This March a panel of plain language specialists from all over the world will be going through nominated websites and print documents with a fine-tooth comb. Or is that fine-toothed comb? There’s nothing like the judging process to keep you on your toes – as I’ve found through being involved with New Zealand’s own WriteMark Plain English Awards.

One thing I like about being part of a judging  panel is it really challenges your assumptions and habits. It’s also a great opportunity to stand back and take a good look at what’s happening in your industry. There is much cross-checking, discussion, and questioning – and utter delight when you come across an entry that clearly nails it. I can’t wait.

Find out more about the ClearMark Awards

Optimal Usability specialise in design that makes things easy. Their web content was no exception.

The judges said:

“This site has a clear, straightforward purpose with highly targeted, engaging content. The services are explained very well and as a new user it was easy to find and follow every section.”

I should point out that because Writeclick had created content for the site, I had no say in judging Optimal Usability’s entry. It was assessed by Annetta Cheek – Chair of the Centre for Plain Language, and Marieke McCloskey – user experience specialist with Nielsen Norman Group (both USA).

Thanks again to Write for organising the awards, which continue to encourage more Kiwi businesses and public organisations to communicate clearly. As the Centre for Plain Language states on its website, plain English is a civil right. Too right.

Winners and finalists – WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards 2011
Centre for Plain Language
Optimal Usability

This year’s entries represent a diverse bunch:  lawyers, financial advisers, web designers, health and fitness people, HR types and the anticipated slew of government organisations.

They have all made a great effort to get their sites as clear and user friendly as possible. Hooray! Your clients will love you. Or at the very least they’ll like using your websites.

Cheers once more to Write Group for organising the awards, finding the wonderful overseas judges, rallying the entries and generally championing the plain English cause in New Zealand.  It’s an honour to be asked to help with the judging again.

Winners will be announced in the Listener on Saturday 19 November. Check them out and revel in the clarity.

WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards

This project has been different in every way to every other project we’ve ever worked on. And because of the rise of content strategy in New Zealand, I know it’s a harbinger of things to come.

Here’s what’s so good about this fabulous client, who I’ll name when their new site is up and you can judge the results of their on-to-it-ness yourself.

CONTENT STRATEGY
Before they got external web writers in (us) they did their content strategy. The results of this thinking are summarised in five short, sweet pages.

It’s all there: site and business objectives, audience groups, content structure/ high level information architecture, style and tone, how content will be created, published, governed and measured – and a timeline for what’s happening when.

This is the stuff we usually help people to work out, so we were delighted when they said they had not only made a start but had a complete content strategy!

CONTENT INVENTORY
Our client had drawn up a spreadsheet documenting source, writer, owner and reviewer for each page of the new site. We use content inventories all the time so it was great to have one ready to go. They’re a handy project management tool that shows what content is signed off, being reviewed or still to write.

CONTENT PAGE TABLES
Content inventories, or ‘content plans’, have been a regular feature of our projects since 2005 – page tables are another great planning tool. In this case, our client sent us a page table for every page. Half content template half page schematic it’s a beautiful thing.

Each page table briefly noted audience, purpose, key messages, keywords, source content and links for each page. Writing from a detailed content inventory is fast. Writing from page tables is faster. Thanks I’m sure to Brain Traffic for sharing this format and approach.

REALISTIC TIME FRAME
Perhaps the best thing about this project is that the timeframe was set by someone who has written a lot of content, and knows how long it takes to plan, write, review and publish.

This person has a lot of other things on their plate. But being proactive, realistic, and experienced, they got in touch with us a full six months before their site was due to launch. Stop it! Six months? Really.

We are writing the content in blocks so our client’s small team can review it in manageable bursts while juggling everything else they’ve got on. Stress free content. It’s the way of the future.

When the new site is up I’d like to post an interview with the smart cookie who drove this project from the inside, to get his perspective on the joys of starting a website redesign with content strategy.

He represents the new guard of online managers who are taking a strategic and systematic approach to their content because A) it just makes sense and B) they can’t afford not to.

Daniel is a content strategist at the bold and beautiful American ad agency Campbell Ewald. He nonchalantly tells us they’ve had a content strategy group for three or four years. Hear that New Zealand agencies?

He tells us ad copy doesn’t work online. True, but too many agencies in this country have been slow to catch up. Maybe tuning in to talks like this will help turn the tide.

Daniel worked as a content strategist for Chevrolet. His reflections on that project show how content strategy can work in practice alongside design, development, content creation and user experience, to ultimately drive sales through a large international site.

Not that it’s all about sales – whatever your site goals are, you need to be able to measure them. Metrics take centre stage in this enthralling little chat and Daniel connects the dots between analytics, user behaviour, content creation and the post-launch conundrum.

Campbell Ewald apparently do a lot of content strategy work for government agencies who are realising their behemoth sites packed with years of legacy content are in quite a state.

Metrics again come into play. ‘Time on site’ on these sorts of sites usually isn’t something to be proud of. That 15 minute visitor isn’t lapping up your content, they’re lost!

Bookmark the podcast – Kristina chews the fat each week with a new and infinitely interesting digital content person. Previous chats include Blake Eskin, Editor of the NewYorker.com, Peter Merholz, founding partner and CEO of Adaptive Path, and Ann Rockley, founder of the Intelligent Content Conference.

http://5by5.tv/contenttalks/

http://danieleizans.com/

The room was packed with plenty of government folk as well as a healthy swag from design agencies. It was an excellent day and I wanted to write it up Straight Away.

But then there was Christchurch (again) and Japan (no words) so my plans fell victim to the (bad) news. Oh yes and helping a client who could have really done with a content strategy.

Here is my belated account.

THE CONTENT PROBLEM
The morning started with the content problem – too much, too little, no planning, no accountability, no process, no goals … we all know it well, unfortunately …  and cut straight to how to tackle it.

THE CONTENT FIX
Regardless of the size or complexity of your website, there are five fundamentals to work through:

AUDIT  – What and how much content? And what internal and external factors affect it?
ASK – Why, what, how, for whom, by whom, with what, when, where, how often, what next?
ANALYSE – What you’ve got against what you need
ALIGN – Content to business goals
ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY – Who’s doing it? Who has a say?

SO HOW DO YOU DO CONTENT STRATEGY?
A lot of people were interested in the how. Do you have to do a full content strategy every time or only on big projects? What do content strategy deliverables look like, and are they just what we’re doing already with a new name or something different?

CONTENT STRATEGY DELIVERABLES
Depending on the project there is a huge list of potential content strategy deliverables. Kristina focused on:

* Content audit
A qualitative stock-take of what you’ve got. She made the point that for very large projects you don’t have to analyse the quality of the content on every single page – so if you’re dealing with 500+ pages it is enough to quantify what you have and to take a sample to get a sense of the quality.  The audit also looks at the ‘ecosystem’ your content lives in – the internal and external factors that may have a bearing on your content, like new product lines or competitor websites.

* Strategic foundation document
This defines the core content strategy (what you’re trying to do), success measures, and requires alignment with stakeholders and sign-off.

* Project plan
Detailed content specifications, timeline and budget.

SIMON SAYS: “CONTENT STRATEGY QUADRANT!”
No really, he does. Brain Traffic’s content strategy quadrant bears more than a passing resemblance to the Simon Says game and is a nice way to bring all the pieces together. It’s a circle with ‘core strategy’ in the middle, flanked by substance, structure, workflow and governance.

The four categories – substance, structure, workflow and governance – are used to organise the strategic foundation document as well as the detailed project plan. Pretty much everything can be housed under one of these headings.

THE STRATEGIC FOUNDATION DOCUMENT
When you do your strategic foundation doc, the ‘core strategy’ asks the vital questions like what does your content ecosystem look like? How are you going to measure your success? What are the risks and how are you going to mitigate them? Who are your stakeholders? What do you want your content to do and why? It provides key recommendations that relate directly to business objectives.

It also looks at the ‘substance’ of your content- things like key messages, audience, style and tone, and content providers. ‘Structure’ is about information architecture, formats, search and technical systems.

‘Workflow’ considers who does what, in what order and with what tools. ‘Governance’ asks what policies or guidelines will cover everyone’s bums, who makes decisions, and how to change the process if needed.

THE PROJECT PLAN
The four categories also provide structure for the detailed project plan, and are a logical extension of the strategic foundation document. Here ‘substance’ delves into message hierarchy, the content audit, gap analysis, content samples, curation guidelines and user generated content types.

‘Structure’ includes site maps, wireframes, page tables, taxonomies and metadata. ‘Workflow’ addresses the editorial calendar, staffing, CMS workflow recommendations and the content lifecycle.

‘Governance’ includes an exec summary of the content strategy (handy!), an editorial style guide, content policies and procedures, a governance board, and content KPI scorecard measures.

A SHOUT OUT FOR PAGE TABLES
Brain Traffic’s ‘page tables’ are a welcome addition to Writeclick’s content strategy arsenal.

A page table is a Word template that lays out the scope of each page, where source content is coming from, the format and any technical requirements, and the order of key messages on the page.

As well as being a very helpful writing tool I’m sure page tables will be appreciated by designers too.

FINAL THOUGHTS
This article is nearly 1,000 words. I wanted a summary!

It’s ironic that a discipline dedicated to bringing clarity to chaos is itself on the complex side. But maybe we should stop being surprised. Would we expect a neat and tidy summary of user experience design in one mouthful? Visual design or information architecture?

Kristina made the point that content is not a feature. It is an essential part of the user experience – a vital organ – dammit, the heart!  – without which there is no meaning, no conversation, no one watching, reading or contributing. It takes time, care and skill to create.

Thanks Kristina for stretching my brain and to Webstock for valuing content strategy and choosing such an ace presenter. Until next year …

But here we are in the second month of the Big Year and there’s little sign that New Zealand businesses are doing much to capitalise. Online anyway.

If your business depends on people finding or booking you online – especially from overseas – there’s a lot you can do to catch the attention of the expected hordes of international visitors. First though, look at the numbers:

• Last February there were 5400 Google searches worldwide for the term ‘NZ 2011’. Last month there were 74,000
• Searches for ‘Rugby world cup 2011 accommodation’ jumped from 1900 in February 2010 to 8100 last month
• ‘Rugby world cup wellington’ went from 210 to 1300, with similar rises in regional searches for Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin

The numbers aren’t surprising but they’re a reminder that if your business relies on the internet, now is the time to get clued up on the search words that could mean the difference between charging up the middle and watching from the sideline.

Top tips to get your content in shape for RWC:

KNOW YOUR NICHE
There’s no point adding ‘rugby world cup’ to your title tags and hoping for the best. Identify exactly who your target market is and draw up a list of keywords they might use to find the kind of thing you offer. Test and refine your list with Google’s keyword tool . If there’s a lot of competition it could pay to support your organic SEO efforts with a pay per click campaign.

For example, if you own an Irish pub in New Plymouth you might do well to target the Irish supporters who’ll be flooding in on September 11.

PLAN TO WIN
Apparently we’re a nation of procrastinators. Start a trend – get organised. Have an editorial calendar that marks out when you’re going to update your content, with which keywords, and make someone responsible so those updates actually happen.

And you’d be mad to ignore the growing power of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Go forth and mingle, but remember that content updates, regardless of where they appear, should always support your content strategy

LOCATION COUNTS
People coming from overseas, as well as New Zealanders travelling for games, are searching for accommodation, places to eat, things to do in particular places. Put your business on the map by taking out a free listing on Google Maps.

IS YOUR CONTENT REALLY THAT USEFUL?
There’ll be a lot of hype this year and most people don’t want a bar of it. The tricky thing is, when you look at your own content it can be hard to be objective.  Ask your clients and friends for honest feedback on what they like and don’t like about your website.

Take some time to click through your site and get rid of any extraneous or out of date content. And measure old content against your newly refined keywords. When you’ve got your house in order you’ll be much more confident about opening your doors to the world.

Should is a bad word but there are lots of reasons why I care if designers care. We work with designers a lot. We get a lot of work through them.  They’re inclined to wear nice shoes.

If I had a design company in New Zealand this year I’d keep an eye on content strategy. There is growing interest here and a torrential hoo-ha overseas, particularly in the United States, where content strategy meet-ups are popping up all over and more and more clients are asking for it.

Not just content audits, style guides and, if you’re lucky, an editorial calendar. The full monty: an all encompassing strategy covering content creation, governance, life cycle, marketing and metrics.

It sounds like a lot of extra time and cost but it’s not in the scheme of things. A good content strategy will save your web project time and money. It’ll make design and user testing easier. It will simply make your websites better.

It wouldn’t be January without some crystal ball gazing. This year will see content strategy come out of the closet – where it’s been trying on different outfits for a while – as a discipline and occupation in its own right. Replete with an army (okay maybe not an army, not yet, perhaps a rugby sized team in NZ) of experts ready to help businesses make the tough calls about their content.

Events like Kristina Halvorson’s content strategy workshop at Webstock will give existing converts new enthusiasm and open others’ eyes to the potential benefits of making content strategy the normal starting point in the design process.

There’s a lot of discussion going on as people working with web content contribute to the constant refining of the practice of content strategy.

Listen in or have your say:
Google’s content strategy group
LinkedIn content strategy group

See you all next year. Happy holidays!

It also means public servants across the US will be signing up for plain English writing training in droves. I feel a sabbatical in New York coming on …

The bill has been in development for some time and at its final reading passed in the US House of Representatives with a vote of 341-82. What’s with the 82? The senate on the other hand voted unanimously in favour. That’s more like it!

The bill aims to increase government accountability and to save the public time and money. It will have a positive effect on things like tax returns, college applications and veterans’ administration forms.

Plain English in New Zealand’s public sector is pretty well entrenched in principle – not always in practice – but we haven’t gone as far as making it the law. Yet.

The wonderful lobby group Plain English Power is pushing for a new law requiring all government communication to be written in plain English.

As Rachel Hunter once said plainly and memorably, it won’t happen overnight but it will happen!

To show your support, get on the case and join Plain English Power