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I’ve just finished helping to judge the public and private sector web categories of the WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards.

Some really great sites made it onto the finalist list, and the input and fresh insights of overseas judges has again been fantastic. Thank you Erin and Annetta.

Entering your website in the Plain English Awards is a sure-fire way to show your clients and customers you really care about communicating clearly with them.

It’s one thing to say you do and quite another to put yourself forward for scrutiny. Big ups to everyone who entered for doing so – you are all helping to raise the standard of our online communication.

Winners will be announced in Wellington on Friday 3 September. Check the Plain English Awards website for details.

Hooray for Kristina Halvorson’s book Content Strategy for the Web. It left me inspired, affirmed, and with a pile of notes on process improvements that will help us to help our clients.

The book is an easily digestible introduction to the principles and practice of content strategy. There’s the case for content strategy – growing by the day – and a process for creating useful content that supports your business goals. Overarching ideas are supported by tangible deliverables and by the end of the book you see how it all fits together.

Because it’s an emerging practice, content strategy means many things to many people. One of the best things about this book coming out now is that it illustrates how all the pieces of the puzzle can come together.

Just as there’s no one-way to create information architecture or design, how you put your content together depends on many things.

On the surface content strategy is quite unsexy really – there’s a lot of documentation – but when done well it has the power to transform business performance, which has undeniable appeal. As Kristina asks early on, how can you afford not to have a content strategy?

The book is a great resource for inhouse and freelance content strategists and writers but it’s just as valuable for web project managers, information architects and UX people.

Why? If web design agencies seriously take this stuff onboard it’ll mean major changes to the way they approach their projects.

For the better, of course.

Content Strategy for the Web

Many big companies and government agencies still make the mistake of trying to write about themselves in ways that, they hope, will make them sound important.

I recently read the following passage – paraphrased to protect the innocent – on the website of one of New Zealand’s leading banks.

“Our mission is to ensure that we consistently deliver the ideal experience to our customers every time they touch us through our channels.”

Touch us through our channels? Say what?

If reading that excerpt makes you feel funny, a bit icky even, you’re not alone. It made me choke on my Gingernut, then chortle, then forward it to fellow word-nerds who all agreed it was a total shocker.

It’s a fantastic example of a corporation trying to come across all customer-focused, failing miserably, and achieving the exact opposite.

How would I have rewritten that passage to avoid the corporate cringe factor? Maybe something like this:

“We want our customers to enjoy fantastic service every time they do business with us.”

Play it straight, keep it simple and your readers will love you for it.

The best thing about the internet in my view, apart from Trade Me, is community. This week I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to content writers and strategists cogitating in Austin, Texas, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. I can’t turn them off!

Content writing has come so far from just being about ‘writing for the web’ and one SXSW discussion really rung true for me.

At Writeclick our days are full of considerations far beyond words on a web page. We look at business requirements, style guides, site maps, page schematics, brand books, SEO analytics, social media strategies and content plans. Not in that order and not all at once, but being a web writer today is more complex, and far more interesting, than it was five years ago. Hooray!

The discussion ‘Writing web content for a living’ highlights many of these issues and how different people work with them. If you’re an inhouse content writer, working for yourself or at an agency, it’s worth a listen.

SXSW discussion – Writing web content for a living

The plain English movement had a major boost last week when the Plain Writing bill passed in the US House, and will next be considered in the senate.

If it passes there, and the President ticks it off, it will become law for the US government’s public documents to be written clearly.

What a fantastic endorsement of everything Plain English stands for. It begs the question – do we need to get this formal about it in New Zealand?

I think it would be great if we followed suit but having said that there is already a lot of good public sector writing going on – look no further than the long list of quality entries in last year’s WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards.

What’s more of an issue for us Kiwis is how far our private sector is lagging behind in the clear communication stakes. Some are having a go and good on them – especially in the insurance, banking and finance sectors – but with nothing like the fervour found in government.

But prove me wrong! We’d love to see your shining examples of plain English – post them below.

In the meantime, you can follow the US bill as it makes its way to the top.

H.R 946 Plain Writing Act 2010