Thoughts on web writing

Consultants: more cost effective than they may seem

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:04:00 +0000

Consultants are more cost effective than they appear because of the hidden costs of employment paid by large employers. Employed staff typically cost over 2x their salary to their company.

“£100,000 spent on a consultant over seven months” a newspaper headline rants about a local authority bringing in outside help. But if a council manager is paid £50,000 you need to add in the costs of the buildings and office space and other associated employment costs. These include:

salary, overtime, holiday and sickness pay, maternity/paternity leave, jury service, special leave, national insurance, pension contributions and private health
running and maintaining a company car
business hotel, travel and other expenses
training bills and time out for this
employee and public liability insurance
staff restaurant and other shared social facilities
recruitment and redundancy costs
office consumables, office furniture, computer equipment
building space - large companies may own the building located in a prime location and have generous parking space - the shared annual cost may be considerable
shared cost of facilities staff to run the building
heat and electricity
a shared overhead cost of other office support staff such as HR, secretarial, post room, receptionists, accountants

There is an interesting ‘employee true cost calculator’ published by itcenta.co.uk that allows you to carry out the calculation for yourself. Check out http://tinyurl.com/yajfs2f.

In an example it shows a £30,000 salaried employee costing £48,998. But this doesn’t take account all of the items I have listed.

I have come across HR debates on the internet that place the figure of true employment cost at 2.5x times employee salary cost. But every business needs to do its own calculations.

Another figure I found in a discussion group was that when a consultant is employed by a company of consultants the amount charged to the client is typically 3x the consultant’s salary. That also applied to me when I worked for an agency.

We also have to recognise that a consultant will have to charge more than a full time employee as very few are working every working day of a year. They will need to market for work and administer their business. Business expenses have to be met - such as insurance and some of the items listed for their employed counterpart.

Better productivity
Consultants can be highly productive. Being self-employed they have to be highly motivated and be seen to ‘deliver the goods’. They often have to work extended days and over weekends to meet deadlines to satisfy their client.

They are usually able to bring in a broader experience and a wealth of new ideas. Sometimes they have been working at a more senior level elsewhere and within larger corporate environments. Cost savings that they introduce may well bring substantial long-term benefits for their corporate employer.

For example, in my own field of corporate communications, Cabinet Office figures confirm that improving the efficiency of communications can save councils half a million pounds a year. This is by providing easy-to-access information so that citizens and internal staff can find the answers for themselves rather than picking up a phone and taking up staff time (£2.83 per call*) or visiting a council office (£8.62 per enquiry*). So employing a consultant for a few months to train staff to put this process on track is hugely cost effective.

By using consultants, organisations can employ just the right number of staff and only bring in help when it’s needed. This replaces hiring and firing their own employees to manage the peaks and troughs - and provides more security for core staff.

Finally, it’s great when a local business can employ consultants from their local area. This helps small businesses survive in what currently is a very difficult trading environment and help the local economy.

My local paper today speaks of a consultant paid £100,000 for seven months work for a county council - ‘more than her predecessor was paid in a year’. That sounds as if it was likely to have been very good value!

*SOCITM / Cabinet Office figures

With thanks to David Jacobs of Lewis-Barned & Associates for additional material.

Technobabble limits progress

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:43:44 +0000

As a former computer book author, and feature writer for Knowledge Management Magazine and other computer journals with some 45 years of programming experience behind me I sometimes despair at the lack of willingness or ability of IT staff to communicate clearly.

I firmly believe that there are fundamentally two states in computing ‘on’ and ‘off’ - any complexity of interpretation is entirely man made.

The intrusion of technospeak is widely found in information architecture and content management circles. Jargon-loaded explanations dissuade clients from even engaging with the information experts. This leads to websites and intranets suffering from complex structures that fail to get the benefit of a consultant’s attention. As a direct result readers suffer from usability and readability issues that limit the site’s effectiveness.

Wikipedia under ‘technobabble’ describes it as jargon that ‘can be used dishonestly to give an impression of plausibility through mystification, misdirection, and obfuscation.’

spoof product
People can employ it mischievously. There was the spoof product called the ‘turboencabulator’ which was created by a British graduate student John Hellins Quick. He published a paper in 1944 for the British Institution of Electrical Engineers Students’ Quarterly Journal. Here is a short extract:

‘The original machine had a base-plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in a direct line with the pentametric fan. The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-delta type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible trem’e pipe to the differential girdlespring on the ‘up’ end of the grammeters.’

Engineers quickly cottoned onto the joke and it was later featured in Time magazine. The response was predictable some people got the joke but it also resulted in ‘… complaints about using too much technical jargon for the layman, observations such as “My husband says it sounds like a new motor; I say it sounds like a dictionary that has been struck by lightning.”’

going the extra mile
There are times when we need to go the extra mile to explain to others what we mean without the intrusion of words that they may be unfamiliar. A careful balance between clarity and talking down to the initiated.

If you have a moment you may care to view the opening of ‘Star Trek - The next generation’. But you may not want to watch the whole four minutes. I just wonder how the actors refrain from smiling as they deliver their convoluted technospeak.

I would like a brief word

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 13:10:01 +0000

When reviewing content on websites and intranets I am regularly dismayed at the poor use of words. A virtual smoke screen has been created between the writer and their readers.

Very often the remedy is simple - use shorter words.

Overlong, bureaucratic and technical words are often used to:

to assert authority ‘I know more than you, I use big words’
to deliberately complicate text to discourage reading, widely used in terms and conditions
to mask a lack of ability and knowledge - we don’t know the answer so lets create a maze of incomprehensible words
because the writer is a poor communicator

There will be occasions when only a technical or long word will do as there is no alternative. That’s perfectly acceptable, but some readers, less familiar with the topic, may need help.

Eve-of-battle speech
Short words can have enormous impact. There is no better example than the inspirational eve-of-battle speech given by Tim Collins before the Iraq War in 2003. A version of it was hung on the wall of the Oval Office in the White House.

Collins, at the time Commanding Officer) of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment of the British Army, addressed his troops in Kuwait. Although there is no accurate record of the speech, which was delivered without a script, began:

‘We go to Iraq to liberate not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.’

You can read more here. This speech is powerful because of its use of simple short words and clarity of message. The average length of words is just four letters, and the sentences just 11 words.

avoiding nominalisations
One of the favourite tricks used by business managers is to use nominalisations, also called ‘hidden verbs’. Here are a few examples:

interpretation, consideration, arrangement, clarification

They all have a root verb which is shorter than the noun form. So why not use ‘they considered’ or ‘we arranged’? Why use a word that is five syllables long when just two will do?

Some of Britain’s greatest writers have known the importance of using short words.

Winston Churchill said, ‘Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.’

And George Orwell, wrote in Politics and the English Language in 1946, ‘Never use a long word where a short one will do.’

I would recommend that all writers run Microsoft Word’s readability check on their text before publication. They need to ensure that their words on average have five or less characters. They should also ensure that sentences are no longer than 15 words on average.

Saved by the bell

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:34:56 +0000

For the first 70 years or so of the last century offices around the world echoed to the sound of bells. These were to alert the busy typist that they were reaching the end of a line before they would have to manually return the carriage (the roller mechanism that held the paper) to the other end.

But today web content creators need another sort of alert while entering content into computers that would save readers from having to wade through poorly presented impenetrable text.

I was working with a large membership organisation recently. Its website provides the users with access to many well researched white papers on a range of industry issues. But many of these shared a very common but easily rectifiable combination of faults. Text with overlong sentences, found in mega paragraphs accompanied by a generous proportion of multi syllable words.

A paragraph, especially on a website, really shouldn’t exceed 50 words. A sentence should typically be about 15 words long and words should average five characters long.

A five year old could spot these errors occurring - it’s not difficult.

If only our word processors would flag this obvious bad practice. Or perhaps our CMS systems could give an audible alert if we were about to publish a poorly written page. This would make reading so much easier for us all.

You may like to travel back through the mists of time and hear those manual typewriter sounds again at soundogs.com. Here are a couple:

A fast typist.
Sound of the bell and carriage returning

Fostering the pioneers' web ideals

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:50:00 +0100

My involvement and recollections of the Internet go back to 1993. When it was growing out of its institutional and educational roots.

There was a spirit of cooperation and generosity among serious users. People were revelling in the new medium that forged new friendships not only locally but nationally and internationally.

Solutions to problems were found by online communities and new projects were born. The fact that it was free seemed too good to be true.

email boxes ‘bombed’
In the early days there was still a resistance to anything commercial. Blatant advertising was frowned on. There were tales of penalties of anyone who tried to promote their businesses on the Internet. Transgressions resulting in email boxes being bombed and rendered useless by emails loaded with lengthy texts such as the Bible or the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

The World Wide Web became available, depending where you were, around 1992. In 1994 online banking became available in the US and an online pizza service was launched by Pizza Hut. It was in 1995 that Amazon.com began to demonstrate the power of the Internet and the real potential of online retailing.

Corporates were initially very hesitant to become associated with a medium that suffered credibility issues due to the growing adult website content.

Business websites had to devote sections to providing valuable, interesting and entertaining content to appease these ideals and attitudes. I can remember doing this for a FTSE 100 corporate’s website, using hand coded HTML, of course! Any postings you made on discussion groups had to address the topic without obviously promoting your organisation.

Expressing concerns back in 1994
In his 1994 article ‘Commercialization of the Internet’ Dr Larry Press of California State University pondered what the future would hold:

‘This barter/gift-exchange arrangement makes for a more comfortable society than one in which every information transaction is explicitly compensated, and no accounting is needed. This open culture is subject to abuse, but it has persisted for years on the Internet. Will increased commercialization end openness? Must it? Can we find policies that balance openness and marketplace efficiency? Social predictions are difficult at best, and the global nature of the Internet makes them even more difficult.’

In the intervening 18 years the commercial side of the Wold Wide Web has comfortably bedded in. But sadly, some of the respect for the community and volunteering of free help has been lost. In its place unrepentant promotion is becoming increasingly prevalent.

In my view, it’s a shame that the founding pioneers’ idealistic views are largely being ignored.

Anyone involved in publishing on websites and social media should understand and respect the cultural heritage of the Internet and take a lower key approach to promotion.

I also believe that this same spirit of goodwill and avoidance of self-promotion should also be encouraged within a corporate intranet. The spirit of cooperation rather than competition can only be healthy to engage and motivate the team.

Rejecting the ivory tower

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 10:58:00 +0100

Many web and print editors prefer to live in an ivory tower and put barriers up to protect themselves. This can involve:

avoiding phone calls by using voicemail and answerphones
having over-protective secretaries
not replying to emails
keeping their email address private

In my view, they will almost certainly be losing some of the best content from potential contributors. They fall out of touch with their audience and lose interest from contributors.

Editing is a busy and time-pressured job and it does need some uninterrupted time to draft lengthy articles, closely proof read material and attend meetings but, as a general policy, isolation is self-defeating.

My approach to editing has always been to have an ‘open door’ policy. Working with international contributors especially you find that certain nationalities simply ignore emails and will only respond if you speak with them and they can freely speak with you.

Then there are the staff, especially the more senior ones, who have found you a scoop and want a one-to-one discussion, even though it will add nothing to the story. They just feel they deserve an appreciative thank you. And why not!

courtesy
The other growing practice is the failure to respond to an email. Just the briefest of acknowledgments ‘thanks Joe’ is better than no reply at all. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I take it as a basic courtesy to respond quickly and rudeness if you receive none. It’s all the more important with emails as they don’t always reach their destination and can get rejected by an over zealous firewall.

The downside of cultivating relationships with contributors is that there is a significant time penalty. You also need the patience of a saint as you politely have to sound interested at a time when pressures are mounting to deliver content on time. But this level of commitment is a price well worth paying.

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The last few days to book a place on my Edinburgh web writing, editing and usability workshop on 24 October. It promises to be a really interesting day.

Exclusivity adds value

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 10:36:00 +0100

‘Content marketeers’ can be highly irritating. If you are tuned in to a number of industry networking channels, you can get bombarded with the same message. They duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate their promotions bombarding the same audience over and over again.

This approach is bound to result in a cumulative adverse reaction. They probably will face eviction from the channels by their audiences or moderators. And they can also expect to lose their clients or their jobs by damaging the brand.  

Don’t you just love those recruitment postings that over-populate some LinkedIn lists? Why pay for advertising when you can do it for free? Not only are they able to annoy everyone in the process but they devalue your favourite medium while they are at it!

Nobody likes a pushy salesman. We get impatient with unsolicited phone sales calls. We hate the repetition of strident poor TV advertising. Advertising and business social chat sits uncomfortably together. Irrelevant postings on social media are invariably an unwelcome intrusion.   

The fundamental concept of content marketing is the redirection and repetition of existing content. From the advertiser’s perspective there may only be a narrow target audience who will be on the receiving end. So the same people get the message from their different source media. But recipients will judge the organisation on its inability to innovate and take a dim view of repetitious promotion.  

single channel 
So much better to confine your dialogue to a single channel so that people can stumble upon the hidden gem amongst the huge volume of dross. This gives the reader a feeling of satisfaction that not many people will have sourced this information. They may be right in believing that this knowledge will give them a competitive advantage.

return to traditional values 
Commentators say after Facebook’s stock market woes that social media is in decline, so perhaps there will be a sensible return to old fashioned values.   Perhaps we will hark back to traditional promotion where you knew where to find a company’s advertising. It was a ‘pull’ rather than a ‘push’ strategy. Perhaps this will continue to be one of the safest and best routes to market.

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It’s not too late to book a place on my Edinburgh web writing, editing and usability workshop on 24 October. It promises to be a really interesting day.

Supercharge your navigation - ten top tips

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 11:26:00 +0100

For so many websites and intranets there is a degree of complacency over whether people are actually finding their material. If you ask content creators why they don’t take a more active interest they say:

I am not a techy I just publish the stuff
The CMS template is set up already and this is the way we have to do it
If they want it they can find it - surely it’s obvious enough
I don’t know how to make it any better

But the content creators and the web team need to take a much more active interest. There is no point in putting considerable resource into publishing if people are not finding or selecting the material. This leads to frustrated staff and customers and lost business.

Here are ten top tips to improve matters.

1 Explanatory links
Websites often make use of navigation link pages - that then link to multiple content pages. This is a good strategy. But sometimes you see each navigation line with just one or two words, for example:

Policies
Shopping
Entertainment

So much better if we can indicate what we are linking to:

Policies - safety, HR, company cars, holiday entitlement
Shopping - West End Mall, out of town retail, high street shops
Entertainment - ice ring, ten pin bowling, night club, cinema complex

This may qualify what the single word means, but also gives a better flavour of the content on the page on are linking to.

This applies Jared Spool’s theory ‘The Scent of Information: getting users to their content’. As he puts it ‘When a user wants to find content, they are on the hunt. Just like a fox in a forest, they’ll be most successful when they pick up a strong scent.’ The idea was first mooted In the early 1990s, by Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card from PARC (formerly Xerox) PARC).

2 Test and monitor links
Think carefully about the link wording. Test the response, monitor the results then fine tune until it works well.

3 Less than ten items
Don’t exceed a maximum of nine items in a link list. The longer the list the less likely they are to select anything. The retail industry is aware of this - give the shopper too much choice and it is self-defeating. If you have to list more items, then introduce a subhead to break the list up.

4 Summary links
Link lists will generally work better if each link has a summary link under the headline. This supporting text clarifies and expands on the headline above.

5 Thumbnails
Support each link with a colourful thumbnail photograph or icon. A lot of work, I know, but this approach does increase click through.

6 Cut the preamble
Link pages are sometimes preceded by unnecessary waffle. ‘Welcome to the pages for the marketing department’. Then a bland or even pretentious oversell of what the department does. Just cut to the chase, eliminate the preamble and offer links to useful content.

No harm in having a department ‘About’ page but lowering the prominence of the material will save the reader time in accessing department information.

7 Keep links ‘above the fold’
If you display links on a web page that runs too deep people may never scroll down to find them. This is even more important now that people use tablet computers.

8 Simple headlines
You may need to dumb down links so everyone can find material. Use technical jargon on unknown acronyms and people will just abandon their search for content.

9 Standardise link text
Don’t have more than one version of a link. For example one place have a link to ‘HR’ and somewhere else use the word ‘Personnel’ instead.

10 Take ownership
Everyone who publishes needs to take a close interest in their material after it has been published. Are people clicking on my links? Can I improve a headline? Is the positioning of the link wrong?

Much can be deduced by actively checking the site statistics and taking corrective action.
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Book now for our Web writing, editing and usability course in Edinburgh on 24 October.

CMS limitations

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 15:59:00 +0100

The need to create content for intranets and websites by content authors without having to know how to program has led to the development of content management systems (CMS).

While CMS systems are now vital for content creation, especially in larger organisations, the features they provide (or don’t provide) directly affects the quality of web pages they can generate.

Some cruder CMS systems do not allow the writer to properly format the appearance of text, for example they:

don’t allow the importing of text from other programs such as Microsoft Word or Excel - or this causes screen corruption
don’t allow WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) page creation
prevent indentation of text
provide poor table editing features
do not provide auto bulleting or numbering
fail to manage related links adequately as web pages are added and removed
don’t provide content versioning
give inadequate support to manage site structure and taxonomy control
don’t provide dated publishing with update reminders
make creation of new templates difficult

These are just some of the short-comings I have found in reviewing CMS systems. To my mind, all these are essential for creating a good website or intranet.

preview
One of the most fundamental failings is that text entry may be done by filling in text boxes on a screen form. But this gives you no immediate idea of what the final web page will look like.

Some systems provide you a scrolling letterbox view of just a few lines of your webpage. When you can’t see all of your web page text in one go this seriously hampers the editing of longer content.

Form entry gives you no idea of how long your web page will run, or the depth that paragraphs will run to and whether a headline will be displayed on one line or two. You can’t see how images will work with the text - will they be distraction or an asset? Will the paragraph lengths need to be adjusted to allow for an embedded image?

It is essential that you can easily preview your web page. I have found some CMS systems that need several clicks before you can see your new web page. So some content authors get lazy and simply don’t bother.

CMS systems rely on standard templates that cater for a variety of web page types you may need. But, if the need arises, the users should be able to create new templates. Some do but other suppliers see this as a useful cash generator and insist on doing this for the client.

desirable features
There are many other facilities that content creators either need or would like to have, such as:

a sophisticated table editor to handle complex material
spelling and grammar checking
readability checking
easy symbol insertion
creation of graphic image maps
simple video hosting
creating ‘step-by-step’ page sequences
blogging
wikis
online surveys, calendars and polls
site structure diagrams
internal and external link validation
integrated payment system
reader feedback ratings
comprehensive analytics
asset management - access to images and documents
API integration
personalisation of interface for user
data import/data visualisation
multilingual support (so the software can be used by subsidiaries abroad)
integrated language versioning (a website in several languages)
workflow procedures to keep tabs on approvals and corrections, and the storage related assets (photos, videos and related files)
built in web style guidelines and glossaries
the ability to publish to multiple channels - web, paper, pdf, mobile phone, tablet PCs, Microsoft Word, Flash, elearning

No system, to my knowledge, has all these features built in.

Some people feel that more complex features are best omitted and better done using specialist software. For example, email newsletter creation feature will not match the power or sophistication of an outside ASP service.

Data visualisation, that’s the creation of graphics that display data in a more user-friendly way, sometimes called infographics, will always be better managed by separate packages, and so on.

experts on call
If CMS programs did incorporate all these extra features then they could become bloated and difficult to use and learn. Then we will have gone full circle, and we might as well be creating web pages with HTML using complex and powerful software like Dreamweaver!

CMS is intended for creating run-of-the mill pages, by non-technical staff. But there are occasions where the web team or professional writers and editors. Lack of sophistication may prove to be a frustration.

Many organisations now use open source software. Most of these are free to download and use. Even large government departments and local authorities are happy to take this route. There can be a risk that modules can be introduced by rogue individuals that will allow a back door to an outsider to access your data.

Messages generated by ‘software vandals’ have been known to mysteriously appear on home pages which will not only embarrass the web department but can seriously damage the corporate brand. The software could also risk a company unknowingly breaking data protection laws.

Some of these ‘free’ CMS solutions may require a web developer or programmer to configure and adapt the software for the web project. So the software is far from free by the time the project is complete - and they will always need an expert on call.

Whereas a purchased of-the-shelf product may allow customisation at no cost. You should also have greater peace of mind over data security and uninvited access issues.
As Bernard Kohan, a web application development and technology analyst expert, puts it on the Comentum.com website, ‘… most of the out-of-the-box open source CMS sites that have not been customised have no branding or personality.’

conclusion
 Most content systems have been created by programmers rather than by people whose primary job is to generate web content. The software designers are more concerned with file management, security and handling code rather than providing facilities that editors and writers need to improve their efficiency in content publication.

I don’t envy the task of any web team that needs to source a new CMS system. The website cmsmatrix.org lists 1200 CMS systems, and that’s only a fraction of them.
Because of the complexity of the software, with their long least of features it can take weeks to evaluate the options. Even after the choice has been made, it may be months before all the short-comings and hidden benefits have been identified.

How to become a Genius

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:37:38 +0100

One aspect of looking after an intranet is that once in a while people will phone you with problems using the software. Sometimes they’re very anxious - perhaps they can’t do something online and they are up against a serious deadline.

Other times they want to do something complicated, beyond their normal experience, and it needs to be explained clearly over the phone.

People can get very angry and often blame the system, the company or even you … when they simply don’t have the patience to access online help menus or read the supporting manuals. Which in the trade is called an RTFM enquiry (I won’t spell this out!).

At the receiving end you have to learn to be tactful and diplomatic and use a bit of psychology to calm the caller down and to resolve the issue to their satisfaction.

I came across an article this week by Sam Biddle on Gizmodo called “How to be a genius: this is Apples secret employee training manual” which blows the cover on how front line staff ‘The Geniuses’, as the support staff are called, are trained to pacify and resolve customers’ issues at Apple high street stores.

As Sam puts it: “Sales, it turns out, takes a backseat to good vibes - almost the entire volume is dedicated to empathizing, consoling, cheering up, and correcting various Genius Bar confrontations.”

useful phrases
With over 40 years involved with computers and supporting customers and staff with their problems has certainly modified my approach to reacting to people in many other situations in day-to-day life. As a Director of IndustryMailout, an email newsletter distribution service, I get the odd panic call every now and then and I have to call on my armoury of reassuring phrases such as:

“I understand how you feel about this now let’s see if I can help you to solve this”
“I can understand you taking that point of view but let’s try and look at it a different way”
“I can see where you’re coming from with this but there is another explanation”
“Perhaps I can explain to you why the program wants to do it this way”
“That must have been so annoying, this is a tricky one, can I check this out and call you back?”

The article identifies a few phrases the Geniuses are taught: “I may know how you feel,” “I can see how you’d feel that way”. They also learn negative words that they are advised that they should avoid - and not blinding the customer with technical terms and phrases.

Geniuses meet customers face-to-face and so they also learn bout tell-tale body language signs so they can anticipate how customers are likely to react. ‘Short breaths, wringing hands, fist-like gestures’ just a few of the things that they are told to look out for.

At the end of their helpful session naturally they offer further assistance to reassure the customer that they can come back if they need further help.

There seems to be a lot of sensible practical advice in the manual and I think many people managing corporate intranets could well glean some useful practice and perhaps even consider adopting some of these techniques themselves.

Book now for our Web writing, editing and usability course in Edinburgh on 24 October. Early Bird price available.

Photo: Apple Store Ginza, Chuo,Tokyo (Wikimedia photo:PRiMENON)]

Paying peanuts

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:52:17 +0100

Over the last few years we have seen much more competition in the web copy writing marketplace. Finances may be tight, but should we really be looking to dramatically reduce writing costs?

Just over 10 years ago I was one of a number of freelancers who had applied to a government department to help them create a new website. They had identified about 30 very competent freelancers, who had all completed and passed a test to demonstrate their writing competency.

This was an exciting project and everyone was looking forward to making an important contribution to what would prove to be a very useful website. In fact it’s a much respected website and still live today.

The writers would be working flat out on the project with several weeks’ work to look forward to. So we had all cleared our desks and waited. Some even turned down potential work from other clients to create the capacity they would need.

Weeks went by before we were finally advised that none of us would be getting any of this work and that everything would be contracted out to a single web content agency.

visiting the mandarins of Whitehall
As you can imagine we were all very unhappy. I took on the task of representing the disgruntled group to challenge the audacity displayed by the government agency. How could they mislead so many small businesses who had gone out of their way to help them? So I was invited to state our case to the mandarins in Whitehall.

They recognised the error of their ways - but pointed out that that they had contractually guaranteed nothing in writing. The only compensation that they could offer was for us to jointly agree a draft code of how they should employ freelancers in future, to prevent a reoccurrence. And this we did.

What had really happened was that the writing agency had undercut the freelancers and offered greater efficiency by supplying all the content from a single source. So financially, and from an efficiency point of view, it was probably the best decision for the government department. But this was my first encounter with the unsavoury world of content creation agencies.

But other run-ins with content agencies have followed. I have pitched for web writing contracts in partnership with fellow freelancers on several occasions and lost the bids on price. But on each occasion, the resulting web content produced by the winner of the bid has been of a low standard. Clearly the buyers were incapable of recognising good content. And while the web content agency delivered a financial saving this was also to be at the price of lack of clarity and readability of the content for their potential customers.

online brokers
The situation over the last few years has worsened. A number of intermediary broker sites now enable you to register your interest as a freelancer and pitch for work that’s advertised. Sites such as Elance, Freelancer and oDesk are examples.

On oDesk I found someone requesting ‘a well researched article’ about 500-700 words ‘on paid focus groups’ - and their budget - $5. They have got to be joking! That doesn’t even recover the time taken for invoicing. The buyer even had the cheek to ask for work samples to review!

On Freelancer I found someone wanting 30 articles, each 450 words, for the princely sum of $1 each. As far as I am concerned, if you may peanuts then you get monkeys.

On some sites you are competing against English speakers in places like India, Africa and some developing countries where their expectations for reward are a lot lower. Then you are also almost certainly pitching against non professional writers. I found a college student on a social media site offering work at £7.50 for 500 words.

Then there are agencies who will arrange writing to be carried out for you. They call on their database of freelancers to deliver the work. Textbroker.co.uk suggests €20 (£15.72) for 500 professional quality words. If you go to Wait.co.uk and you can buy 500 words for £12.50.

So what should we be paying for web content? Turning to sample journalist prices on the NUJ website and you will see writers charging 15x more than this. That’s not surprising as this could, depending on the research involved, be equivalent to a day’s work for a journalist.

But writing for the web is much more demanding. It can be as refined as advertising copywriting and needs additional care and thought in its crafting and presentation.

content farms
Then there are content farms. These are companies that employs large numbers of often freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content at minimal cost. the web content is designed to attract visitors from search engines - with the aim of generating advertising revenue from hosted advertising.

Recently Google has been fine-tuning its algorithms to knock content farms out of its indexing. But the content farms are in the business of exploiting writers.

There’s a very good article on the growth of ‘content farms’ by Peter Kirwan in the Press Gazette that makes sober reading.

in conclusion
Returning to serious commercial writing. It’s worrying when web copy buyers cannot see the benefit of employing good writers. This suggests that they have not received the necessary training to create quality webistes. The extra business generated should more than recoup the additional financial outlay.

Is there a digital workplace revolution?

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 09:53:00 +0100

“Leading the digital workplace revolution” seems to be a slightly inappropriate title of a webinar that IBM delivered earlier this year. The real revolution all happened a long time ago.

The ‘digital workplace’ for me began in the early 1970s working on mainframe IBM computers for a major UK bank. IBM were the world leaders in mainframe manufacture.   

I remember writing my first program and entering it into a computer terminal at our offices in London, which was connected to a mainframe located in Northampton. To my delight the program actually worked and I watched the processed data being printed out in front of me. From that moment I was hooked - I had made a machine do something useful and respond to me.

Although far from portable, the terminal could be located almost anywhere. So perhaps this was the first time we could use ‘digital workplace’ and when remote workplace working was first practically applied.

the programming buzz
In those days only a privileged few who worked for universities and large companies could access computers. In quiet moments programmers would delight in writing simple games such as noughts and crosses. They used to draw pictures with the character set on printers and by using electrical interference from the computer they would write programs to play a tune on a transistor radio (Like HAL playing ‘Daisy-Daisy give me your answer do’ on the film ‘2001 a Space Odyssey’?).

Today even primary school children can learn to program computers to do all these things and get that same ‘first time’ buzz.

cloud computing
 In the 1970s, due to the high cost of hardware, it was quite usual to buy computer time and storage on remote mainframes. So ‘cloud computing’ has been around for 50 years. There was even some debate in the 1960s that computer storage could become a public utility.

  Moving 10 years on, office computing became affordable even for small businesses. In 1981 IBM launched its PC microcomputer (see inset photo). It proved to be a huge success. But IBM was late to recognise the importance of ‘microcomputing’. By comparison, Apple’s first computer was sold in 1976. 

For decades, IBM has been a well respected technical innovator, it was always a provider of quality business computers and has, perhaps wisely, never seriously ventured into the mass market. But the undisputed leader today is Apple. A company that started satisfying home computer geeks now also provides serious and sophisticated business computer power. Who would have predicted that even 10 years ago? So I would even dispute IBM’s title ‘leading the (workplace) revolution’.

acoustic coupler
Being able to work remotely was possible even in the 1980’s. Anyone remember acoustic couplers? You could strap your home or office phone handset into a cradle and connect your rather bulky portable computer to online computer services. In a company I worked for, the staff were paid every month by bank transfer using this very crude set up. But if all this was possible 30 years ago then the advances in the digital workplace must surely be progressive rather than ‘revolutionary’.  

Today we are still seeing a measured digital ‘development’. Progress has sadly been somewhat stalled by the global financial collapse, so the momentum has been, and probably will be, far from revolutionary.

what is a ‘digital workplace’?
Digital Strategist Oscar Berg, based in Stockholm, agrees that the term is confusing and believes it’s all about people. In his blog article entitled ‘It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane…it’s The Digital Workplace’ he writes ‘I see the Digital Workplace as a people-centric approach to empower knowledge workers by simplifying the online work environment for people doing information work.’

Currently Wikipedia replaces ‘digital workplace’ with ‘virtual workplace’ which it defines as ‘a workplace that is not located in any one physical space’.

It’s clear that people and the blogosphere are unclear about the meaning of these terms. And I am adamant that the ‘revolution’ happened a long time ago.

Olympics and remote working
Thanks to remote working, central London has been significantly quieter during the Olympics following the advice to businesses that staff in Central London should ideally work from home.

Today remote working is so commonplace that it has become an accepted part of the term ‘computing’ - and working on a computer in an office is becoming the less preferred activity.

For 40 years we have been able to work remotely and access and share data ‘on the hoof’ and we haven’t needed a special term for it. The question is do we really need one?

Content marketing confusion

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:53:00 +0100

Last week I discussed the issues relating to the term ‘content strategy’ and this week I look at ‘content marketing’. This term is more confusing than ‘content strategy’ and again offers no new insight into digital publication.

three definitions
Essentially ‘content marketing’ appears to have three distinct meanings:

A …. promoting (perhaps selling) content - maybe videos, pdfs, elearning, ebooks and other material online.

B …. applying and promoting the concept and approach to others of using content beneficially. In other words, giving away existing material more widely as a means of attracting business or staff engagement.

C … using magazine content specifically written by publication houses and agencies for companies to use in their marketing.

Joe Public will immediately assume definition ‘A’ and only a few people in the comm’s world may have come across the new meanings ‘B’ and ‘C’.

But why ‘C’? In June the much respected Association of Publishing Agencies (APA) in the UK rebranded to become the Content Marketing Association (CMA). It describes itself as ‘the professional body representing publishing and content marketing agencies in the UK’.

So does an organisation that has taken the name of what might be the representative body of the subject put a new spin on the definition of content marketing? That is - that content must be created by agencies.

Even within the communications industry we have to be quite specific about what we mean by the term ‘content marketing’.

the word marketing
The term ‘marketing’ is most often used for the promotion of existing ‘off-the-shelf’ product. Whereas ‘content marketing’ often involves an element of tailoring. This puts a less familiar spin on the word ‘marketing’.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing doesn’t yet define ‘content marketing’ on its website. But it does run a course ‘Content Marketing Planning’ supported by the phrase ‘to improve the effectiveness of your digital communication with customised content for your audiences.’ So CIM recognises this ‘tailoring’ distinction too.

Any editor or communicator worth their salt should always be looking to make best use of existing content. So why the sudden Eureka moment that we should suddenly be doing it? Have the advocates of the phrase just discovered that they weren’t doing their job properly?

professional writing needed
Out of curiosity, I turned to Wikipedia for its definition of ‘content marketing’. The first paragraph of the definition (which a dozen contributors created) is as follows:  

‘Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty.’  

Read on if you want to but the definition gets worse! With a Flesch Reading Ease of 9.3, my conclusion was that these wiki contributors should leave content matters to professional writers as they will be doing more harm than good!  

Content marketeers not only need to know how content can be best used but also recognise good content when they see it. They should also be able to generate it.  

Unlike ‘content strategy’ I think the term ‘content marketing’ term is so confusing that it will fall into disuse. As I wrote in my previous blog, my current web writing training work is mostly with government departments, universities and the UN and I have heard nobody use the term ‘content marketing’ at all.

Content strategy confusion

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:01:00 +0100

We see books, conferences and training courses are using new phrases to promote them including ‘content strategy’ and ‘content marketing’. They are used as if some new dimension has been added to publishing. But this is causing some confusion over what the terms actually mean.

Let’s consider ‘content strategy’ first.

the word strategy

 I have no objection to using ‘content strategy’ in a communication discussion but it’s not the big issue that people are trying to build it into these days. Every editor and communicator has to be ‘strategic’ in the selection and delivery of content - that’s been part of the job since time immemorial.

You could say Shakespeare and Dickens were masters of structure, plot and targeting audiences. They had to engineer their work to specific lengths, retain audiences with well written copy, and build in dramatic cliff-hangers. There’s nothing new here.

When associated with the web and other publication today and we read the words ‘content strategy’ in a headline we really don’t have a clue as to its meaning. Is it referring to the content of a single article, the approach to a project, is it considering a whole website or referring to plans for managing content for a whole organisation - or what?

If it’s an event, a conference ,a webinar, an article, or even a book, we really need to get down to the detailed content before we know what it’s all about. Now how confusing is that!  

There is nothing inherently virtuous or constructive about ‘strategy’. It’s a pretentious word loved by management, and it does not sit comfortably with creative writers.

The impression given is that some master plan will somehow guarantee a positive outcome. But the most successful communication benefits from testing and monitoring feedback. A decision to stay on the same course, fine-tune or remove will then follow. The process is creative and reactive rather than fixed from the outset. To put it another way for Blackadder fans, sticking to a ‘cunning plan’ may lead to corporate disaster.

strategy is just a cog in the works

 The ‘thinking’ or strategic aspect of digital publication may be important but it only takes a small slice of production time when generating content. The lion’s share of importance and time concerns the research and crafting of the high quality output itself.
If a CEO was advised that his company needed to employ a content strategist he or she would probably wryly say ‘ … and what are they going to do for the other six hours of the day?’

So to justify a content strategist there must be:

plenty of good material being constantly generated
there will be many target audiences
the writer will have an ability to edit other departments’ material despite a knowledge gap
they will have the skill to retune content for new audiences
there will be time to monitor and briskly respond to social networking postings

To me the vision of a content strategist being the conductor of an organisation’s content orchestra is patently nonsense. Any good content writer gets their buzz from the creation process - it’s not their bag to be managing or acting as postmaster for other peoples’ material. They would even consider this to be a soul-destroying job - always the bridesmaid and never the bride!

where’s the volume? 
Even though there are many potential communication channels, generally a target audience will congregate around a few. So rerouting the same material to other channels may not be a rewarding effort.

You may also share my aversion to over-marketing, and hitting the same audience many times over can be a real annoyance. I am member of many communication-related LinkedIn Groups and I find it really irritating when the same or similar message appears in my inbox five times over from the same source.

Let’s consider a large organisation that publishes a lot of content on its website and some social media channels. The strategic thinking behind what is needed and which channels to use cannot always be wisely taken centrally. This has to be a devolved process.

Only the department publishing the material will know the relevance and importance of the content. It will also know which channels are hot and those that are not. They will know their target audiences well. So the idea of central policy being controlled by a content strategy guru is highly questionable.

Incidentally, if a strategist is not capable of creative writing then clearly they won’t recognise good writing when they see it nor will they be able to adapt the material for new audiences and channels.

If they distribute poorly written material then they risk damaging the corporate brand - and having a content strategist involved will do more harm than good.

content is a degrading word 
Then there is another issue. Reducing our output to a commodity debases the craft and the expertise of the writer. Should Shakespeare’s works be reduced to the label of content?

  So what if we didn’t like content strategy then what phrase could we use instead? Well there is nothing wring with editing it’s been used for web publication for nearly 20 years.

But you might instead adopt ‘digital publication’. ‘Digital’ is more relevant and everyone understands the meaning of ‘publication’. It can include print production as virtually all print is created via digital output. Digital publication has also been used for 20 years or more. Publication is a powerful word - implying it has been selected and worthy of distribution.  

My recent work carrying out web training has been mostly for government departments, universities and the UN and I see no appetite to adopt either the term ‘content strategy’ or the other new buzz phrase ‘content marketing’.  

The reality is that digital communication of data, or call it content if we must, has been around since the 1940s. Nothing has dramatically changed even in the last 20 years, communication has simply taken a few measured steps further forward.

For my part, for the last 13 years I have delivered web writing courses with a holistic approach. They cover navigation, integration of graphics, usability, accessibility issues, tuning for target audiences, consideration of channels - and the list goes on. As far as I am concerned, we don’t need a specialist - it concerns every writer and editor.

I will occasionally use the phrase ‘content strategy’ in a low key and hopefully thoughtful way - but I don’t plan to use it as if a whole new science has invaded the publication world.   

Next week ‘content marketing’ goes under the spotlight.

Please say hello to my computer

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 10:09:00 +0100

With Apple’s introduction of Siri, ‘the natural language user interface’, it’s clear that voice interaction will be the next big advance in office computing.

Voice instruction and information is becoming increasingly common. We have all experienced the frustrations of trying to get through to our utility companies and banks via endless menus using voice commands.

When car satellite navigation came in, this seemed such an enormous stride in technology. The gadget knew where you were, and seemed to know multiple ways of getting you to your destination and would calmly talk you through every roundabout and junction. No wasted time, wasted petrol and very good for the blood pressure! Just what would our ancestors have thought of it all? But today we just take ‘satnav’ for granted.

A few years back, through my work, I even had the pleasure of meeting the folks at TomTom at their offices in Amsterdam. And, by the way, their HQ was easy to find! I guess a few people who have been directed up a dead end or two might also have liked the opportunity to say a few words to say to the authors of their predicament!

voice apps now widely being used
I regularly use voice apps in my work. The iPad app ‘Dragon Dictation’ helps me input my blog. For me, it’s a lot quicker than keying and remarkably accurate at transcribing the spoken words. Then on lengthy writing projects I get my iMac’s voice synthesiser to read back my text. This method greatly speeds up cross checking keyed in text against the original, but also is useful for proofreading.

But voice synthesisers are now being backed up by artificial intelligence. Apple has been pioneering his technology with ‘Siri’ on the iPhone 4S. Described as ‘an intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator’. As Apple puts it: ‘… lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, make phone calls and more.’ YouTube has some hilarious clips of how Siri responds to certain questions, and you soon realise that it has been given a recognisable ‘personality’. You may like to check this video clip out.

Google’s executive chairman and former chief, Eric Schmidt, has conceded that Siri could pose a ‘competitive threat’ to the company’s core search business. And Google will need to respond with similar technology.

Voice is Apple’s next important field of computer-input and it probably won’t be long before we will see it built into the main Mac operating system.

Give me a briefing on …
In my day-to-day business I am pleased to receive calls enquiring about my web writing courses. In order to better understand a potential client’s needs and so I can anticipate likely questions I like to do a little background research. Sometimes I am doing this even when I am talking with them on the phone, by keying into Google.

Just a few minutes check out an organisation’s website or reading a profile on LinkedIn can be highly beneficial. It’s amazing just how much help the internet can provide.

There are even occasions when checking my web statistics that a company is checking out my services. So, just in case, I can’t resist doing a little homework. Then occasionally the phone will ring and the conversation might go like this. ‘You won’t know us but I am calling from AlphaBeta ..’ and I say, much to their surprise … ‘Ah yes, you’re located just outside Aberdeen aren’t you, specialising in medical IT systems, I believe?’ It’s a good ice breaker if nothing else.

So it seems highly probably that soon we will be very used to getting briefings this way. So I might ask ‘Give me the low down on AlphaBeta and the webmaster John Smith’ and the computer will oblige with a concise verbal overview.

It’s all a bit reminiscent of Michael Knight (played by David Hasselhoff) in the 80s TV series ‘Knight Rider’ talking to his car KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand). He would ask for the low down on the villein he was chasing or ask for mission details. Either the car’s voice synthesiser or his boss Devon Miles, back at base, would oblige.

Are you human?
To mark the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth a ‘Turing Test‘ competition was held on June 23 at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. The object of the Turing Test exercise is for a computer to hoodwink judges into them believing it is human. This was the largest ever such event. Some 30 judges quizzed five computer programs and some decoy humans. The winner was ‘Eugene Goostman’, a chatbot with the personality of a 13-year-old boy. But it only convinced humans 29% of the time.

But for artificial intelligence to work in an office environment we don’t need to believe the answers are from a human. It just makes the process more user-friendly.

fatal consequences
For those who can recall Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film epic ‘Space Odyssey 2001’, maybe there could be a possible downside. In the film, HAL 9000, the Discovery One’s onboard computer took leave of its ‘senses’ which had fatal consequences for the crew. So maybe we will need to choose our computer assistants very carefully in the future!

Tablets will overtake PCs next year - now what?

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:55:00 +0100

Speaking at TechEd Europe in Amsterdam, Microsoft’s vice president for Windows Web Services, Antoine Leblond said: “Next year, tablets will outsell desktop PCs.” … “Touch is coming to PCs and that’s going to change the way UIs (user-interfaces) are designed very dramatically, just like the mouse did.”

Figures this week from Gartner show a second quarter decline in sales in the US of 6% in desktop PCs and 11% in laptops. They also predict the dramatic growth in tablets will reach a global figure of 665 million by 2016.

But how will this shift in hardware preference affect corporates? Well website and intranet web content needs to be adapted to assist the tablet user. Changes will need to include:

writing more tightly
providing good headlines
simplifying data entry
avoiding unnecessary screen clutter
using appropriate type sizes
offering good contrast to make reading easier
avoiding long scrolling
separating clickable items
designing for swipe and other gestures

While there are rumours of Apple launching a mini iPad, Microsoft appears to have designs on going bigger. According to Wired, Steve Ballmer makes good use of his 80 inch Windows 8 tablet on the wall of his office and that Microsoft may consider launching such a product. I am just picturing commuters struggling onto a bus with one!

I will be covering more aspects of the influence of iPads on web page design in future blogs. We now cover creating content for tablets in our web writing training.

Is the future to be ‘pick n’ mix’ software?

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:11:06 +0100

Everyone is guilty of buying and using software but only understanding and using a fraction of its functionality. We sometimes find ourselves buying additional software to do a job that could be done using one of our existing programs.

To meet their overheads and to stay in the game, software houses have been accused of deliberately adding unnecessary features to encourage us to upgrade. This practice also results in bloated packages that are not only difficult to use but often devoid of adequate explanation and help.

It’s because of this that the ‘For Dummies’ guides and ‘Missing Manuals’ have flourished, to fill the gap with the missing documentation. In the mid 80’s I had a useful sideline by writing books on hardware and software to assist buyers to use products that had been rushed into the marketplace. It seems that little has changed in 30 years. Specialist authors, like Nick Vandome, doing this today are assured of a secure future by continuing this invaluable service.

Online video training, such as found at Lynda.com, is also a great way to get up to speed with complex packages. And there is plenty of amateur help readily available on YouTube. I now regularly use this channel when I get stuck or when I want to preview new software.

newer intuitive alternative software
An interesting development is the growth in the popularity of software such as Apple’s Pages, Numbers and Keynote. They provide just what we need but without unnecessary frills. New users can quickly learn how to use these packages. The software is designed to be intuitive and has on screen help that largely meets our needs. Users are not intimidated by surplus-to-requirements menu items.

Adobe has recognised that ‘Lite’ versions of their mainstream products are popular and meet a demand. OnOne plug-in software helps Photoshop users to achieve effects that often the host package is quite capable of achieving itself.

Then there are now Apps designed to expertly meet a specific need but at a fraction of the prices that we have been used to paying. A £5 pound package that brilliantly achieves some of the functionality of a £300 package.

So are we now seeing a demise of the ‘do-everything-but-not-very-well’ software and the rise of the well conceived and supported bite-sized budget priced app? I think we are.

It might be better if the main software - whether that’s a word processor, spreadsheet or accounts program - was slimmed down to become the host to budget priced plug-ins. Then we can ‘pick n’ mix’ the functionality we need and yet access it all from one place.

When bosses impede web progress

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:04:00 +0100

Over the last 12 years as I have travelled around meeting content creators across Europe there is one phrase that I hear over and over again - ‘we are not allowed to do it’.

For example, I was called in to help a council to improve its website. It was about to have a high profile event of international importance on its doorstep. Metaphorically it needed to blow out the cobwebs from its website and give it a fresh lick of paint.

My training brief was to cut the bureaucratic waffle, make the text shorter and scannable and support the material with helpful hyperlinks and relevant images.

As I started training the staff the response came back loud and clear - we want to do what you are suggesting but ‘our bosses won’t allow us to do it’.

training the bosses
After the course was over I passed this comment back up the line, and days later was back on site again, but this time training the bosses and getting them on board. They soon saw the benefit of the new approach and the very next day were enthusiastically supporting their staff to meet the looming deadline.

I have so many other examples of other organisations where successful web communication is impeded by the bosses.

It’s even more a problem on intranets where politics reign unhindered from outside prying eyes. Business jargon and cliches can reach epidemic proportions.

I have even had web teams apologise ‘don’t blame us for this page - we know it’s bad - but we are simply not allowed to touch it.’

But why does it happen at all? What do the bosses fear? And why do they get it so wrong? Here are a few possible reasons:

fear of being seen to make a decision that will rock the corporate boat
fear of being seen to go against the industry-accepted approach
fear that ‘short’ text must be inadequate in some way
it doesn’t look official or governmental
everything must be on the same page, inaccurately citing some legislation or other
definitive text - we have written this once - we can’t rewrite it just because it’s on the web
the decision-maker doesn’t feel they have the authority, so plays safe to avoid the hassle of bothering their boss
the decision-maker does have the authority but overrides best advice from below through ignorance

Whatever the reason, the solution lies in education. The proposed remedy may be better coming from an outsider.

training
Although usually entitled ‘Web writing, editing and usability’ my course touches on many other aspects of content creation. I usually have to explain that it’s about getting the politics right and telling the bosses when they have got it wrong, but in the nicest possible way, of course!

The ideal situation is to tactfully persuade the boss to attend the course so that they can get the message directly.

Software prices collapse

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 13:27:00 +0100

We are seeing a radical change in business computing at the moment. Not only is there a massive increase in better performing and lower priced software available but there is also some radical thinking going on about hardware choice.

For example, at one time, to buy OCR text recognition software would have set you back over £100. Today you can buy an app to do this for an iMac for £14.

Prices are dramatically tumbling down.

To design a website in the past you would probably have bought industry-standard Dreamweaver which today costs £385. It has all the bells and whistles the serious web designer needs. But for many this has grown into a tricky-to-use piece of software - so they might agree with the website Top Ten Reviews preferred choice of Sandvox at £54. Not only is it more than adequate for most people but is a lot more user-friendly.

By the way, I uploaded this blog photo using Yuppy FTP, a really neat but sophisticated app on the Mac, which cost just £7.

Software houses have caught onto the fact that selling more cheaply to a global market is very lucrative. I have found small specialist software companies creating brilliant software that are located in the Middle East and Far East where production costs are dramatically lower than in the West.

clever operating systems
We are also now are finding more and more functionality built into operating systems. Not only will Mountain Lion, Apple’s new operating system, have voice synthesis to read out text for you, but it will have dictation software to translate voice input into written text.

Then there is Apple’s built-in Time Machine. This is an amazing piece of software that quietly and reliably backs up your work every hour and gives you access to historic files stretching months and years into the past. Software to do this used to cost £50-100.

hardware choice
At one time the choice of platform for business computing was simple - it was Microsoft and Windows.

But things are changing. Top Ten Reviews when choosing business computers has placed the Apple iMac as the best choice for office hardware with a score of 9.03. The 10th choice was the HP Workstation XW9400 which scored 5.0.

With a better choice of apps and better hardware we are going to see a significant change in platform allegiance.

There are hundreds of content management packages that enable compay staff to update intranets and websites. But there are too many second rate products that have yet to face the full onslaught of global competition. The gloves are off and the consumer will be seeing the benefit.

Open source software is also gaining increasing respectability and acceptance with its widespread use in government departments. Coupled with the wider availability of cheap apps, it is just a matter of time before we see a wholesale collapse in business software prices.

Michelangelo versus white van man

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:59:36 +0100

I came across a discussion on LinkedIn today asking people how much people were paying for web writing. But there was no mention of what the subject of the copy was, the audience it was intended for or the nature of the text.

Five years ago, agencies and freelancers would advertise the fact that they specialised in, or were capable of writing for the web. Today all writers claim that they write or edit for websites - whether they have attended relevant training or not and whatever their level of experience or ability.

If you need a ceiling painted at your home are you fussy about who would do it?

Last year I visited the stunning Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. I will confess that the ceiling is considerably better than the ceiling I emulsioned in my kitchen a few months back. And this was marginally better than the standard delivered by a local ‘white van’ cowboy trader with an eight inch roller!

perception of quality
But just how good are organisations in recognising web writing quality differences?

Working within the constraints of screen area demands much higher standards of writing than on paper. Material has to be well structured, priorities assessed, effective titles created, subheads and hyperlinks need to be written and usability issues taken on board. Even on completion, the web page copy may need to be tested and the text further refined.

Whether you are trying to get buy-in from your staff on a new initiative - or you are keen to attract new customers on a website - the quality of copy can make a substantial difference.

So should we be paying an editor in India at US$2.40 an hour or commissioning a world leading agency at $240 an hour? The decision must be based on quality and performance.

tablets make greater demands
As more and more people defer to smart phones and tablet computers to access web pages there is a growing need to employ more experienced and effective web writers who can successfully work within the tighter constraints of the reduced screen area.