Content Planning for and Launching a Responsive Site: An Editor’s Perspective

By Jennifer Ford

Launching a new website presents a host of concerns. First, what kind of site does your audience need? Is it a store? Is it a blog with regularly published news? The most important consideration is your intended audience and researching what they need and trying to create it.

As a web editor for a healthcare publisher, I was tasked with launching a new web-based clinical journal for healthcare providers. Because I have done my research I know that my intended audience is using tablets and mobile devices as much if not more than a desktop, and more than the general public. So, I knew from the start I wanted this new site to be responsive. One consideration you need to make when planning for a responsive site is keeping the site design simple because website elements shift and reform as the size of the screen decreases. You don’t want a lot of drop-down menus and you don’t want users to have to click more than a couple of times to get to where they want to go. Another thing to remember is that as the display of your site shrinks to fit the size of the screen that displays it, certain items may “disappear,” like images or ads.

Starting from scratch, I wrote a business plan for my publisher that detailed my reasoning and a structure for the new responsive site. Here I’ll share some of the resources I used to create the plan.

First, I went to fellow Web Editors contributor Gazalla Gaya’s site, “Web Content Blog.” In one very helpful post, Gazalla details some tips for planning a site launch using a content map. The resource she suggested for creating a content map is the slideshare presentation on web content strategy by Joe Pulizzi from Content Marketing Institute. To build a content map, identify the goals of the owner of the site and the goals of the readers, and prioritize your content based on this. My plan described my mission statement, my audience, the goals of my readers, the goals of our business. It was helpful to see the way reader and publisher goals overlapped or didn’t when I built the content goal map.

Website wireframe built with Google Drawings.

Then I used the content map to create a wireframe of the site that showed the menus and essential areas of the site. I presented it to our artists and e-media team and they were able to translate it into a responsive site design. It took a lot of guesswork out of what should go where on the site and helped make my reasoning clear to everyone involved. I also was able to plan for a lightweight site design with a limited number of menu items and site areas that would easily resize to various screen sizes and form factors. The web and design team created mockups of several different screen size displays and we made tweaks based on them. We launched the site in September and have already had great feedback from readers.

If you take just one thing away from this, it should be this: When planning a site launch, do research about your audience and be deliberate in creating a site plan that is tailored to their needs. And giving readers compelling content will give you the added bonus of appealing to the Google Hummingbird algorithm, which, to steal a page from a Website Magazine webinar on SEO, values content that “delights humans.”

Time to Revisit Your Content Strategy?

by Alan Eggleston

Happy New Year! The change in calendar year is often the trigger to revisit your content calendar and your whole content strategy. If January or February is a down time in your organization, this is a perfect time to do one.

Does your current content work?

Photo by Victor1558 with Creative Commons license.

Many web editors often do a sweep of their content at this time and decide any big changes. This may happen at other times of the year or more often than once a year, such as at change in fiscal calendar or concurrent with annual share holder meetings, but often New Years is a convenient trigger. Maybe now is when you decide when that time should be and plan for it.

A more useful strategy is to revisit your analytics at least quarterly and adjust your content strategy based on site performance. Online publishing is amazing for its quick turnaround –  make that work for you.

What does your data tell you?

A deciding factor for changes in content direction is website performance. Take a look at analytics and decide what your stats are telling you – is your current content working and thus worth continuing, or do the numbers tell you that readers want something different? Are visits down or perhaps never really up in the first place? Do visitors stick around or do they come in and get out quickly? Do they visit a lot of pages per visit or do they hit where they enter and leave? Do they arrive at the home page or come in to the site in-depth? Where do searches bring visitors and what do they do when they arrive? Are purchases up? Have you experienced growth in any of those numbers? Analytics can provide you with a ton of great strategic information.

What is your search performance?

Another decision, and one where many web editors historically have been weak, is about search performance. How does your site do in a search? How many of your visits are from searches and how many from people who simply know how to find you? What search terms are they using, and are they the search terms you were expecting (and upon which you base your optimization strategy)? Which search engines are driving the most traffic to you? How many come to you by outside links or by social media and what does that say about your link and social media strategies? What is your search strategy and is it working (do a search audit to find out), or should you rethink that as well? If you don’t have a search strategy – a strategy to improve how your site is found in a search – now is the time to start working on one.

Search performance is often tied to search engine policy. Have you read and followed search engine guidelines or are you unwittingly running afoul of their rules and being punished for it?

What are the search engines telling you?

If there’s any possibility your site isn’t performing well in a search – and, thus, not driving traffic to you – it is worth your time and energy to register for and use search engine webmaster tools. First determine which search engines are driving the most traffic to your site. It may not be Google like you think. However, Google in particular will provide you a lot of feedback if your site is doing something wrong – if they can’t index your pages, for instance; if you have troublesome links; if you aren’t measuring up to their standards. And Google will often suggest changes to help you meet their needs and allow you to resubmit your site for indexing (a “reconsideration request“). If they’re penalizing you, finding out why and doing something about it is a great benefit. Explore the other search engine webmaster tool sites to see what they can tell you and help you fix if they are key to your search strategy.

Google introduced major changes to its algorithm the past couple of years that may have affected your search performance. Are you aware of them and how running afoul of them could affect your site performance?

• Google Panda* – filtered for poor quality content such as unreasonable duplicate content.

• Google Penguin* – filtered for spam content such as poor quality links.

• Google Hummingbird – entirely rethinks search to add nuance, handle questions, and adjust for mobile search.

*Panda and Penguin were folded into Hummingbird.

Panda could affect your search performance if you run a lot of duplicate content or if your content is of little value in Google’s eyes. Google is OK with duplicate content for globalized sites where different versions of a site contain regionalized versions of the same content. But to aid sites, they introduced the “canonical tag” for URLs to distinguish original content.

Penguin could affect your search performance if your content contains low quality links, including link farms or doorway pages and spammy content and links in your comments sections, such as in blogs or news sections.

If any of these algorithms may have dampened your search performance, now is a good time to rethink how to revise your content to remove the penalties. For instance:

• More actively administer blog comments to eliminate comment spam, which is rampant.
• Recode content to add the canonical tag for original content.
• Make sure writers create only original content and that editors filter for duplicate content (run a search on segments of content to look for duplicates).
• Eliminate gratuitous link trading and external links that don’t make sense for your content.
• Revise major current content to build more nuance to improve search performance.
• Strategize how to build nuance into your new pages to improve search performance.
• Ensure your site is designed to handle mobile, which Google has also said is now important.

Growth is about improving the search

Today, content is about more than providing interesting text on a page for readers. It’s also about how you attract readers to your page and sustain readership. It’s as much about how you build the page and work with search engines as it is about publishing itself. As you rethink your content calendar – now, at New Years, or at any other time of the year – think about how you bring the reader to you.

Authority – How to Build it into Your Site

by Alan Eggleston

As a website owner or builder, you are trying to work with three search algorithms created to thwart hacking of search engines: Google’s Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird. Your best strategy is to try to build more authority into your site, which works with the best sides of all three of these algorithms. According to Google, to build authority means to build quality.

Defining Authority

Photo: Friends of Europe on Flickr, Creative Commons license. Photo was edited from original.

What is “authority”? Think about authority in general: An authority is someone you trust to give you reliable information, a source you go to for good information. It’s the same on the Internet. When search engines assign authority to a website, it’s someone they feel provides solid, reliable, verifiable, unique, factual information. They tend to be news or media (who report firsthand on events or people), reference sources (who list facts rather than opinions), universities or other institutions of higher learning (who catalog histories, facts, reports, or research), and original sources (who report on research). In business, they tend to be brands (who own patents and trademarks, establishing their ownership of technology).

Unless your website is among these, how do you build authority in your own right?

Building Authority

Look at what most of these authority sites do in garnering or protecting their authority: They publish volume or quantity, reliability or quality, unique information and usually first-of-a-kind, factual information or opinion based on unique research, verifiable works with rugged footnoting, featuring usually named and tested contributors and online, vigorous linking. You can do this, too.

Volume: The more you publish the more variety you are likely to have and the better the indexing you are likely to have. Volume can be number of pages, but also length of pages. Doing both would be better. Number of pages creates depth of site, length of pages creates depth of content, and search engines like both.

Reliability: Anyone can write but only authority figures write quality content that readers return to time and again. Readers “like” quality articles promoted on Facebook, give them “1+” on Google+, “RT” on Twitter, and – most important – link to them on their blogs, in forums, and in comments sections. Write good content that others can’t find anywhere else and watch readers pass it along.

Unique: The Internet is full of duplicate articles, although less so since Panda came along (Google estimates 25-30% of content is duplicate). Still, lesser quality writers can’t pass up the desire to duplicate success and repeat what works for others – sometimes even plagiarizing works. Blogs are full of repeat material. Authority figures write their own and write on topics first. Break new ground on the topics you cover!

Facts: The Web is full of opinion and fluff. Authority figures write facts or opinion based around their unique research, research their unique position, or their knowledge makes their opinion valuable. So either bring new light to facts or discover new facts to bring new light to your readers. Use facts to your advantage to put them to your reader’s advantage. If your site sells products, create new ways to look at products using facts.

Links: A lot of sites use links merely to tap the ranking strength of the links. Go another step better and add authority to your site by citing sources or providing your reader with more information. This might be less useful for you on a higher-level sales page than on a lower-level information page.

As an authority, you want others to link to you. You still need to be careful that links to you and that to whom you link aren’t garbage links, but on the whole, quality links are good and help build authority. The more authority your site has, the easier it should be to encourage links, but promoting them should still be part of your strategy – just avoid doorway offers.

White papers: Go into depth and show your knowledge on a topic by writing a white paper on your area (or areas) of expertise. Caution: These need to be well done, far above fluff or promotional pieces. Similar to white papers are studies, poll examinations, definitions, and more rigorous research papers that provide value to your reader and establish your authority in the subject.

Leadership: Be the leader in whatever community you find yourself. If you have a website and can add a blog to take stands or create growth in that community, that’s another way of building authority. If as a website editor or publisher you can rally employees who are “community” leaders into writing posts for the website (for instance, one of your R&D techs or scientists could write information pieces; nursing or health care supervisors could write tip articles; or real estate staff could write local articles to help people moving to the area) that could help establish authority for your website.

Promotional writing: Promoting your website on social media or in professional or other industry journal websites could also help build authority, including adding links to pages in forums, blogs, on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, and on Quora (perhaps address a question on your website and then refer to it in an answer on Quora).

Establishing authority, thus, means becoming an authority and with that producing quality content. It can be hard work, but it will be worth it in the ranking power you will build.

Content Strategy for Higher Ed: Tips from Confab

by Rebecca Del Giudice

On November 11-12, 2013, Confab: Higher Ed took place in Atlanta. This was the first time that Confab, a content strategy conference founded by well-known content strategy expert Kristina Halvorson, held a session focused on a particular industry.

While I did not attend Confab, I did sit in on a great recap session put together by the folks at Meet Content, a web firm that specializes in content strategy for higher education. At the recap session, some of the people who had presented at the conference shared summaries of their own talks and what they had heard from others. There were also several people who had attended the conference and gave their views on the most important takeaways.

As someone who provides content strategy and editorial support to higher education clients (among others), I found the session very helpful. Here are five themes that emerged:

Empathy: One of the big themes of the conference, and one that every editor can relate to, was empathy. As Lisa Maria Martin, User Experience & Information Architecture Specialist at The George Washington University, said in her talk, “People make content. And people have feelings.”

The theme of empathy resonated with many of the recappers. Empathy means understanding your audience’s needs, and it also means finding ways to work with your content owners (in the case of higher ed, this could be everyone from the dean’s office and alumni relations to faculty and students, etc.) Sometimes in our day-to-day struggles with making and maintaining great web experiences, we forget to look at our work from others’ point of view. That could mean remembering to value your business partners (who may not understand what you do, but who contribute institutional and academic knowledge). Or it might mean taking a step back and thinking about how your latest web page or social media post looks to students, and whether or not it is meeting their needs. Staying in our silos with our blinders on does not allow us to grow and to help our audience get the information they need in the best possible ways.

The mobile mandate: Many of the recappers, especially Jenny MacIntosh of Boston University,  talked about the impact of Karen McGrane’s talk. McGrane, the author of an influential book on mobile content strategy, mentioned some striking statistics from the Pew Internet survey:

• 35% of Americans still have no internet access at home
• 20% of Americans have no internet access at all
• 91% of Americans have a cellphone, and
• 63% of Americans are using a smartphone

What does this mean for editors? It means we must champion mobile. The fact that a significant percentage of Americans, including prospective students, can only access our content via their phones, provides a renewed sense of urgency to ensure that our websites are easy to view and engage with on mobile.

Reuse and transmedia storytelling: The concept of COPE (create once, publish everywhere) resonated with Confab attendees. It is more important than ever in this era of shrinking budgets and understaffed departments to leverage content in as many ways as possible. But with this idea comes the equally critical idea that you should be prepared to meet your audience where they are. This means determining what stories you want to tell and making sure those stories can be told across multiple channels, not just where your university is comfortable or has an existing presence. One example came from Ma’ayan Plaut from Oberlin College. In her Confab talk, she mentioned that in one case she had posted an event to Buzzfeed instead of to Oberlin’s social media accounts, because she knew that was where her target audience was. 

The idea of transmedia storytelling takes COPE a step farther. It asks you to leverage the same story on different platforms, but also to take into account that you may tell different parts of the same story and the platform determines what you highlight. For example, you might have created a series of alumni profiles that includes interactive video, still photos, and text with pull quotes. You may decide to pin the pull quotes on Pinterest, post the still photos to Instagram, and highlight the interactive videos on Vine, and you might put all of the content on your website. For each channel, take into account how your audience engages with you and what parts of the story will resonate the most.

Speak in a language your audience understands. This one is near and dear to most editors, and in higher ed it’s no different. We struggle with overly wordy, non-web friendly text that our colleagues want to post on the website. Remember the empathy theme and look for ways to help your colleagues understand why it’s important to use clear, easy-to-understand language and avoid jargon. Jargon will turn off prospective students, alumni, and others who visit your site. Jargon is another example of lack of empathy, because it is as if you don’t care that your audience doesn’t understand what you’re saying. One recapper recalled a great suggestion: look through your analytics and search logs to see what terms site visitors are using. Do those terms match up with the vocabulary you’re using on your website?

Make students the hero of your content. As an editor in higher ed, you should ensure that the content you review puts the spotlight on students, not the college, whenever possible. There is a natural tendency to make the university the hero in an effort to promote your school to outsiders. But showcasing your amazing students is the right way not only to support their achievements, but also to show how much students can thrive at your institution.

For more on the Confab Higher Ed event, check out Meet Content’s recaps and the Confab site.

Why Keywords Still Matter

by Alan Eggleston

“Keywords are dead,” scream the headlines. If you believe the screamers, keywords went the way of the buggy whip and the BetaMax. Not so, and I’ll tell you why.

Photo: Phillip Stewart on Flickr, Creative Commons license.

At the heart of every search is a keyword. Or a couple of keywords. Or a string of keywords. But even at the heart of a keyword string is still a keyword. Every search begins with a kernel concept of what the searcher is looking for – the keyword, even if someone searches in the form of a question or asks by voice instead of by keyboard. “Restaurant.” “Chevrolet.” “Tacos.” “Book.” The search widens as the topic narrows to “a” restaurant or “a model” of Chevrolet or “a kind of” taco, so the keyword string better defines the search. It may be a universal search or the string may localize.

As a content provider, you still need to decide the overarching keyword and keyword string that defines your content. Then you need to optimize your page for it so – whether as a couple of keywords or a string or a question – a searcher can find your page. That should form the basis of your page title, meta description, H1 headline, some anchor text for links, and so on. More on meta tags in a moment…

Google would say, you write the content and we will decide the keyword string and where you place in any particular search in meeting that searcher’s needs. Content providers have been so concerned with making a top ranking, they have kept trying to rig the system to rank instead of trying to provide great content. The result is Google Hummingbird. Today, Hummingbird simplifies the search by looking at your content and finding nuance for the keyword string. But even with that nuance added in, you still need to begin with the keyword and keyword string. Working diligently with keywords gives you control of your content – not working with them gives the control over to your competitors.

What Do I Mean, “Optimize” for the Keyword?

What does it mean to optimize the page for your keyword? Well, for one thing, it doesn’t mean repeating the same keyword over and over again – keyword stuffing. That doesn’t work anymore. It means creating content that better defines what you mean when you write about that keyword. It means varying the words you use in your content to establish the nuance that supports the meaning behind your keyword. It means building links and anchor text that also add nuance through connecting to meaningful content – on your site and off-site.

So, what is different for keywords since the introduction of Hummingbird? Not much, it turns out. It is much harder to simply stuff a page with keywords, especially since Google killed off its free keyword tool and keyword reporting program. However, it hasn’t reduced your need as a publisher, editor, or writer to know your audience and reader and vary your keyword vocabulary. Google does offer the keyword planning tool as part of its AdWords program, and it allows you to use it free even if you don’t advertise (it says). And there are keyword tools on Bing and Yahoo, which are just as useful for defining keyword use. Furthermore, there are other “free” keyword tools (also this one and this one), meaning you get to use them free for a limited time – so use them wisely and use them sparingly.

How to Plan for Keywords

How would I plan for keywords today in the Hummingbird era? I would still plan pages around a keyword as before, but instead of amping up one keyword I would create nuance for it building quality content and quality links with useful synonymous keyword derivatives. For instance, if my site was about Chevrolets, I’d build in content about the Chevy, the Malibu, the Cavalier, the Impala, the sedan, the SUV, the car, the automobile, and so on. I would have a content-rich site that included not just sell copy about what’s on my lot and the service department, but also about the dealership, the company, GM, and the history of the brand. I’d also link to Chevy enthusiast groups and have a blog and keyword-rich social media links. Finally, I would have an FAQ page that addressed questions people might ask online trying to find my site.

How to Use Keywords in Anchor Text

A few words about keywords in link anchor text: Google has said it will penalize for using only keywords in links. They want you to vary the anchor text for links. For example, instead of always using “Google” as the anchor text for a link to the Google site, they’d like you to use more generalized words like “search engine” or “leader in search” or “did a search on such and such” or whatever words would fit the context of the link. The same would go for your site – also for link URLs. Don’t always use the home page of a site – go deeper into the site. Instead of www.google.com, go for www.google.com/about for instance, depending on the context.

How to Use Keywords in Meta Tags

I’ve heard suggestions that to optimize for Hummingbird you should write page titles as statements. I’m not sold on that. A page title functions much as a subject heading in your local library book catalog. The page title is where the keyword is very important and that the root keyword needs to stick out. Everything else has to build the nuance around it. Furthermore, search engines limit the number of words/characters you can have in a page title, so you shouldn’t waste those limited elements on useless statement words. I would focus on the keyword in the page title, then work with some nuanced keywords in the meta description, headlines, and especially in the body text and links. The meta description needs to be a statement but also has a word or character limit (I have found success with a 150 character and spaces limit) – again, be efficient with keywords and nuance-building words.

So, do keywords still matter? They sure do!

Are they harder to work with? Most likely, but even so you’re going to get more bang for your search if you don’t panic and optimize efficiently.

Will Google change the game again? Of course! But that’s what makes our work so interesting.

How Would You Design a Content Management System?

By Cathy Hodson

What is a content management system (CMS)? According to Wikipedia, “A Content Management System (CMS) is a computer program that allows publishing, editing and modifying content as well as maintenance from a central interface. Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual steps or an automated cascade. CMSs have been available since the late 1990s.”

In other words, a CMS allows multiple content creators (frequently called “authors”), a managed workflow (approval process), and either automated or manual features.

I have experience with two content management systems: Ektron and SharePoint. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. I have also kicked the tires on other CMSs, and they too have the good, the bad and the ugly. Recently I asked the members of the Web Editors group, “If you could design/develop your own content management system, which features would be ‘must haves’?

Must Have Features
The responses were interesting. J.D. desired more project management features, “The CMS should know that nothing goes public until an assignment of copyright agreement has been executed.”

He also recommended staging features, workflow integration (“you should get a view of works in progress”) and annotation, in particular, fact checking and documenting the fact checking.

Barbara wanted “True WYSIWYG. Period.”

Ken wanted to “work on a system that has all the parts that were promised. Twice this week I’ve been told…’Oh, that’s scheduled for the next version.'”

Control
If you were designing your own content management system, which features would you want to include? For me, there are a few, and they have to do with control. Being able to control the style (rules and guidelines used for consistency across a website) within the CMS so authors not well versed in your company’s or your website’s style cannot stray from it. Another feature I’d like would be to have the HTML view of your content be color coded, such as in Dreamweaver. It makes it easier to pick things out when you’re looking for something rather than having everything in black type on a white background. In Dreamweaver, if there’s a problem in the code, the color coding stops where the problem is so you can find where the snarl is a little easier also. (If you’re colorblind, however, that may not be as effective.) It would also be nice to be able to use a global replace in the HTML view.

There are times when it seems that developers of content management systems don’t understand what a content editor or author does. They are not aware of the publishing process that a writer or editor goes through in order to add or maintain content on the website. This disconnect can be a major issue at times. For instance, when my company was going through its most recent redesign, we expressed our desire to the developers that, as all content funneled to me for approval, I needed to be able to see what had changed on each page. I needed a redlined version, in other words. Our company, at the time, had several thousands of web pages. There was no way I could possibly memorize each page and instantly recognized what an author had changed in an existing page when it came to me for approval. Because we have such a high volume of content, I didn’t have time to dig through everything on every page that was submitted to me to try and figure out what the author had changed. Had they deleted any paragraphs? Had they linked to something new? Was there an update to the photos? It would be helpful to see only what had changed so that I could review those changes and then send the page on its way to the website, or back to the author for more work. There was great puzzlement on the developers’ part, not understanding why this was so critical. We finally got across to them why it was so necessary, and were able to implement a customized tool that allowed me to see what an author had done to a page.

Gibberish code
About the time we were discussing this topic, I received an email newsletter, Fierce Content Management, and read the Editor’s Corner: “Content Management Systems drive me nuts!” by Ron Miller. I read with particular interest, “Last week for instance, I tried to drop in some code for the content marketing infographic we published. Typically, it’s like dropping in the code for embedding a YouTube video. You access the source code, paste the embed code, and presto, you have an infographic in your post. But lately our CMS has decided to spontaneously add gibberish to the infographic embed code making it virtually useless and forcing my co-worker, Emily Poe, to have the added work of dropping it in as an image instead.”

That hit home with me, as our CMS also will add gibberish when our authors copy and paste from a Microsoft Word file. Sensing a kindred spirit, I contacted Ron and asked him for his “must have” features. He sent the lists below:

Back End:

• Make sure it supports multiple writers easily.
• Make sure it’s easy to update the CMS. (WordPress is drop-dead easy).
• Make sure you set up a good set of tags ahead of time.
• Leave a place for the writer to include a one or two sentence excerpt and encourage writers to create this for you.
• Make sure it’s easy to add alt text to your photos (very important for disabled community).
• Make sure it’s easy to embed content like video and inforgraphics (easy access to HTML code)
• Make sure it’s easy to add and edit photos. (visuals are really important in my view).
• See if you can find a plug in for creating a weekly newsletter and linking it to a mailing list app like MailChimp.

Front End:

• Accessible contact info.
• Some sort of comment security like Disquus. Doesn’t prevent morons, but helps.
• Prominent search box.
• Resources like white papers and ebooks.
• Include all your site’s social media info
• Make it easy to subscribe
• Make it drop-dead easy to share across all major social networks.
• Easy to copy and paste text from outside sources and maintain style

None of the CMSs will be perfect. They all have their quirks, and web editors must find work-arounds and solutions we can live with. But it sure would be nice if we could design our own, or at least catch the ear of the developers and have them truly understand what our needs are. Anyone?

Next time: Editor vs. Programmer

Disaster Planning for Editors, Part I

When you think about disasters, you probably think of hurricanes, earthquakes, or acts of terrorism. You probably don’t think of editing! But those of us who edit websites, applications, and social media should have a strategy for when disaster strikes.

If you live in an area that’s prone to weather events or earthquakes, you probably already know what you’re supposed to do to protect yourself. You should have a first aid kit and potable water, food for your family and pets, etc. If disaster hits when you’re at work, you likely know where you are supposed to go if your building is evacuated. But what if the disaster takes down your servers or makes your website incredibly slow? Your IT department probably has a plan for data recovery and server backup, but do you have a plan for communicating with your customers?

Here are some ways you can help your team prepare for a disaster well before anything happens.

• Know what your most business-critical channels are. Which website or application needs to be restored first? What social media channel has the most followers/fans so you can prioritize your messaging?
• Make sure everyone has a backup, including you. If an unforeseen event impacts your team’s availability, you should have a designated team ready and waiting to step in.
• Distribute an emergency contact list. Each staff member should have an emergency contact list (include cell or home phone numbers and home email addresses).
• Secure remote access for critical team members. Make sure your fellow web editors, content managers, and developers have remote access to your content management system so they can update the website from home (or a designated work space, if your company has a back-up work location) if needed. Have your team test out their remote access to make sure it works, especially if they are using home computers.
• Build helpful error pages. This is good usability practice, but it becomes critical when your website is inaccessible. Don’t use the dreaded  “404” error page. Work with your developers to find out what the experience will look like from a user perspective when all your servers go down. Is there a way they can ensure your audience sees a custom message from your company? Create an error page that includes helpful links to other applications that might still be accessible and phone numbers for customer service. Include links to your social media sites as well, because if the disaster has only affected certain areas and is not widespread, you will likely still have access to your social media accounts and can update your customers through those channels.
• Determine who will need to approve emergency messaging. When something unforeseen happens, your company will likely want or need to issue a statement. This could mean that people who don’t normally approve your content will now be approvers. Make sure you know who needs to sign off on any emergency statements instead of trying to figure it out in the midst of chaos. (Find out who the back-up approvers are as well, in case the designated approvers are not available.)
• Be supportive and helpful. If there is a national disaster that does not impact you directly but your company wants to comment on it, make sure your messaging is nothing but helpful and empathetic. Some companies have made the mistake of using a tragic event to promote their product (for example, American Apparel encouraged customers “stuck inside” during Hurricane Sandy to use the time to shop their website; Epicurious suggested that customers try their cranberry scone recipe in response to the Boston Marathon bombing). It’s far better to say nothing than to offend people or take advantage of a tragic situation.
• Know which reputable charities your company supports. If customers might look to you for suggestions on what they can do to help, make sure you give them accurate information. Know your company’s stance on charities before a tragedy happens and do your research so you don’t direct your customers to an organization you don’t know anything about.
• Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What questions would your customer have for your company in the event of a disaster? If your company provides an essential product or service, what expectations might customers have about your availability during or immediately after a disaster? Any messaging you craft should address these expectations.
• Review your content with the disaster in mind. Rethink your existing and planned content in light of the event that has occurred. Is there anything on your website now that you should remove or edit to reflect what has happened (either from a factual or empathetic standpoint)? Or is there content you have scheduled that you need to postpone or scrap altogether?  For example, say you were planning a series of travel articles about the Gulf Coast, but the Gulf was just struck by a deadly hurricane. You will likely want to postpone that series until the coast has recovered from the damage. (Don’t forget pre-scheduled email newsletters, partner content that you might not directly control, and quarterly or monthly communications will need to be reviewed too.)

In my August post, I’ll review how editors can help plan for a very different kind of event: the public relations disaster.

“Content Strategy for the Web” – Key Points

by Alison Lueders, Great Green Editing

My summer reading tends toward mysteries – Dan Brown’s “Inferno” – that sort of thing, But this month I read Kristina Halvorson’s “Content Strategy for the Web.” Ideally web editing occurs within the context of a content strategy. Here are some key points to ponder while you sip that cool lemonade or iced tea.

Some definitions

We don’t create content for its own sake. It usually exists to meet some organizational objective.

According to Halvorson, “Content is what the user came to read, learn, see or experience.” And content strategy does several things:

• “defines how you are going to use content to meet business objectives
• guides decisions about content throughout its lifecycle
• sets benchmarks against which to measure the success of your content”

Content strategy crosses disciplines, including:

• messaging and branding
• web writing
• information architecture
• SEO
• metadata strategy
• content management strategy

Sound complicated? It is, but Halvorson exhorts us to “call it what you want – just get it done.”

Web writing – “a whole lot more than smart copywriting”

Halvorson describes web writing as “the practice of writing useful, usable content specifically intended for delivery online. This is a whole lot more than smart copywriting. An effective web writer must:

• understand the basics of usability design
• be able to translate information architecture documents
• write effective metadata
• manage an ever-changing content inventory”

I hadn’t seen this distinction expressed quite like this, but I found it helpful.

Developing a content strategy

The book describes the steps involved in developing a content strategy. While these can flex significantly in practice, the basics include:

• stakeholder alignment – getting key people to support your content efforts
• audit – identifying what content you currently have
• analysis – understanding the world in which your content lives
• core strategy – setting the long-term direction for all your content initiatives
• content – defining the substance, structure, workflow and governance of your content

People

It’s telling that the last 4 chapters of the books discuss “people issues” – from content job descriptions to governance approaches to ways to pitch content efforts to upper management.

In my experience, it’s not developing the content or implementing the technology that’s the biggest challenge. It’s managing the people issues.

Adaptive content – what does it mean for web editing?

In discussing the future of content, the book makes the point that “we need to start thinking about content as something that lives beyond a particular publishing platform.” So true. As web editors, is our work really confined to one platform? Or is our focus increasingly on content, regardless of form?

Bottom line: The book sums up the importance of content this way: “Better content means better business.” I really believe that. The book does a great job of explaining why this “no-brainer” idea is both important to understand – and really hard to do right.

What books about web writing and related topics do you read? Share your favorites here!

Do It Well: Addressing the Mobile Market

By Cathy Hodson

In a recent webinar on Responsive, Adaptive and Progressive website design that I sat in on, Bill Cava, the “chief evangelist” of Ektron, said that the proliferation of mobile devices is disrupting many businesses. He gave the examples of the newspaper business, which has traditionally been a print business but is and has been transitioning toward delivery of online and mobile content; and cameras – why would anyone want a standalone camera any more when you can snap an arguably good photo with your phone? Professional photographers might disagree with that, but Cava went on to say that it is predicted that there will be one BILLION smartphones in the world by 2016. If our heads haven’t already exploded from information overload, that is.

The mobile invasion
If you haven’t begun looking at how to address the mobile device market with your website and communication plans, you need to. According to a recent Pew Research study on smartphones, 56 percent of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, with Android and iPhone owners accounting for half of the cell phone user population. In another recent Pew study on tablet usage, the researchers found that tablet adoption has almost doubled over the past year. “For the first time, a third (34 percent) of American adults now own a tablet computer, including almost half (49 percent) of those in their later thirties and early forties and a majority (56 percent) of those in higher income households.”

There are still hold outs. Maybe you know some of them. According to Pew, one third (35 percent) have some other kind of cell phone that is not a smartphone, and the remaining nine percent of Americans do not own a cell phone at all. So some people do still have a life.

Pew goes on to say that “ownership is particularly high among younger adults, especially those in their twenties and thirties (although a majority of Americans in their mid-forties through mid-fifties are now smartphone adopters).” Eighteen percent of Americans age 65 and older now own a smartphone, compared with 13 percent in February 2012.

Tablets Skew A Little Older
Tablets, on the other hand, also according to Pew Internet Research, skew a little older than the smartphone market. “Unlike smartphones, which are most popular with younger adults ages 18-34, we see the highest rates of tablet ownership among adults in their late thirties and early forties. In fact, almost half (49 percent) of adults ages 35-44 now own a tablet computer, significantly more than any other age group. Adults ages 65 and older, on the other hand, are less likely to own a tablet (18 percent) than younger age groups.”

How much mobiletraffic?
For my company, a nursing association, mobile traffic now accounts for 20 percent of the traffic that comes to our website. We implemented responsive design across our website in May, and we are looking forward to seeing how this helps our traffic numbers, particularly during our Annual Meeting in August.

Mobile design is a challenge for everyone involved in delivering content. Responsive design is one solution – one website catering to many devices. There are other solutions out there, and it is up to each company to decide what is best for their needs. If your company has not begun to consider addressing the mobile market, I suggest you get moving. The Information Superhighway continues to move at the speed of light. Don’t get left behind.

Why You Should Write for Us

by Alan Eggleston

We need more editor writers for this blog. It’s not that you don’t have anything else to do, but you do have things to share as an editor or as a writer for editors.

Photo: Rusty Clark, creative commons license

You may have things to say that are difficult to share elsewhere that can be addressed on a professional blog. You may have ideas that have nothing to do with your work or that won’t work for your organization but could work elsewhere. You may just have a wealth of experience and you want to pay back to the profession. All these are great reasons to write for the Web Editors Blog.

So why not sign up for the Web Editors Group on LinkedIn and then the Web Editors Blog Project subgroup and let us know you’re interested in contributing? We will let you know what to do from there.

What’s in it for you

There are lots of reasons this would be good for you.

Networking. For instance, executive coaches often suggest joining professional organizations and networking through them. Writing for the Web Editors Blog will get your name out in front of all the Web Editors Group Members as often as you publish an article. (We post the article on the Group page, too.)

Professional Resource. Just as you would refer and link to your LinkedIn profile as a professional resource, each article becomes a linkable resource both to you personally and, potentially, to your organization. If you have a personal blog, a Facebook fan page or Google Plus brand page, or a Twitter business page, you can link to each article as you publish, also. Why not set up a search under your name on the blog and create a link to that for any of your pages as well? Of course, you can link your article byline to any of your pages as well.

You may set up a byline to link to Google Plus Author to boost your search optimization opportunities, to your LinkedIn profile to aid networking opportunities there, to your Twitter account to promote social networking, or to anywhere else you would like.

Career Booster. Articles about professional topics are good career boosters. You can promote what you have written to your colleagues, to professional audiences, on your LinkedIn profile, on your resume, and anywhere else you promote your experience, skills, talents, and knowledge. Attending a conference? Promote your Web Editors Blog articles to show your bone fides. Joining a professional blog or forum discussion? Reference your article as further reading.

Boss Pleaser. Writing for a professional blog – an online professional journal in essence – on your own time shows initiative and enterprise and should impress your bosses. An email to them announcing the newest article, tying in any organizational references, should impress.

What’s in it for us

Growing Quality Content. This isn’t a paying gig – we don’t have an income stream for the blog. But together we provide an audience of web editors who read the blog and are looking for quality information on their profession.

Steady Flow. There is no set frequency of submission; it’s up to your willingness to publish. But the more often you can post the better our readers will become familiar with your work and look forward to reading you. We would love to have you post at least once a month, but it isn’t required.

Targeted Content. There are no established topic lines, but there are general topic categories to help guide. Of course, the topics should relate to web editing and web writing, and sometimes they are even more general than that about writing or editing, which still apply to the Web. It’s probably obvious that we should tailor the content to the audience.

Topic Categories you can currently choose include:

• Content
• Design
• Editing
• Graduation (typically May issue)
• Management
• Miscellaneous
• Mobile
• Professional
• Profile
• Project Management
• SEO
• Social Media
• Strategy

Typical publishing standards apply.

Won’t you join us?

We have a great group of editor writers who contribute now. You will be joining them in creating a superb blog associated with professional quality and talent. Associate your name with that growing list. If you’re a web editor, please join us!