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Hiya, Loyal BT Blog Readers:

I'm Katie, the Brain Traffic blog editor, here with a brief but important announcement: We’re moving to Wordpress.

You can still get to our blog when you ... 

a) Use the handy-dandy menu item located above in your friendly neighborhood navigation bar, AND/OR

b) Visit  http://braintraffic.com/blog, which will redirect you to http://blog.braintraffic.com/

RSS feeders and Bookmarkers: Please update to http://blog.braintraffic.com/feed/

See ya there.

I saw this sign during a recent trip to Midtown Global Market.

I liked it for the following reasons:

• It clearly communicated that there was still a play area but it had been moved.
• It helped me understand where I was in the market (northeast)  and where I would need to go (southwest).
• The graphic gave me additional information (rather than acting as unnecessary decoration) and reinforced which direction I should go to find the play area.
• The design isn't any fancier than it needs to be. It's clear, simple, and readable from a distance. 

There are only two improvements I could offer:

• Use sentence case to improve the readability.
• Change relocated to moved. Same message, only simpler.

Nice job, Midtown.

Well, hello there.

As you may or may not know, several months back I signed a contract with the esteemed New Riders publishers to write this book. (New cover design with actual title coming soon.)

After lots of speaking engagements, seminars, project work, and not a little procrastination, the time has come for me to focus seriously on getting this sucker finished.

Why am I telling you this? Simply to let you know that I'm going to be taking a little blogging break.

But never fear! You'll still be hearing (at least) weekly from one of our smarty-pants Brain Traffic staffers. And, if you need even more Brain Traffic goodness, you can follow us on Twitter. (Now tweeting more than just blog posts, thank you very much.)

So! I'll see you here again in late June. And, in the meantime, when you think of me, think of this guy:

I've been getting a lot of messages in my mailbox lately from CEOs and the like trying to reassure me about the state of their business. No, your money didn't go towards that $30,000 antique rug in my office. I swear.

A great example of this phenomenon is a recent TV campaign with Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. In it, he strolls through Central Park in a luxe overcoat pitching a new product, all while empathizing about the "trying times" we're in. Bill Clinton feeling my pain this isn't.

Occasionally, we get asked at Brain Traffic to make space for this kind of thing as part of a larger content development project.

It seems like a lame holdover of a (much) older style of advertising . . . say from the 1950s. I guess I just can't get my Gen X brain around the idea that an appeal from authority is an effective way to retain a customer, let alone a good means to convert a sales prospect.

It's as if they think a few platitudes and a reassuring word from the Person in Charge can fix a deeper issue.

Well maybe it can, and maybe it can't. But I'm skeptical that putting executive marketing messages on your website is an effective way to soothe a nervous customer.

The customer is on your site to accomplish a task. Maybe they want to learn more about a product, or service an existing product. A leadership message doesn’t help accomplish that task. 

The best way to convince a customer that your company is still trustworthy is to prove it with action. Continue to provide value. Make the customer service process easy. Make it clear why you’re offering something your competitors aren’t.

As hard as it is for an old editor to say, there are times when content alone can't fix the problem.

Several months ago, I started a Google Group on content strategy. And then promptly neglected it. (Yes, thank you, the irony does not escape me.) And so, after an initial flurry of activity, it died.

And then! Much to my delight and surprise, a comment was posted to the group from a graduate student named Brynn, who asked the following question:

The responses – coming from content strategists all over the country - have been terrific, and very worthy of sharing with the community at large. So, with the authors' permissions, here's what they have to say:

Jeffrey MacIntyre, Principal, Predicate LLC:

Library sciences is a very strong basis for content strategy skills. I came to be a content strategist out of a constellation of management/ communications consulting, interactive copywriting, and a strong field interest in publishing.

There's no one path that's right, in my experience. It really comes down to best aligning your interests and getting some project exposure as soon as you feel ready to test the waters.

I strongly recommend you join the CS mailing list and ask the subscribers what they think! To subscribe, send an email request to Content-strategy-request@mail.asis.org.

Karen McGrane, Principal, Bond Art Science:

Rahel Bailie, Principal, Intentional Design:

Richard Sheffield, Author, The Web Content Strategist's Bible:

Content strategists can share a lot of concepts with librarians and information architects, so another idea would be to look into univerities with a School of Information, or iSchool.

[Your Name Goes Here]
Have other ideas for Brynn? Want to help breathe new life into the Content Strategy Group? Visit and join today!

It's not every day a person gets interviewed by Lou Rosenfeld.

You know. The guy who helped create the profession of information architecture.

Perhaps you even have a copy of Lou's book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, sitting on your shelf, right within arm's reach. If you don't, you should. Maybe even two copies.

As a longtime fan of Lou's work, I was honored to help "open his eyes" to content strategy (his words, not mine).

An excerpt from our interview:

(Hm. Upon review, I think he actually took that part out ...)

Read the actual, non-annoying, mostly informative interview here: Future Practice Interview: Kristina Halvorson

Kristina's Rosenfeld Media webinar Content Strategy for Websites takes place on April 23, 2009, 1-2pm EST. Use code RMWBNR for a 20% discount off your ticket purchase.

Sure, someday you’ll have a free decade or two to tackle the mountain of books out there on web writing. Until then, use this nice, basic list of web writing best practices to tack on your wall:

• Trim fat. Keep your content short and sweet. (Would say more about this, but, you know.)
• Stay focused. As you’re writing, stop yourself every once and awhile and revisit your topic sentence. Ask yourself: Is what I’m writing relevant? Delete what’s unnecessary and retool what’s awkward.
• Don’t exceed 60 words per paragraph. Doing this will make your readers’ eyes want to jump out of their sockets. True story. 
• Honor thy bulleted lists. Three items? Perhaps you should bullet. Ten items? Definitely bullet. This will help your readers quickly assess, divide, and digest information. 
• Avoid fantastic, wonderful fluff and cutting-edge, innovative corporate-speak. Readers can smell it a mile away. They don’t like it. It’s just a big, dumb, useless mountain in between the user and what they want.
• Speak to the audience as ‘you.’ Make them feel special, like you’re speaking directly to them. Remember, conversational. If you went to check into a hotel, a friendly concierge would say “Here’s the key to your room. Hope your stay is pleasant.” A not-as-nice concierge would bark “Here’s the key to the room. Hope the stay is crap.” (The crap bit was for emphasis. But you get the point, right?)
• Divide and conquer existing content. Sometimes a content expert will give you information for the About Us section that would actually be more useful in the Jobs section. Or, a sentence won’t fit with the rest of a paragraph. Don’t assume the person who put it there was smarter than you. Move it! When reorganizing existing paragraphs or forming new ones, a good rule of thumb is to use the inverted pyramid style.
• Talk like a human. If you’re writing for an established brand, by all means use their existing tone—if that’s what the client hired you to do. If you’re hired to create a new tone, that’s great. Do that. But in all instances make sure you don’t sacrifice clarity for cleverness. Also, don’t get overly grammatical. Sometimes it’s better to break a few grammar rules than to sound stuffy.
• Stay grounded. Don’t fall in love with your writing. You’ll lose perspective. And, you’ll probably be less open to constructive client feedback.
• Stay active. Jog twice a week. Heeeyyyoooo! Seriously, though, use active voice. Say, “She rocked the content.” Not, “The content was rocked by her.” Active voice sounds more conversational and offers less potential for confusion. Make sense? Good!

Want to dig deeper? Check out Kristina’s book recommendations.

First, I admit it. I have a not-so-secret crush on John Hodgman. Don’t know him by name? Picture the cuddly geek who plays the PC on those Mac commercials. Yeah, this guy:

My crush is not physical. It’s intellectual. John Hodgman is one of the smartest, funniest men on earth right now. Plus, he knows a thing or two about content strategy and information architecture.

The organized truth of a fictional reference book
In his book, More Information Than You Require (the second in a trilogy of almanacs about fake facts), Hodgman realizes his lifelong dream of writing a page-a-day calendar.

Each page includes a date and “an interesting historical fact that did not occur on that date.” Pure fiction.

Besides being hilarious, the facts are perfectly placed on the page. They appear as insets—a sidebar of sorts. It works because the facts:

• Do not interrupt the flow, nor have anything to do with, the chapter in which they appear
• Do not need to be read chronologically
• Are there for those who, indeed, require more information

For example, in the chapter “Even More More Information Than You Require, With a Special Emphasis on Food and Animals (A Kind of Food),” we find this gem:

This fake fact has nothing to do with food. Or animals. Yet there it is. And I love it.

Typically, I wouldn’t applaud an author for providing aimless fodder, but each one goes perfectly with the book’s overall theme. It just doesn’t fit neatly into a chapter.

How I applied Hodgman’s genius to web content
I thought of Hodgman’s book during a client meeting recently. While reviewing the client’s sitemap, I was having trouble understanding the position of a particular page. It seemed out of place.

After asking a few strategic questions about the page’s planned content, it became clear to me that it included “nice to know” information. The content was related to the site’s main purpose, but did not fit the overall story.

So, I took a page—not literally, though he encourages it—from Hodgman’s book. I suggested placing this content outside of the site’s main navigation, perhaps as a sidebar throughout the site. That way, the information would be there, but it wouldn’t get in the way.

My client loved this suggestion. They created a new sitemap and new wireframes to reflect this direction. And I wrote a little sidebar that linked to the “nice to know” information.

I doubt my copy will crack people up the way Hodgman’s phony historical tidbits do, but his approach worked on my client’s site. 

More information about John Hodgman
I encourage you to develop your own crush on my little Hodgy. Perhaps you will discover more ways to apply his methods to web content.

Here are some links to help you stalk him from afar:

• Blog
• Twitter
• Books
• This American Life
• The Daily Show

I've been at conferences almost non-stop for the past several weeks. My brain is full. It hurts. IT HURTS.

The bad news is that I'm tired. The good news is that there are many, many smart people out there who are serious about making web content better. More relevant. Findable. Persuasive. Consistent.

I'd like to highlight the work of a few brainy colleagues, here.

Colleen Jones (Threebrick) participated in the Content Strategy Consortium at the IA Summit in Memphis (big post on that coming later this week!).

At the IA Summit last week, she spoke about the need for content to find a balance between "usable" and "marketing-focused." I'm very impressed by Colleen's thinking about the role of persuasive content in web user experience.

Rahel Anne Bailie (Intentional Design) and I finally met in person at SXSW. She's been writing and talking about content management system design and strategy for a very long time. I admire her straightforward style and her smart, common-sense problem-solving approach. This is a presentation she gave at the DocTrain conference.

And finally, Derek Powazek (powazek.com) totally wowed me with his SXSW presentation, Design for the Widsom of Crowds. Plenty to think about here when you're hatching your user-generated content strategy. (He includes a few references on his blog.)

Which presentations blew you away? Share the love.