Creek Content

End content chaos. Communicate clearly.

Writing Collaboratively: IRL and Virtually

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Summer and I have now worked together more than a decade — every bit of it with me in Nashville and her in Austin. To us, and to Megan and Lesley and many of our clients, sitting side by side is a wonderful luxury that we take advantage of as often as we can. But we’ve found very little work in our field that requires being in the same place with each other, day in and day out.

When we work with clients, we plan carefully to be in the same time and place when it counts, and to allow both our clients and the Creek Content staff personal flexibility the rest of the time.

All that means that we end up working as a team but from a distance a significant amount of the time. For many of us trained in some creative discipline, this requires learning new ways to work. I learned to write in the newsroom of the student paper at Vanderbilt, with the editor standing over my shoulder, or my standing over his, as we wrote and edited together. [OK, as he slashed my copy to bits. But oh, how I learned — so I do not complain.]

When I began a career in publishing, I can’t count how many hours I must have spent sitting at a designer’s side as he or she laid out a magazine page, talking through all the little decisions together, step by step.

Today, as we work together, we use several tools to stay in touch. I have to confess that email is first and foremost among them. As much as we all know it’s not always the most effective way to collaborate, it has the benefit of being the default platform for most people with whom we interact, including each other.

Summer and Megan and I are also huge on IM. Most of our conversations happen that way. I have actually been sad to see the fragmentation that Facebook, Twitter, texting and other platforms have created here; 6 or 7 years ago, IM was a viable platform for my connections in any realm of my life. Now, it is an intentional communication choice I make with my team. It is a great platform [in whatever application you like — AOL, Google, MS Communicator, Skype, Yammer, many others] for a team to use. I also really like group chat platforms like Campfire from 37 Signals. If you have a team that needs to communicate regularly with a group, these can be valuable.

One of the most important considerations is keeping track of work, files and progress in a mutual way. We use both Basecamp [primarily for task management and calendaring of tasks] and Google Drive [for file management and collaborative work spaces]. We’ve tried lots — LOTS — of other tools, but this is where we’ve landed for the moment.

How do you work collaboratively across a distance? What tools are essential for your team?

Writing Content for Usability

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Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Steph Hay’s Writing Content for Usability webinar. Steph’s main question (and the one we’ve been asking ourselves for years) is “Why does the Internet still lack great content?”

Steph’s short answer is that most of us rely too much on design to catch the attention of readers, rather than the content we write. For a few hours, Steph talked about focusing on the following three criteria to improve your writing:

  1. Focus on your audience, medium and network. Start by figuring out to whom you are sending the message. Instead of considering everyone who might drop by your site, focus on one ideal person and directly speak to him or her. Then, determine how you want them to feel.  Consider how your network will describe you—and then influence your target audience. Once you are satisfied with your content, capitalize on other communication channels to tell your story.
  2. Write credible content. Obviously, usable content has to say something substantive. Too often, we get caught up in filling space rather than creating something that will reach our audience. Remember that credible content is meaningful, helpful, results-oriented and confident. Here are a few tips for achieving credible content:

    • Meaningful: Take time to ensure that your writing actually says something. Remove buzz words and industry jargon and tell your audience exactly what you want them to hear.
    • Helpful: Don’t assume users know what to do once they reach your site. You have to tell them what you want them to do!
    • Results-Oriented: Explain what awesome things your users will get from you. Writing a list of what you do isn’t enough to get results.
    • Confident: Be careful not to over promote. Showcase confidence in your work while being humble.
  3. Achieve consistency. Content is consistent when it is uniform in structure, style and voice.

    • Structure: Always lead with the most important information, include what is relevant, and use keywords throughout the site.
    • Style: Make sure every page of the site uses the same format for capitalizations, punctuation, headings, etc.
    • Voice: Always write in a genuine tone. Read your content out loud and then rewrite anything that sounds questionable.

What’s your definition of great content? Let us know in the comments below.