly as possible so they can leave your website. It’s nothing personal. They’re just being efficient.

Scale of content negatives

1. Banter content
2. Bad content
3. No content

Readers consume so very little on web pages that wasting word count on happy banter is criminal.

Cut the banter and cut to the chase.

What is a content strategist you ask?

As a content strategist, I help people decide what their website should say and how it should be said. I work with project teams to figure out what content needs to go where.

As a web writer, I take businesses goals and build websites that help customers gather information and complete tasks without any hassle.

It’s important to realize that old content can be repurposed and new content needs to be created. All of this material needs to have the appropriate tone and voice to create the correct feel for the audience.

Content? Oh yes, people come to your website for the content. People search for answers to questions and you expertly position yourself with exactly what they want. You use text, video, audio, slideshows, just about anything that provides those answers.

My daily responsibilities include defining, refining and promoting the value of digital content across all platforms – including social media platforms.

Thanks to Brain Traffic for the original elevator-pitch-to-mom idea.

Making the long tail of video more searchable

Good volume of video content helps, but not if people can’t access the video content.

Charles Tillinghast, President and Publisher of msnbc.com, talks about the use of metadata to help people find the long tail in news video instead of just the top 100 views.

Automatic transcription of the voice track of video has proven to be a big value by making video more searchable.

Participation Inequality: All users are equal, but some users are more equal than others

If you are scanning Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox for highlights on the 10 Best Intranets of 2010, you’ll come across a reference to Social Features on Intranets and Participation Inequality.

90-9-1

Nielsen points out that in most online communities, 90 percent of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9 percent of users contribute a little, and 1 percent of users account for almost all the action.

Consider this when trying to assess the tone of your community based on representation of subgroups. Such inequities can produce a “biased understanding.”

Other eye-catching inequalities from the Oct. 2006 article:

1.1 billion – 55 million – 1.6 million

According to Technorati there are 1.1 billion internet users, but only 55 million (5 percent) have blogs and those blogs generate only 1.6 million posting per day.

32 million – 68,000

99 percent of Wikipedia users are lurkers. Wikipedia has only active contributors – 0.2 percent of the 32 million unique U.S. visitors.

25 million – 185,000

The “Causes” application on Facebook had 25 million users in April 2009, but only 185,000 had given a donation.

Can you improve Participation Inequality and get something better than 90-9-1? Not really.

But you can make it easier to contribute on your web site or social media platform, and you can nurture the 9 percent. Nielsen, a usability expert, contends that web site design influences participation inequality. Also, a combination of rewarding and promoting contributors is a strategy that focuses on what you can see and control.

Raw video: Making something out of nothing

What would possess men to leave a nice warm poker game and venture out into the elements? This softball rivalry began over a poker game in 1937 in Elyria, Ohio and has spanned three generations to settle a dispute. The wisdom of settling the matter in January instead of waiting until June is debated each year during post-game festivities at the United Polish Club in Elyria.

Is this raw HD video visually worthy? Lorrie Cesarz decided to frame it with context and tell a story.

We struggled with two failed uploads to the MrElshMedia YouTube channel before noticing that the M2TS file format was for Blu-ray video. The HD video ended up in a MPEG-2 container and all was well.

Trying to keep up with the real-time web

Great post on the The Intention Web by Jeremiah Owyang.

Businesses that have a physical location like retail, events, or packaged goods can use this data to anticipate consumer demand. They may offer contextualized marketing, or increase or decrease inventory or store hours to accommodate. Don’t be surprised in the future and you walk into a store with your preferred items, meal, or drink already nicely packaged for you.

How not to get blindsided by social media

Hey, you screwed up. You can:

1. Ignore
2. Respond . . . somewhat
3. Respond with vigor

Even an old dog like David Letterman took some great advice and got way out in front of his recent bad news. Like him or not, agree with him or not, Letterman responded quickly with great vigor.

Here’s EA Sports responding with a fix for a ‘flaw’ that had Tiger Woods walking on water.

Have you seen any other Domino’s like examples of clutch social media relief pitching?

Ukrainian sand story is singularly special

Kseniya Simonova gets her message across by ‘performing’ amazing sand animation for Ukraine’s Got Talent.

Simonova recounts the German invasion and occupation of Ukraine in 1941, for which she won the 1,000,000 hryvnia prize (about $125,000 US).

Knowing that Germany conquered and occupied Ukraine between September 1941 and March helps to explain the audience’s tearful reactions to some of the images that seem obscure.

The Liveleak long version is worth the extra four minutes.

Seussical webmercial: Horton gets a head start

MrElshMedia’s webmercial for Sylvania (Ohio) Northview High School theatre program was edited in Sony Vegas. Add narration combined with our Audio-Technica AT2020 cardioid condenser microphone and Sony ACID Pro 4.0 and Horton, the Elephant and his mates use social media for a running start toward the upcoming production.

Seussical, The Musical, is coming to Sylvania  this November 6, 7, and 8. The Northview Theatre production is an amalgamation of many of Seuss’s most famous books. Northview put on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in 2008. For 2009 ticket information – http://northviewtheatre.org/ or Northview Theatre’s Facebook page.

Video beast: Feeding the appetite for raw media

Edit yourself for the Rice Chex or just eat the entire thing.

As news (paper and TV) producers debate the turn-around time on stories and best options for short-term multimedia, consider long and raw multimedia.

Are time-consuming Flash interactives and heavily-edited videos the best option for news multimedia?

Social media platforms and news sites provide a starting point and a foundation for growing an idea. The news story that produced a fountain of water cooler talk invisibly connected to the original source now breeds links and comment fields online than extend its publication date. But does the time invested in that news video produce the feedback depth that publishers crave?

Raw video as placeholder

Videographer Adam Westbrook commenting on short-term multimedia options mused about the “appetite for raw multimedia” including “unedited footage of press conferences, speeches, original documents and photographs.”

For stressed news staffs fighting the clock, raw video is the placeholder and advance to the edited news story.

Does anyone actually do this, right now? Delivering facts as images with no explanation or commentary is No Comment TV, an excellent a la carte selection of raw news views to supplement any news diet.

Palin and Obama hubbubs

The next step for journalists (look forward to the windy discussions on the Poynter Institute website) is to secure credibility with unedited content that accompanies a crafted news story. Sarah Palin and Barack Obama video hubbubs sparked by out­-of-context issues and apparent misquoting can be assuaged with two pieces of video content – edited and unedited, side-by-side. News sites will deal with bandwidth issues, or kick the can to the video platform king, YouTube.

Who has time to wade through unedited content? Scan readers won’t. They’ll let a few in the long tail burden themselves with the bigger picture by providing analysis, creating timelines and mashing the raw video content. But the complete picture would be available.