Sally Sisson

Web content and the eternal home page question: How much is too much?

sally — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:45:27 +0000

I love this Venn diagram by xkcd. It was projected on the wall at the start of a Future M seminar I attended this September called “Beyond the University Website – The Future of Digital Marketing in Higher Education.” This image keeps coming back to me, in content decisions for both edu and B2B.

Sponsored by ISITE Design, and moderated by chief strategy officer Jeff Cram, the panel included Mike Petroff, Web and Technology Enrollment Manager at Emerson College; Perry Hewitt, Chief Digital Officer at Harvard; Gene Begin, Digital Marketing Director at Babson College; and Tom Baird, Vice Chancellor of University of Michigan Dearborn.

Content Overload? It’s all about balance.

I’ve been working on content strategy, optimization, writing and editing for an independent preK-8 school website this year and am about to begin on one for an independent high school. Funny how, regardless of the size of the school, the home page issues always seem to be the same.

How to balance content for current vs. prospective students and constituents? How many news feeds, blog feeds, photo and video galleries do you really need? How can we make sure it’s all optimized for search? What is the true purpose of the home page anyway? How much is too much?

I’m knee-deep in content migration from one CMS to another on the above mentioned website, but once I come up for air I’ll grapple with this question some more. Got any formulas for success? Would love to hear them.

FutureM wrap-ups:

Here are a couple good summaries of the FutureM seminar, along with some choice tweets on CMS quandries (as universal as the homepage ones, it seems to me), mobile stats for edu, and the need for social strategy:

Open Parenthesis: Future M on Higher Education
post by John Eckman of ISTE

Inside FutureM: Digital Marketing and Higher Education
post by Erik Devaney on New England Post

10+ Tips on Combating Creative Block

sally — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:35:18 +0000

Thanks to readers for responding to my last blog post:

March Madness: Celebrating creativity and the (sometimes maddening) creative process

image from williamsrandall.com

Tracy Graves, digital + social media consultant @ B4South

When I’m stuck, the world easily descends into a maelstrom of despair. And then, to re-jigger myself, I spend oodles of time looking at other people’s work. I try and take the pressure off and create something for myself instead of for a client. I read something utterly escapist and don’t worry about whether I’m intellectually furthering myself. And most importantly, I accept the fact that I need to get at least 5 crappy versions of something out of the way, and then something will emerge worth keeping.

Christopher Harting, photographer + philosopher @ Christopher Harting Studio

Go to Manhattan. Walk around and look at stuff. Drink coffee. Walk around some more. But you know the truth? I never have that problem. Never, ever, ever.

John DiCocco, creative director/writer/editor (and underground reporter for the Tiny Mind Gazette)

I’m pretty fortunate in that I have rarely suffered this dreaded event, except when writing ad copy. And when that occurs, I have a standby tactic. I start asking outlandish questions:

“What if the whole thing was blue?” “What if your parents spoke two different languages and you didn’t understand either one?” “What if you knew everything that was going to happen one hour ahead of time?” What’s the worst that could happen—I mean, really, the WORST? Okay, backtrack from there. “What if it/he/the nation were twice/half as big/small/loud/dense/bright etc?”

Michael Calienes, creative director + copywriter @ Transplant

Self-induced water boarding.

Cuban music in the background.

Freedom.

Kelley Rugg, producer, director, writer + videographer @ Rowboat Productions

Creativity is not about making or forcing but about allowing and trusting, and so what I do when I feel any type of block is understand that I am causing it by trying too hard… so then I let go, get out of the way, and absolutely keep going.

Trebor Healey, poet + novelist @ treborhealey.com

I think it’s best to shift your surroundings, take a trip, small or big, spend time in nature…go to museums, dance performances, concerts…other creative ventures will inspire your own, will put you in the creative reality. If all else fails, revisit your favorite writers’ or artists’ work like a bee dropping in on the hive of honey and you will once again know how to get to the flowers you seek.

Doug Eymer, creative director + designer @ EYMER Design Laboratories + Think Tank

Procrastination is such a negative term. I prefer to think of it as getting all of your ducks in a row. Here’s the real dear, you awake from hibernation in a cranky mood. Your immediate reaction to EVERYTHing is: “I’m right, the LOSERS that have been grinding their teeth all winter are WRONG!”

So, because you have been asleep and avoiding the family check book, you stand at the very end of the protective barriers and say, “So What! I have been dead for the last couple of months, what is the difference in a few eternal centuries more?”

The Mysterious Dr. F, linguist, world traveler + underground reporter @ Tiny Mind Gazette

My true method of overcoming creative block used to be:

1) Put on blue clown wig; 2) put Boomtown Rats’ “Tell Me Why I Don’t Like Mondays” on at maximum volume on the Walkman; 3) draw random shapes all over the paper until the creative fairies inspired me (without getting swatted out of the air by the eraser dust brush).

But, the wig used to scare the cleaning lady.

So, now I only limit my creative sessions to the foggy span of time at the mid-point of a 50 mile business drive, of a four-hour “creative” slide presentation (by someone else, of course), or during the five-hour Easter vigil mass. Then the janitor in my head starts screaming, “OOO! Mr. Kotter! Mr. Kotter!” and I have to rush to fish out my mini composition book to pour out the golden flow of inspiration (somewhat like a potty training two-year-old on a drive to grandma’s—gotta go NOW, Mommy!)

Yes, it’s a crazy sight, especially for the guy in the second lane, the guy sitting next to me in a meeting, or Father O’Reilly; but hey, I didn’t make the rules of creation!

Doug Williams, writer @Writeous Outrage and head of FUSE5

Here’s one from the director I worked with in NY during my playwriting days.

She said the best way to beat block was to find famous quotes on the subjects (or themes) you’re writing about, and then make them your own. The quotes serve as idea factories that 1) give you another perspective; 2) take you in a direction you’d likely have never found yourself; and 3) reinvigorate the internal creative process by making you think about something familiar in a completely different way.

I’ve been doing that for years – in screenplays, novels, speeches, PR/marketing, online writing, et al – and it’s never failed me once.

David Game

Terence Rattigan, UK playwright, was advised to join the RAF [Royal Air Force] to cure writer’s block.

Joe Lee @ joelee.me

When in doubt or stuck, I doodle. Doodling to me is active so it literally gets me going. It’s my physical technique to kick start a mental stream of consciousness. Since my doodles are not even worthy of being called a sketch, they are uninhibited and uncensored. Also, I use scraps of paper, napkins, recycled printed sheets, anything that has no feeling of preciousness whatsoever, not even post-its or sketchbooks. (Think about how many artists who like to flaunt and show off their “sketchbooks.”) Start here, there, or anywhere – JUST DOODLE IT. As Bucky Fuller once said, “How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.”

March Madness: celebrating creativity + the (sometimes maddening) creative process

sally — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:04:43 +0000

image from John Kelly's "Procrastination" video

Get inspired

Anyone else out there been in a slump this winter? Here’s a great collection of video clips from 99% to shake the cobwebs from the cranium. Check it out:

10 Awesome Videos on Idea Execution + The Creative Process

Spring forward

This coming week I’ll be covering creativity in my blog and would love folks to contribute thoughts, ideas, doodles, random musings or guest blog posts. Whatever you like.

Battling creative block

Last spring I posted the following three pieces to give myself a kick-start:

Here Comes the Sun: Overcoming creative block (part 1 of many)

Overcoming Creative Block (part 2): Writing, procrastination + keeping a sense of humor

Overcoming Creative Block (part 3): Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity

Tell me:

When it’s cold and gray (or when it’s hard to come up with something creative to draw, design, write or say), where do you look for inspiration? How do you break out of a slump and get back in gear? If you’re stuck in a long and tedious project, how do flex your creative muscles on the side? I’d love to read your comments below. Thanks!

Extreme Content: How is web writing like extreme winter weather?

sally — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:21:18 +0000

A: You’ve got to be prepared for both.

When a client needs web content, sometimes it’s just a home page or a few headlines. Sometimes it’s the whole thing – 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd level pages plus links and special features.

Light to moderate to heavy

For the Ready Classroom website, Discovery Education needed the whole package: research and writing for a dozen categories of extreme weather and natural disasters, customized content for each of the 50 states, copy to cross-reference it all, and creative standards-based lesson plans for different grades ranges for K-12.

On top of that there were different strands for three different audiences. All content had to be run through Discovery Education as well as the Ad Council and FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), their partners for this particular project.

Stock up. Hunker down.

Web writing involves a range of skills: research, writing (both copywriting and long-form content), editing, organization, planning, critical thinking. It also takes time, especially a job of this size. It can be enjoyable to dive deep into a topic and stay holed up for a while. The key is to be be prepared (clear your schedule, line up childcare), stock up on supplies (decent snacks, decent coffee, case of coffee filters), and prepare for a couple all-nighters. Note that it’s good to come up for air every once in a while, whatever the weather.

Toolkits, checklists and survival skills.

We’re getting pretty hard hit with winter weather this year, some parts of the country worse than others. Just this morning I consulted Ready Classroom to check my own family’s state of preparedness for this week’s monster storm. According to FEMA, the Red Cross and my own trusty tips, we still have another trip or two to the hardware store before ticking all the boxes on our Disaster Preparedness Checklist.

Check out the site and see how you stack up. Are YOU prepared?

The calm after the storm

Judging by the broken flashlight and half-empty box of kitchen matches by my side, I would not win many Girl Scout badges for preparedness. However, the content I developed did score some points: Ready Classroom won a 2010 BESSIE (Best Educational Software Award), which made those days and nights in my underground bunker all the more worthwhile. Read more here.

The Power of Cartoons: TED Talk on Feminism, Humor and World Peace

sally — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:40:45 +0000

Click here to watch: Liza Donnelly: Drawing upon humor for change | TED Talk

How cool is this?

New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly shares a portfolio of her wise and funny cartoons about modern life—and talks about how humor can empower women to change the rules.

Her latest project supports the United Nations initiative Cartooning For Peace. The exhibit “The Folly, Fun and Flexibility of Women” showcases cartoons by artists from around the world.

Women as change agents

“Visual humor has the ability to reach the viewer quickly and succinctly, speaking not only to the intellect, but also to the heart. Rather than reify, laughter has the power to break down stereotypes and unchallenged beliefs.”

“We can change this thing… one laugh at a time.”

Click here to see a gallery of Liza’s cartoons. Her latest book, When Do They Serve the Wine?, is available on Amazon.com.

The Life (and Death?) of STORYTELLING: Ten top posts of 2010

sally — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 04:33:27 +0000

Once upon a time… storytelling was the domain of kindergarten classrooms and creative writing courses. Over the past decade it’s found its way into advertising, marketing and business consulting, and countless articles on all of the above.

Stories inspire and connect us. From ancient cave paintings to Super Bowl commercials to transmedia storytelling, they illustrate, resonate and—when done well—stick with us for a long time.

Here are some of my top picks on the topic. Instead of synthesizing what’s already been written so well, I’ll let these speak for themselves.

1. Harvard Business Review: The Power of Storytelling

In a conversation with HBR, Robert McKee, the world’s best-known screenwriting lecturer, argues that executives can engage people in a much deeper—and ultimately more convincing—way if they toss out their PowerPoint slides and memos and learn to tell good stories.

2. Copyblogger: How to Captivate Your Audience with Story (From America’s Greatest Living Playwright)

There’s been a fevered interest in the art of storytelling among the marketing crowd recently. We are told that story—applied to salesmanship, preaching, advertising, conversation, marketing, songwriting, and blogging—contains the power to deliver the world to the deft storyteller’s door. But what is a well-told story? Take a lesson from David Mamet.

3. Chris Brogan: Storytelling for Business

Stories are how we learn best. We absorb numbers and facts and details, but we keep them all glued into our heads with stories.

4. Smashing Magazine: Better User Experience with Storytelling

Our information…has become watered down, cloned, and is churned out quickly in 140-character blurbs. We’ve lost that personal touch where we find an emotional connection that makes us care. Using storytelling, however, we can pull these fragments together into a common thread. We can connect as real people, not just computers.

5. Ten Ways to Story Your Business (or Product or Brand)

Nine wise tips, plus #10: Remember that if you don’t tell your story, your story will probably get told for you—in a way that may damage your business.

6. Content Rules: What Does Business Have to Do With Storytelling?

The idea of storytelling as it applies to business isn’t about spinning a yarn or fairytale. Rather, it’s about how your business exists in the real world: how people use your products—how they add value to people’s lives, ease their troubles, help shoulder their burdens, and meet their needs.

7. Mark Levy: Telling the Same Story Differently

An insightful post inspired by Matt Madden’s ingenius cartoon book “99 Ways to Tell a Story.”

8. Transmedia Storytelling: The Psychological Power of Story

The ultimate mashup of ancient traditions and new communications models.

9. Harvard Business Review: When Storytelling Isn’t Enough

Fast Company founder Alan Webber says storytelling is overrated and declares, “Content isn’t king, context is king!”

10. Bite: The Death of Storytelling?

“We are all striving to tell stories. But are we making more noise than news?”

What do you think?

Content (and copywriters) are king at Groupon, part 2

sally — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 04:15:43 +0000

Continuing my fixation with the group buying site…

[See part 1: The Key to Groupon's Success? A Stable of Great Copywriters]

I know much of the genius has to do with the simple business model, but I remain fixated on the creative. Here’s another article I bookmarked a while back, this one from 52weeksofux.com:

Groupon and the value of copywriting

“There is lots of talk of whether Groupon can keep their advantage over new competitors. But the competitors I have seen don’t have the copywriting chops that Groupon does, at least right now. As long as Groupon continues to write such great copy, they’ll have a big advantage over their competitors.”

Click here for full article.

Editorial style (and schtick) guide

Check out the company’s Public Editorial Manual which describes the Groupon Voice in detail and has a whole section on Humor Writing, complete with examples. Here’s a small taste:

Zog’s Dogs

“The first deep-frying techniques were used as a means of preserving wedding gowns and Barry Bonds rookie cards; it wasn’t until later that they were applied to food….”

Guide to Art-Museum Banter

“Before taking advantage of today’s Groupon, memorize these handy art criticisms, which are guaranteed to apply to any work in the Lowe Art Museum:

“The brush stroke is large. It would not shock me if the artist painted with a wig or mop. Do you agree with my point of view?”
“The way color is used is breathtaking. It is either red, blue, green, or purple, but I would need to take a closer look to be sure.”
“Some say those are boxes, but to me they appear as triangles. Either way, this painting is about Lou Gehrig’s desire to adopt a dog.”

The key to Groupon’s success? A stable of great copywriters.

sally — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:50:10 +0000

Okay, so it’s not only about the clever content. But it’s the reason I read my Groupon coupon every morning as I sift through the clutter in my in-box. And I’m not alone.

Back in September I posted a link to this article from VentureBeat about writing as the key to Groupon’s remarkable success. Now whenever I read about the social-buying site and Google’s billion-dollar takeover offer, the copywriting bit remains top of mind.

Read the article here:

The Secret of Groupon’s Success Is… Good Writing?

“Chief executive Andrew Mason said today that the success of his popular social buying site Groupon had less to do with brilliant tech and more with good writing, and with unfashionable technology like email.

“Groupon employs a staff of 70 writers to create the text of all its group deals, Mason said. It might be easier to ask the businesses offering the deals to write the content, or perhaps to find some way to automatically generate the text, but Mason said that having well-written, engaging content is a key part of convincing users to keep reading…”

To be continued…

Where’s Bill Nye When We Need Him?

sally — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:41:18 +0000

Climate Change Skeptics vs. 21st Century Skills Movement in Schools

I’ve got Bill Nye on the brain. I miss seeing him on PBS and now he keeps popping up in unlikely (online) places. Recently he was featured in an Utne Reader blog post (“Bill Nye is the Archbishop of Scientism”) that described his take on the current climate change debate. Having been awarded the 2010 Humanist Award, he was extolled for his “unflappable faith in science.”

In his words:

“Climate change is going to affect the world in ways that are truly hard to imagine. And it’s this hard-to-imagine nature that’s costing us so dearly in time. We’re losing valuable time because of disbelief in the scientific method.”

Math + Science = Future

A couple weeks ago Bill joined Al Gore and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in a Global Online Town Hall forum called “Math, Science and the Future of Our Nation.” More than a thousand students joined in the live discussion about the future of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education.

Other panelists included astronaut Sally Ride, inventor Dean Kamen, and the stars of Discovery Channel’s MythBusters. The program was just one small piece of Connect a Million Minds (CMM), Time Warner Cable’s $100 million philanthropic initiative to advance education and careers in STEM fields.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

In October the National Journal reported that 19 of the 20 GOP Senate challengers deemed climate change a non-issue, declaring the science behind it either inconclusive or wrong. Some of those same politicians are now gunning for seats on the House Energy Committee, and pledging to attack existing environmental policies, discredit scientists, and do away with the EPA’s authority to tighten emissions controls on coal, oil and other carbon fuels.

This flies against the findings of the National Academy of Sciences and 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists.

Separation of Science and State?

As a citizen and parent, I find this disconnect deeply disturbing. As someone who writes about science, technology and trends in K-12 education, I find it mind-boggling.

Science is a key focus of the 21st Century Skills movement. STEM skills are in demand around the globe, and teachers, students and professionals are being challenged to deepen knowledge and keep on the cutting edge of scientific advances.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills outlines recommended outcomes for core subjects and relevant interdisciplinary themes, e.g., Environmental Literacy. In K-12 classrooms, students engage in authentic learning online with real scientists and government groups like NOAA, NASA and, ironically, the EPA.

So while students and schools are ramping up science, government officials are dumbing it down. It doesn’t make sense.

Call for Alternative Energy

Today I searched on YouTube for a video clip I’d seen a couple years ago. Nye’s call to invest in wind and solar energy seems especially prescient right about now. Check it out:

Repower America: Bill Nye the Science Guy

Voice of reason

Okay, so here’s the other reason we need Bill Nye: He’s a reasonable, even-tempered guy who’s trying to help us reach across the aisle here. In his words:

We all have a tendency to dismiss people who believe other things, who are outsiders, or who speak other languages. I constantly have to fight the urge to say, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! That’s crazy!”

My advice is just try to listen and see if you can figure out what it is that makes a person not want to believe in climate change, not want to accept that Venus is like Earth only a little different, not want to question things….So try asking instead of telling. Ask people, “What is it about science that you don’t like?”

Sounds like we could all read a page from his book. Click here to read more from his entertaining acceptance speech for the 2010 Humanist Award.

Closing thoughts…

“It is through science, and the discovery of scientific processes, that I came to be a skeptic and came to really embrace critical thinking. I came to embrace the idea that you probably only get one shot at life, so, roughly, don’t blow it.”

– Bill Nye the Science Guy

Graphic novel of Dante’s Divine Comedy triumph of information design–and editing

sally — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 02:07:54 +0000

This entertaining review in PopMatters made me want to run out and buy the book.

It tells how illustrator and graphic designer Seymour Chwast condensed Dante’s epic 14,000-line allegory to under 120 pages, producing an accessible visual adaptation, complete with diagrams to explain the intricate circles and steps in the author’s imagined world. The approach is quirky and playful, while still capturing the spirit of Dante’s daunting prose.

This is neither a dumbed-down, Reader’s Digest treatment nor a substitute for reading the 14th century classic. Rather, consider it a wayfinding guide to the real thing.

“Film noir, Marc Chagall and children’s picture books are among the sources which inform Chwast’s art, drawn in pure black and white, which presents Dante as a trench-coated, pipe-smoking private investigator, Virgil as a proper old-school English gentleman with a bowler hat and cane and Beatrice as a blonde, pin-curled beauty…”

“This is a true adaptation, not a translation, and one in which the graphics do more of the storytelling than the text. Chwast’s illustrations carry the main content of the Divine Comedy while the cantos have been greatly shorted and translated into modern prose.” — Sarah Boslaugh

Read the full review here:

‘Dante’s Divine Comedy,’ from a Left-Handed Designer

For more insight into the creative process, in Chwast’s own words, see this from Huffington Post: Divine Comedy as Graphic Novel