While recommending someone on LinkedIn, I noticed (not for the first time) that they do a nice job with the hint text in the Written Recommendation field on their form.

What’s cool?

1) It’s helpful but not essential. The description of what you’re supposed to put in the box is appropriately left outside the box, so it doesn’t disappear when you start typing.

2) It uses your recommendee’s name.

3) It’s clearly labeled “Example” and grayed out to reduce confusion with real, pre-entered text.

What could be cooler? It’d be sweet if the example changed based on the relationship you select–right now, “Dom is a detail-oriented manager” whether you reported to Dom, he reported to you, or it’s a different relationship altogether.

Sweet, but not essential. Nice microcopy, LinkedIn.

On September 8, I hosted a panel I’d been plotting since founding the Content Strategy Seattle group last October: Ask the Content Strategist.

My idea: Get a group of professional content strategists together and let people ask them questions. It worked great, and here’s the video to prove it.

The participants: Ariel van Spronsen of POP, Vanessa Casavant of AdoptUsKids, Patty Campbell of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Tiffani Jones Brown of Second and Park and Things That Are Brown. (Scott Pierce provided invaluable behind the scenes techie magic. I moderated.)

Questions included:

• What are the differences between a content strategist and a writer or journalist?
• How do you differentiate between a content sitemap and a IA sitemap? More broadly: Now that we’ve covered the differences between a content strategist and a writer, what are the differences between a content strategist and an information architect?
• What’s the most effective way to explain the importance of content strategy to a team who doesn’t understand why site architecture would come before design?
• Is workflow analysis always a part of content strategy, or is there a way around it?
• What’s the ideal interaction or workflow between content strategy and search engine optimization (SEO)?
• Knowing that content is king, a call to action is imperative, and the company or website will fail without a good content strategy, when do you throw in the towel?

Many thanks to all four panelists, and to the Watercooler for the venue.

And don’t miss next month’s meetup: Margot Bloomstein talks about Waking Up in Seattle: You’re the one that they want.

Last weekend I went to camp — BarCamp Seattle, that is. I’d never been to an unconference before. One of the rules of BarCamp: The first time you go, you have to present. So I spent the morning half paying attention to other people’s presentations while working on my own, which I wrote out by hand during lunch.

So: Not so much networking, but I did speak for 25 minutes on comics and content. Here are my notes. (Acutal words used: more.) Within the next couple of days I’ll post a more thoughtful consideration of my efforts, because the time scale — commitment to presentation in 3.75 hours — meant I didn’t think all of this through.

Hi.

I’m James Callan, a web writer and content strategist. I’m presenting because it’s my first time at BarCamp and I knew Dylan would call me out if I didn’t.

I founded and help run Content Strategy Seattle.

If you have  a website, you don’t just need content. You already have it. The question is: Is it any good? Is it as good as it could be?

First things first: What is content?

Content is more than just messaging. It’s what your website is about.
Information. Story.
Text, video, audio, photography, illustration.
Things that convey meaning.
It’s what all the technology that goes into creating websites is used for.

In the last couple of years, there’s been lots of conversation about content on the web.

This problem — the relationship between technology and the things the technology is used for — is not unique to the web. It’s not new. It’s been solved before.

Examples:

• Movies. Edison invented the movie camera, and for a while it was interesting to see trains pull into stations and people kissing. Eventually, people wanted more, so you get screenwriters, producers, and directors.
• TV series. Add another problem on top of the movies: Not just a single show, but 20+ in a season. Screenwriters and showrunners plot story arcs for a season.
• Comics. The product of collaboration between writers, illustrators, plotters, publishers.

Side note: A great book for people interested in communicating on the web is Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Words + pictures = meaning — just like on the web.

Here are five lessons about content that the web can learn from comics.

1. Content vs. not content.

Wolverine.

Cool. Mysterious. Claws and a bad attitude.

But Wolverine by himself is not content. It’s a character sketch. Fan art. Perhaps a figurine. A product of skill, but not content on its own.

Content requires context to be interesting. Wolverine needs to be pitted against Magneto or Sabertooth or a bunch of ninjas.

Lesson: Use your content wisely. People are burning out on Wolverine because Marvel slaps him in anywhere. This kills the core of the character: A mysterious loner can’t be everywhere in the Marvel universe at once and stay true to his essence.

2. Build on your existing content.

Most websites start from stuff that’s already there: Printed material, pitches, ideals, company values, what have you.

Similarly, most comics come with years or decades of backstory. Superman is 70+ years old! They’re up to 24 years of current continuity (since Crisis on Infinite Earths.)

3. Explore alternate universes.

Be true to the essence of your site, but be contextual.

Everyone knows the story of Batman. The essence. But he gets expressed in a bunch of different “universes” targeted to different audiences: The flagship DC comic, Frank Miller’s out-of-continuity The Dark Knight Returns, the TV series starring Adam West, the Tim Burton movies, the Joel Schumacher movies, the several animated series, the Christopher Nolan movies.

Different executions, pitched to different audiences, but expressing the same core idea: Batman.

Another example: Peanuts, the comic strip, vs. the Peanuts characters as shills for MetLife. People get that the characters are the same but the ads aren’t “canonical.”

Use this for your brand. Do it well and audiences don’t get confused.

But do it poorly and people reject it. The transition from the Tim Burton films to the Joel Schumacher films didn’t work; the tone slipped, and though creators tried to pretend the universe was the same, the sensibilities were too far apart.

Another example: Kevin Smith recently wrote a story where Batman revealed that he pissed his pants during his big, splashy Gotham debut. There was fanboy outrage, because although the idea is certainly true to the core of Kevin Smith, it’s not true to the essence of Batman. (Neither that he’d wet himself, nor that he’d tell anyone about it.)

4. Embrace the idea of canon.

Canon (in comics) is the idea that all stories told within a particular universe (or continuity) happen, and that future stories build on them.

But: Bad decisions get ignored. Or retconned — creatively rewritten and undone down the line.

If you put something out there that people hate, or reject, ignore it. Treat it as non-canon. But expect your hard-core fans to bring it up for a loooong time to come.

5. There’s more than one way to bring it all together.

DI all Y: Very nice if you can do it — write, design, architect, code, develop, QA; or write, draw, self-publish — but it doesn’t scale to support an entire publishing line or a major website.

Google is not written by one guy.

Collaboration between content and design can happen in a number of ways along a spectrum — but it has to happen.

One end of the spectrum: The Stan Lee approach.

Lee spitballed and plotted comic book issues with Jack Kirby — for example, the first 100 issues of the Fantastic Four.

Then Kirby went off and laid out the panels and drew it all.

Stan circled back around and filled in word balloons and captions.

Result? Happy accidents, for one — the Silver Surfer started his life as a background doodle that Kirby put in there and Lee thought was a great idea.

The other end of the spectrum: The Alan Moore approach.

Moore turns in extremely detailed scripts that spell out specific contents in each panel — he’s got a vision of the book in his head that goes beyond big-picture elements.

The artist (Dave Gibbons for Watchmen, Eddie Campbell for From Hell, etc.) is free to invent within those tight parameters.

Final result: Distinct visions from each artist.

Lee is very hands off, Moore is very hands on, but they’ve both got their hands in the game. The same is true for the web: Content needs to be involved in the process, or you end up with doodling.

“Do you know of any classes or anything on content strategy for beginners?” a friend of mine asked recently. “I’m interested in learning more but don’t really know where to start.”

I didn’t (and still don’t) have recommendations for classes — especially not DIY content strategy. But I was able to recommend the resources that I’ve come across in the past year. And she’s lucky — a year ago, I hadn’t heard of content strategy, so I wasn’t even able to articulate the question.

The resources I recommended:

• “Content-tious Strategy,” Jeffrey MacIntyre‘s article in the Dec. 16 A List Apart.
• “The Discipline of Content Strategy,” Kristina Halvorson‘s article in the exact same issue. (Dec. 16 is the day I fired up my RSS reader and soon afterward said “So that’s what I’ve been trying to articulate for the past few months! Content strategy!”)
• “The Content Strategist as Digital Curator,” Erin Scime’s article in ALA from Dec. 8 this year.
• Rachel Lovinger’s article “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data” deserves mention for many reasons. But what I love most is the phrase “content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design.” That’s the money quote so far as I’m concerned, but that could just be because I’m an often-frustrated copywriter.
• If those pique your interest, Kristina Halvorson’s book Content Strategy for the Web is the next step.

I posed my friend’s question on Twitter, as well, where I was reminded of two more excellent resources:

• The Content Strategy Knol kicked off by Jeffrey MacIntyre
• Karen McGrane’s presentation “Content is King: or, if you don’t have a content strategy, you’re living in a fairy tale,” which includes the brilliant art gallery analogy.

If you’re still interested, find a Meetup near you. If there isn’t one, do what I did in Seattle: Start one up.

Picking on Craigslist ads: So easy even Bugs Meany could do it. So what better way to kick off my blog?

"Charming"?

This ad has appeared on Craigslist several times in the last couple of weeks. It always claims that this house is charming. And it always uses this photo — the one with the prominent chain-link fence surrounding a concrete yard, some kind of forbidding sign (“NO”) juxtaposed with trash and recycle bins.

And every time I think: Charming? Seriously? I’d hesitate to deliver mail to that place.

I could blame the writer, but I’d rather blame the content strategist. They’re both the same person anyway, some Windermere agent trying to get this place rented in mid-December. “Well this place is kinda small, I guess, which means we’ll call the place ‘charming.’ And it’s a remodel, so there you go.”

What’s wrong? The words and the photos aren’t working together. They are, in fact, giving each other the hairy eyeball. The agent should invoke their inner content strategist: “We say the place is charming … but that picture says ‘forboding.’ ‘Creepy,’ even. Let’s switch it so we lead with one of the charming interior photos. Or at least let’s find a good word that’s less jarring than ‘charming.’”

Words. Photos. Harmony. (Regardless, I’m not renting that place.)