Writing for the Web2.0: Usability is still king
Since graduating with an English literature degree ten years ago, I’ve made a good part of my living writing web and interactive content. Much of what I learned comes from online journalism practices, web usability via Nielsen and the web style guides I’ve worked with on various projects.
Last year, I put all the basics of web writing together for my online publishing courses in a Google doc. The rules haven’t changed all that much:
- People still scan the web
- Web writing is chunky and funky
- Headlines should be searchable (not clever)
- Web readers are also web users (let them interact)
- Inverted pyramid still works
Of course, it also helps to spend as much time as possible actually writing intended for a public audience – whether it’s your blog, website or an online publication. This year, I decided to share this resource (sans the teaching, assignments and assistance I provide to my students).
Writing for social media apps and microcontent services
In addition to the above, I also wrote 5 tips for better social media writing (to speak to the needs of social sharing, bookmarking and the limitations of microformats – like Facebook walls, bookmarking fields and social feeds like Twitter).
There’s certainly a lot more I could say here about integrating writing with other media elements, engaging user generated content and tagging but I’ll leave that for a part two!
A terrif presentation, as I suspected.
Read Jacob Nielsen? Ugh. Okay, but I need something to balance him out. He often strikes me as being a bit pedantic and overly prescriptive. Seth Godin is fun. Chris Brogan too. Donald Norman is one of my all time faves. (I need to reflect more on HCI folks that I follow — sorry for the incomplete list).
For myself, while I adore the inverted pyramid, I find that it’s important to leave the reader with a clear set of take away points at the end of my story/post/text. Sort of a recap, as it were.
Also, on the last slide I wanted to see something about paying it forward, that is, make recommendations, share some link love. Web 2.0 writing is clearly as much about sharing as it it is consuming, no?
Again, I really like the way you think.
-c-
For what it’s worth… I just remembered one other thing about being “king.” I think in light of the read/write web, Cory Doctorow said: “Conversation is king.” Usability is indeed critical, regal even. I guess you can’t have a conversation with a usable interface, so I vote to stick with your simile. ; )
Thanks Christopher – this is pretty bare bones. Just the basics. I’d love to expand on this but I am also just getting the hang of google docs. The presentations I create for real conferences are a little more interesting :)
I like what you said about inverted pyramid. As for clear take away points I guess I should add that – though the whole thing is just points :)
I totally epically fail the Lessig method with these things but I’ll get there someday (when I have 100 hours of free time to find enough images to tell the story!)
Update: Just this weekend I was speaking with an online magazine about making their articles a bit more web friendly. The problem for most print to web mags is that they input their print articles exactly as formatted for the print version. trouble is, this doesn’t really add up to an engaging web experience. A number of my colleagues at the conference also pointed out that print headlines/titles tend to be more creative/clever and less clear than web headlines. My suggested strategy is this: print mags should edit print versions with an eye to web usability (use searchable terms in headlines) and ensure subheads and the tips above. Also, print readers are getting accustomed to the hassle free format of web writing (breaks up huge passages of text) with subheads, lists, images, sidebars.