Colleen Jones’s book, Clout: the ART and SCIENCE of INFLUENTIAL WEB CONTENT, faces this problem from the outset. Right there on the cover it straddles the fence of condescension. Its subtitle invokes the renaissance and dares to use the word “influential”: Influence being the characteristic sought by all who write content for the web but never mentioned explicitly for fear of being judged manipulative.

In that way, Jones’s title teaches us the first lesson the book has to offer: Sometimes it’s better to be explicit than pretend to be something you’re not.

Inside the book, the lessons continue and it’s quickly evident that these are lessons for the less informed content creators. The reader is eased into the concept of content strategy. For the uninformed it’s an introduction while the informed are given some ready-formed arguments to help sell the idea of content strategy to those who need to buy it.

Jones’s book is a primer for content strategy, focussing more on creating content with a taste for the planning and analytics that go along with other parts of the strategy. She describes in appropriate detail why creating the right sort of content is difficult and how it’s a job that is never really finished.

Important for any introductory book, and successfully achieved by Jones, is informing the reader that there is still so much to learn before becoming an expert. Throughout Clout, she refers to the other leaders in content strategy like Ann Rockley, Kristina Halvorson and Erin Kissane, and she prescribes further reading into areas of marketing, planning, heuristics and analytics.

In Australia we’re particularly bad at explicit instruction. The title garnered some judgement amongst colleagues and judgemental looks on public transport. Our attitude is often “what could a book tell me about what I do?” The answer is: “A lot. Now, shut up and read.”

Clout puts the concept of content strategy into perspective for those who do it on a daily basis and those who are new to the idea. For those of us who work in the field, it serves as a reminder of what it is we’re trying to achieve and who to talk about it to those who have no idea.

Where I had “Vodafone will correct its billing system on 8 July 2011 to include three types of data usage,” she suggested adding the word “additional” so that the sentence would read:

Vodafone will correct its billing system on 8 July 2011 to include three additional types of data usage.

That single word clarifies the situation a lot more.

One of the reasons we perform user testing in web design is to get someone who has not lived with a website for months to point out something we’ve missed. The same thing happens with content. Having another pair of eyes look over some content is a vital part of a content strategy.

When we build content at Soupgiant, almost nothing leaves the office without at least one other person looking at it. That’s part of our content strategy.

Every blog post is read, redrafted and proofed before publishing. Many of our emails are double-checked and workshopped. We want to make sure that the message going out with our brand on it accurately represents our brand. Sometimes we even cross-check tweets.

This helps in a number of ways. Most importantly it means that every bit of content is clear in its intention. It also, however, means that we’re involved in, and aware of, how the business is represented in the outside world.

In small to medium sized businesses, it’s rarely prudent to run a piece of content through a focus group but it is often easy to get someone else in the organisation to read through something.

For a large organisation, like Vodafone, there are hundreds of people within the office who could have looked at the content of that email and offered suggestions.

This part of content strategy fits into content management and follows two very simple rules:

1. Somebody must be in charge of approving content before it is released.
2. The person who created the content cannot be the person approving it.

Sometimes you might find you’re all alone, with no one to check the content and no ability wait until somebody else has a chance to look at it. This always feels weird but it works every time; If your content is written, read it aloud.

When you read something aloud you’re substituting your ears for someone else’s eyes. You will be able to hear long sentences, ambiguities, questionable jargon and anything else that doesn’t fit into your branded message.

Nobody enjoys reworking something they previously thought was finished. It’s tedious and annoying but it’s less tedious and annoying than having your brand associated with a twitter hashtag that ends in “fail”.

Recently, Vodafone Australia sent its customers an email titled “Important information on your data charges.” That sounds like a descriptive subject line, but is it?

The email was about Vodafone correcting an issue in its billing system that meant certain internet activity on their mobile phone plans was not calculated correctly. The purpose was to inform, so the subject isn’t wrong, it’s just not the best title they could have used. “Changes to how we calculate your data usage” is only one character longer but tells us instantly what to expect in the email.

Vodafone, in its mobile phone contracts, includes a certain amount of data transfer per month. If their customers exceed that amount of data transfer they will be charged extra. The first paragraph of the email reads:

Vodafone is implementing a correction to its billing systems on 8th July 2011 that will result in charges for three types of mobile handset data usage. The data usage charges are in line with customers’ existing contracts but were not previously billed.

The word “charges” here is, at best, ambiguous. It could mean that customers were, from 8 July onward, going to have to pay extra for those types of data usage. It could also mean that data transfer used for those particular purposes was now going count towards the total data usage when previously it was not.

Ambiguity in a single word is enough of a sign that a piece of content is not clear in its purpose. Here’s a version of that opening paragraph that avoids the ambiguity:

Vodafone will correct its billing system on 8 July 2011 to include three types of data usage. Previously, data used in services listed below were not counted in the data allowance for your plan. As a result, your calculated usage may increase dramatically.

The Big Red Tin version is only seven characters longer than Vodafone’s version. If Vodafone wanted to be even clearer about the changes being a correction and not a new set of charges they could have added the word “incorrectly” into the second sentence so it read: “Previously, data used in services listed below were, incorrectly, not counted in the data allowance…”. It just drives the message home a little clearer that Vodafone’s customers are not getting a dud deal here but were, up until now, getting a free ride.

When a company like Vodafone issues an ambiguous email like that, it causes a great deal of confusion. The forums on the broadband information site, Whirlpool, have at least 122 posts of discussion about what the email might mean. On Vodafone’s own community forums there are another 93 posts at the time of writing.

One of the posts on Vodafone’s website shows exactly the problems that content unclear in its intention can cause. Alcook writes:

This was the worst worded email I think I have ever received. It is completely misleading and basically inaccurate. Thank you for wasting about 45 minutes of my time investigating just what the hell it actually meant…

How does a major company get it so wrong? That’s where content strategy comes into play. At its most basic level, content strategy dictates that every single piece of content needs to be clear in its purpose. Content can be a video, a picture, a manifesto, an email or a text message. Clarity comes about by having clearly stated goals and intentions but also by having someone check that a piece of content achieves its purpose.

The cost of spending an extra hour on making sure an email is clear is minuscule compared to the cost of the ill-will the badly worded email created for Vodafone.

Postscript:

Just for the challenge, I created a version of the message that fits neatly inside a tweet:

We will correct our data usage billing system on 8//7/11. Previously, data used in some services weren’t counted in some plans’ allowance.

The message doesn’t have to be complicated to get a complicated idea across. This tweet could have been followed by another containing a URL providing for a web page with more information.

According to the fangs plugin, the JAWS screen reader reads the opening of Soupgiant.com as:

Page has seven headings and forty-three links Soupgiant vertical bar Web Production dash Internet Explorer Heading level one Link Graphic Soupgiant vertical bar Web Production Heading level five Heat and Serve Combine seventeen years of web production experience, twenty years of television and radio experience, put it all in a very large pot on a gentle heat. Stir regularly and serve. Soupgiant goes well with croutons and a touch of parsley.List of five items bullet This page link Skip to Content bullet Link Home bullet Link About bullet Link Contact bullet Link Folio

- my emphasis

That’s a lot of content to get through, on every page of the site, before the Skip to Content link. It would be much better if the skip to content link were earlier on the site.

As the HTML title of the page is read out by JAWS, the best position would be before the in-page title. The opening content would then read as:

Page has seven headings and forty-three links Soupgiant vertical bar Web Production dash Internet Explorer This page link Skip to Content Heading level one Link Graphic Soupgiant vertical bar Web Production

- again, the emphasis is mine

That gives the JAWS user the title of the page and immediately allows them to skip to the page’s content. I don’t read the header of on every page of a site, nor should I expect screen reader users to.

I realise screen readers most likely have a feature to skip around the page relatively easily, regardless of how the page is set up but our aim should not be relative ease, our aim should be absolute ease.

As a result, we’ve decided to move the skip to content links on future sites to earlier in the page.

Sadly, this revelation came up as a result of what I consider to be a limitation of the WordPress 3.0+ function wp_nav_menu, the inability to add items at the start of the menu. I should have considered the accessibility implications much earlier. It serves as a reminder, to all web developers, that we should constantly review our practices and past decisions.

If you’ve recently changed something you’ve always done, we’d love to hear about it in the comments.

My instant response, whenever somebody starts a conversation like this is to ask them why they want a website. At least that’s what it used to be. Apparently it’s bad business to tell people they don’t need what it is you’re selling. I held off for as long as I could. The conversation went something like this:

“How much would you charge for a basic website?”
“For a website with original graphic design using a content management system you’re looking at a minimum of a few thousand dollars. It varies depending on what functionality you want on the site.”
“OK. I called up this place that advertises on the radio. You know, ‘quick and simple websites from $495′?”
“I can’t say I’ve heard the ad.”
“Well, it got really weird. They kept calling me and now they keep emailing me. I don’t really want to use them now. They’re too much like stalkers.”

We’ve all heard about how, when something sounds like too much of a bargain to be true, it probably is. This was definitely the case with “quick and simple websites from $495″. It turned out that for $495 you could have 3 pages. Extra pages cost more money and then there were the ongoing costs of hosting, a monthly cost of licensing their CMS and who knows what other hidden costs.

Let’s go back one step. They were charging per page. I remember people charging per page back in 1997, when sites were static. In fact, charging per page implies that they’re not using a CMS. So why then are they charging for CMS licensing?

So I told her what I thought she needed. She’s a physiotherapist and her business relies on her expertise in the area. A blog about physiotherapy, new techniques, stretching the right way, and avoiding injury could really help build her profile as an expert in the area.

“But a blog is a lot of work,” I told her. “Not keeping it up-to-date can do as much damage to your reputation as maintaining the blog will improve it.”

She already works long hours and I knew she didn’t want more work. So finally I asked her what she thinks she can get from a website. I pointed out to her that her business is already at capacity. Not a single slot is left vacant all week.

It turns out that an organisation for a new technique she’s been accredited with wants to put a link to her website on their website. That’s all. In fact, that’s enough. The website could help her expand her business using this new technique.

It reminded me why I ask the question of potentially new clients. It means we’re going to build the right website for them if they actually need something built. If a client actually has a need for a new website then we can work towards that need. It helps us advise them on content, style and structure. These are all services that “quick and simple websites from $495″ won’t provide.

The problem, though, is that businesses like those that advertise web production services at prices that seem too good to be true create an expectation in the market-place. They prey on those who don’t know enough about what they’re purchasing, lock them into systems where they end up paying more over time without ever actually giving them value for money.

In 2007-08, government funded shelters turned away 80% of Australian couples with children every day.

There’s an asterisk at the end of that statement that says the statistic comes from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. I can tell you now that it doesn’t.

What Mission Australia is saying is that more than 80% of Australian couples with children applied for shelter in government housing, implying they were in some way homeless.

In the Australian 2006 Census off-shoot, “Counting the Homeless”, conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there were an estimated 105,000 homeless people in Australia.

This means that about 0.5% of the Australian population is homeless.

In contrast, in the same census, there were about 2.4 million couples with children in Australia.

Yes, I’ve gone to great, even ridiculously exaggerated, efforts to show that some copywriter somewhere made a terrible mistake. They meant to say that of the Australian couples with children who applied for government funded shelter any given day, 80% were denied.*

This is a terrible mistake for Mission Australia. It is, in effect, misleading advertising that can affect how the charity is perceived in the market. Would a potential donor prefer to give money to a charity that makes outlandish claims? Someone could think that, rather than an error in copy-writing, this is an attempt by the organisation to make themselves sound even more important and necessary than they already are.

This may seem like an overly dramatic and pedantic argument. Of course people are going to understand that somebody made a mistake and didn’t read through their copy properly. That’s just the point, though. They didn’t read through their copy properly which means they weren’t fully aware of what they were publishing.

When I do consultations about content strategy, most of what I’m doing is trying to make my clients aware of what they’re publishing. It’s sometimes a long and complicated process because they’ve never thought about their business in that particular way before.

It’s very difficult to distil everything a business does into a single, simple yet accurately descriptive sentence. Sometimes it’s easier to mention a problem and then talk about solving that problem. That’s what Mission Australia does in their ad and it either makes them sound ignorant or like super heroes.

The first step, though, is always to work out what it is that a business does. Read it out loud, refine it and read it out loud again until it rings true. From there it’s easier to work out what the message is and read that out loud to see if it complements the description.

Every step of creating content for a website needs to be tied back to the original business description and message. You should be able to create a flow diagram to show exactly how it relates. Reading things aloud or tying things together through concept diagrams will be the barriers to letting misleading or inappropriate content hit the public sphere.

Not only will you avoid a potentially embarrassing situation, your organisation will be a lot better understood in the market place and a lot more likely to receive the response you were anticipating.

* It’s quite possible that that is a statistic from the AIHW. I tried to find it but I couldn’t so we’ll never know.

What we’ve done in Soupgiant, however, is take the blog portion of our website and move it over here to Big Red Tin. The two sites still link to each other. There’s no doubt that the people in charge over here are also in charge over there. It’s one and the same.

We decided to separate the two because we didn’t want to disrupt any one audience.

Soupgiant.com is our sales website. It’s where we’ll put all our information about the products and services we offer. Customers will be able to see the work that we’ve done for other clients and can see if what we can do for them is actually what they want.

Big Red Tin, on the other hand, is just a blog. It gives us a chance to document every single part of our business, from bits of code to design concepts and also choices we make in running our business in the day to day.

Basically we hope that this will become a repository of information that can help people who encounter the same issues we have.

This is the first lesson of Content Strategy and it’s something we are taught all through school but still often manage to forget: Know your audience.

Websites have the added benefit of allowing our audiences to know us. So, in one sense we can work out the audience for a website by asking: What do we want our audience to know about us?

With Big Red Tin we’ve already answered that question earlier in this post: We want to share what we learn from the issues we encounter.

To do that, we’ve split this blog into four categories that we think detail all aspects of our business:

• Behind the Websites details the work we do in coding websites and dealing with content management system (CMS).
• Business is about business decisions we’ve made or the general lessons we learn in running a business, either based on our own experiences or our observations of others.
• Content Strategy discusses the intricacies in honing the content of websites to achieve the greatest value from them. It might be about navigation or website accessibility or the general layout of information on the screen, but it also might be about words and how to use them.
• Design will bring together aspects of graphic design that we deal with. Buttons, images, colours, styles, legibility – basically everything that brings that all important first opinion will be dealt with under the “Design” banner.

There might be people who are interested in all four of these categories but we hope splitting them out makes it easier for those only interested in one or two.

For more specific areas of discussion we have tags. There are many of these and you’ll see them at the bottom of each post. So, if you’re on a post about CSS3 and you want to know more, you can see all our posts about CSS3.

Big Red Tin is the result of a long process of planning, which is the only way to do content strategy correctly. We hope you enjoy what we do here and encourage you to share your experiences in the comments.