For me, the hardest part of an interview is listening back to the recording. I’ve had enough practice not to hate how strange my voice sounds, but no matter how great the content is, I’m always disappointed by the overlapping “mmhs” I always add in solidarity with my source. And the crinkling paper. And the pen drops that my handy-dandy Zoom never fails to record.

But, maybe there’s more to those “mmhs” and little interruptions than we all thought? I’ve been reading Storytelling for User Experience, and finding a lot of great parallels between storytelling and listening for UX that can be directly applied to interviewing.

“Good listening can be addictive,” writes Quesenbery and Brooks. “If you have ever been really listened to, then you know its power. We then want it, even crave it and seek it constantly.”

Even though listening to someone speak seems simple enough, we’re more used to not being listened to. We’ve developed “highly effective defense mechanisms”—like raising our voices or pausing at the threat of interruption—which detracts from really listening. Or really telling the story we want.

Those paper crinkles and pen drops, however subtle, are interruptions that prevent you from really listening, and might ultimately prevent the source from sharing her deeper thoughts.

Here’s a list of five tips on learning to be a good listener via Mind Tools and Storytelling for User Experience:

1. Pay attention. Give the speaker your undivided attention and acknowledge the message.
2. Show that you are listening. Use your own body language and gestures to convey your attention.
3. Reflect back. Show that you understand what is being said by paraphrasing and summarizing periodically.
4. Defer judgment. Allow the speaker to finish. Don’t interrupt.
5. Respond appropriately. Be candid and open in your response.

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Sounds easy enough, right? But if your audio sounds like my audio, you’ve got a little bit of work to do. Your source—and your story—will thank you.

—Wendy Joan

(Photo by Melvin Gaal)

It seems every publisher has an ironclad policy when it comes to letting sources review stories pre-publication: either they forbid it, or they require it. These policies were set in stone some time around the Mesozoic era and any troublemaker who tries to alter them clearly does not understand A) journalistic integrity or B) the business objectives of the publication in question. In fact, these policies are taken so seriously, anyone who violates them faces grounds for immediate termination.

A post on UMagazinology, a blog about university magazines published by the editors of Johns Hopkins Magazine, tackled the subject of pre-publication review in a recent post (the bolding is mine):

“Why not? What’s the harm?

The harm, I think, is to our standing as professionals, and that is not a minor thing. University magazines produce the highest-quality work, and thus best exemplify and promote the excellence of their parent institutions, when they are allowed to approach the work as professional journalists. And it is part of journalistic professional practice to not show stories to sources before publication. No matter how strongly you stipulate that you are showing a piece to a source only for verification of accuracy, you are implicitly inviting everyone who reads the story to approve it, advise on how it should be written, and grant permission to publish it, and all those things undermine our standing as professionals. That in turn undermines our ability to argue for the freedom to publish substantive, credible stories that will be read because they matter and because our readers trust how they were produced. We don’t advise chemists, physicists, surgeons, literary scholars, historians, biologists, or mathematicians on how best to do their work. If we genuinely believe that what we do merits professional respect and an essential measure of autonomy, why do we so willingly accede to non-journalists telling us how to do our jobs?”

Yeah! Like they said!

Print-to-Web integration and the Advent of New Devices has Shaken Up Production. This coupled with the adoption of more user-friendly CMS systems and device driven publishing taxes most organizations on the production, project management and change management fronts.

“Publishers have got to do things that are richer, more dynamic and interactive, not just transfer a static page from print to digital.”

Steve Grande, VP of Sales for Fry Communications

This is exceedingly difficult when many publications originating as traditional print based pubs are now transitioning (see struggling) to move to digital. Excessive stakeholder reviews and print based project management/review processes are dinosaurs in today’s digital world —a world where news is immediate, influence is measured by trust and originality expands with devices and technology.  Brands that want to be successful need to embrace speed and adopt the concept of being nimble, whether they inhabit 500sq ft or 50 floors. It’s not just about undermining an editor’s expertise or dragging out a project. It’s about the final outcome. It’s about your brand.

—Britta

We recently launched a redesign for a university magazine (finally!) and thought we’d pass along some of our favorite tips for making your own custom publication better.

1) Rethink your magazine architecture

BEFORE A front of book section that didn’t evolve with the magazine’s needs. Too many new sections had been added over the years, and the naming convention was starting to not make sense.

AFTER Help readers hold their place by redesigning the flow of the entire reading experience. For example, we converted several choppy sections into one umbrella FOB section that encapsulates the university’s mission. We gave the client a menu of various columns/formats that can be rotated in and out of this section from issue to issue.

This new format also creates a stronger branded magazine that a) is not re-invented each issue and b) begins to build recognition with readers.

2) Kill the “Wall of Words”

BEFORE Each page had one story and an average of 550 words. There were excessively long narratives about a single source. An earlier attempt to break up this text with subheads was ineffective because subheads were the same size/style as the body text.

AFTER Chunky, colorful, big and juicy. Get away from a traditional narrative style—there are a million ways to tell a story. Put two or three stories on a spread and let stories cross the gutter (which also means you’ll greatly increase the number of voices in each issue). Make numbers and subheds stand out from body text. Update your fonts.

Even better, ask yourself if your story could be more quickly communicated in a chart or graphic. For inspiration, start collecting “charticles” from New York, Esquire and Good. Think those publications don’t apply to your trade pub? Check out what Inc. has been up to lately. Bring some much-needed inspiration to your weekly status meetings by sharing examples from Information Is Beautiful.

3) Don’t tell a life story in every story. Or any story for that matter.

BEFORE A 150-word piece about an award recipient, once in the hands of marketing and product stakeholders, morphed into a 600-word monstrosity.

AFTER Focus on a tiny sliver of the story. Do this by establishing very clear column descriptions and criteria (complete with word counts!) in your redesign. For example, one of the goals of this particular magazine is to get alumni to re-enroll. So we created a column called “How it Paid Off” which essentially demonstrates the “ROI” of spending thousands of dollars on an advanced degree. This could easily eat up 1,500 words. Instead, we created a list format:

HOW IT PAID OFF

Name/Degree
Job title before degree
Job title after degree
How my degree helps me make a bigger impact
Biggest benefit of earning my degree at x university.

We captured this in 102 words. In and out.

4) Use better art (without necessarily spending more)

BEFORE Stale headshots, outdated stock illustration styles, far too many “grip and grin” photos

AFTER Instead of sending distant sources to their local mall photo studio (shudder!), we worked with the same art budget and hired photographers across the U.S. who could capture environmental portraits (hint: get your sources outside). We also pushed sources for submitted images and gave them ideas on what we wanted to see. When we got good images, we ran them big. We saved the standard headshots for thumbnails (or not at all).

5) Remember: What’s important to your administration is probably not what’s important to your readers

BEFORE Too much real estate given to university news, and placed where the university thought it belonged—right up front. Long articles covering university events that already happened.

AFTER With a 2x/year frequency, news is not a primary purpose of this magazine. So we moved news section to back of book and capped the word count for each “brief.” (Again, build this criteria into your redesign. The more “rules” you can establish up front, the better chance you have against word creep.) Each news piece ran with a call to action to get the full story online (interested to see the metrics on those redirects).

For event coverage, which used to eat up spreads at a time, we offered up one 1/3 column where we ran big, chunky sound bites. Outcome? We were able to “cover” four events in 139 words.

What would have made this project even better?

A print-to-web integration, which is something all clients should include as a mandatory line-item on their publication budget.

Check out some great examples from min online.

Ready to launch your own redesign or improve your print-to-web integration?  Give us a shout.

—Britta

Media moves really fast. And (apologies for the cliché), if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss some really great pieces.

Below are my picks of the week. Enjoy!

—Wendy Joan

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Being and Frumpiness, New York Times Style Magazine

Last week, Knopf published a new translation of “The Second Sex,” Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist masterpiece . . . This latest translation got us thinking about de Beauvoir’s accidental style statements — about her whole amazing, intellectual frump thing. Digging into the New York Times photo morgue, we’ve come up with what must be the world’s first “Simone de Beauvoir Look-Book.” Which is nothing if not reductionist and superficial.

407: The Bridge, This American Life

I first met Patrick three years ago, sleeping in a cardboard box … Considering his circumstances, what was surprising wasn’t so much that he ended up living in a box under a bridge, but how he had come to be right there, precisely. His probation officer, he said, had ordered him to live there.

China’s Arranged Remarriages, New York Times Magazine

So staggering was the scale of destruction unleashed by the Sichuan earthquake that, much like the Haitian quake in January, its horror was often reduced to a series of statistics: more than 87,000 dead or missing, nearly 400,000 injured, upward of five million homeless …

Looming over the physical reconstruction, however, has been another question: How can society rebuild? In China, one answer has been to pair grieving men and women to create instant families that will help ensure social and economic stability.

Covering ‘Tainted Justice’ and Winning a Pulitzer, Fresh Air

GROSS: So after you broke this story, there were threats against you, a lot of nasty things said, press conferences, threats to sue you?

Ms. RUDERMAN: Oh, yeah.

Ms. LAKER: Yeah. We had that early on, one attorney told us if we ran the first story, he would sue us and close the paper.  I mean, we had a lot of threats like that, but Wendy and I really believed in this story.

Jenny Shimizu and Susi Kenna, Style Like U

The first time I saw myself as a model was when my friends woke me up at four in the morning and took me to Times Square. I saw the Banana Republic billboard that I shot with Bruce Weber. There was just a picture of my face, and underneath, it said ‘American Beauty.’ It still makes me have the chills. Never in my life did I think that I was beautiful.”

(Simone de Beauvoir photo by Charles Hewitt/Picture Post/Getty Images, China photo by Wang Gang for The New York Times, Style Like U photo by Stylelikeu.com)

Three quick content tips from Paul Boag. Simple stuff, but everything is so much better when orated by a a Brit.

—Ian

A few weeks ago, I decided to prepare and can my own pickles for the first time. Without an expert canner to guide me, I obsessively read up on the dos and don’ts of pickling and canning.

I found the process to be quite easy and enjoyable, as long as I adhered to the steps. Back in the office, I triumphantly told Jonathan of my success, and he said, “there must be some sort of connection between pickling and content strategy.”

There is. And here they are—what preparing pickles can teach content writers:

1. Do your prep work. My grandmother was an excellent pickle-maker, and her secret weapon to ensure delicious and crunchy pickles is an ice bath. Before you even get started on the pickling, you need to soak the sliced cucumbers in ice for at least three hours. You can’t rush this part of the process, even if it does eat up most of your Saturday afternoon.

Before you start writing, you need to put in the time and do the essential research that will inform your writing. Thoroughly read your background sources, and spend the time referencing additional sources that will strengthen your piece. You want to put in this time BEFORE you get going—if you don’t, you might end up with a less-than-appetizing finished product. No one likes soggy pickles, and no one likes less-than-compelling content.

2. Don’t forget to wear your gloves. Having decided that my pickles should be both hot and sweet, I spent the better part of an hour carefully slicing countless jalapeño and poblano peppers. I was more careless than careful, and the oils from the peppers seeped into the pores on my hands, and painfully burned for the rest of the afternoon.

When writing potentially hazardous content, be sure to wear gloves. If you don’t, you might continue to feel the pain even after the piece is complete.

3. Sterilize. If you don’t wash, dry and sterilize your mason jars and lids, you could end up with poisonous pickles.

Same goes for content writing: you want to make sure that your piece is germ-free, clean and entirely your own content. Even the slightest bit of unwanted substance puts the entire jar at risk.

4. Listen for the ‘pop.’ When your mason jars are packed full of pickles-to-be, you place the sealed jars in a hot water bath and boil for 10 minutes to process.

After carefully removing the jars from the hot water with a pair of tongs, they’ll begin to cool. Over the next hour or so, you’ll hear a loud ‘pop’—which means that the jars are air-tight, and the seals have taken properly.

Before your draft becomes a completed piece, you need to make sure that it ‘pops’ as well. Read the piece aloud. Does it have that Je ne sais quoi that makes the article shine, or do you need to take a step back and re-process?

5. Store in a cool, dark place. Being a pickler requires patience. After you have canned the pickles, you need to let the jars sit for at least two weeks to let the spices infuse the cucumbers. You could eat them earlier, but they probably wouldn’t taste much like—or nearly as good as—properly aged pickles.

Writers rarely have the luxury of sitting on a piece for an extended period of time. Unless you’re on a tight deadline, do allow any time you can spare apart from your writing. Be patient. Walk away. Sleep on it and revisit in the morning with a clear head. You’ll see something that you didn’t before.

Your pickles (and your content) will thank you.

—Wendy Joan

(Jalepeno photo by Beau B, mason jar photo by Brown Eyed Bombshell, Pickle photo by Wendy Joan)

You’re making your readers angry. Stop it.

Content strategists often get very wrapped up in the concrete deliverables of the content creation and production process, and that’s understandable, because they are the sorts of things that are easy to make into line items in a proposal budget. If there is a sexy part of content strategy, it’s content creation and delivery.

But the final piece of the content strategy puzzle is often the part that gets the least thought and fewest resources once the sexy part of a project is “completed.” Of course we are talking about site maintenance, one aspect of content governance.

In the olden days, many sites often had a “contact webmaster” link that would often open an new email, or send you to some onerous form, or worst of all, send you to an FAQ page that had the sorts of questions that no one had ever or would ever ask.

Even if you were able to send a message about your problem, the chance of getting any sort of meaningful reply was vanishingly small, if you received a reply at all (That’s right, I’m talking to you, Newsvine. You’ve never responded to TWO queries about my account. But hey, I’m just one more ANGRY user who no longer partakes of your product.)

But all those user inquiries do go somewhere (even if it’s an unmonitored mailbox or some sort of auto-reply bot), and how those emails are handled is going to go a long way toward making your users happy. Anytime you can get a kind human response out of a computer means a lot to the puzzled and frustrated human on the other end.

Here are several tips on how to be the best website manager you can be:

1.    Know thy CMS. Chances are if you are the one checking the system admin inbox you are also the person updating the content on a regular basis. If you were really lucky, you got to participate in the design and beta testing of the site, so you’ll have fixed many of the UX flaws that might have made your visitors angry. But, inevitably, there were items that got pushed to “YourSite 2.0” and some wonky features that got left “as is” because no one wanted to go to the trouble/expense of fixing them, rationalizing that, “people would figure them out.” Regardless of how you ended up where you are (and how bleak that landscape might be), learn your platform inside and out. Know how the content needs to be tweaked in the back end so it looks and performs its best on the front end. Whether you’re using Joomla, Umbraco, or, God forbid, RedDot, you must become one with your CMS.
2.    Be a problem solver. The vast majority of people aren’t writing in to pay you a compliment. They have an issue. Give them an answer. And if you can’t give them an answer, or if you know the answer to their question isn’t going to make them any happier, apologize, sincerely.
3.    Take accountability to the next level. If you see the same issue cropping up over and over again, don’t blame the users; take a hard look at your site and fix what you need to in order to create a better and less frustrating user experience.
4.    Become an expert in the site’s subject matter. If you are running a site about cars, you better know your bias-plys from your radials. This is going to make your job easier in the long run and is going to make the provision of excellent customer service faster and more reflexive.
5.   Be nice. You will be asked stupid questions and you will be asked them over and over again. It may be the 10,000th time you’ve been asked something, but to the person on the other end, it may be their first experience with your site. Make sure it’s not their last.
(And for the truly off-the-wall questions, have a sense of humor. Years ago, while working at a ski resort in Colorado, questions like, “At what altitude do the deer turn into elk?” and “When it gets really busy, do you use both side of the chairlift?” were commonplace. Roll with it.)
6.    Be open to new ideas. You will receive a lot of suggestions about how to improve your site. Some of them will actually be good. Politely thank everyone and quietly implement the best ideas.
7.    Know when to escalate. Some people will be asking about your products and services. You should consider this an epic fail for your site and something that rates pushing the panic button if it happens too often. If people are contacting the webmaster and asking how to buy your products, you have a huge UX problem.

Most of what you need to know about being a website manager you learned in kindergarten. Be kind, helpful and patient. Listen. Share your knowledge. This is all basic stuff, but considering how rare it is to encounter it in the wild, it certainly deserves another mention.

—Jonathan
@bentpiton

Photo of The Minotaur and The Hare by Jim Linwood

Too many articles and blogs (ours included) have set out to define Content Strategy, called it King, whitewashed it as “content marketing/SEO.” Some have hyped it with agendas and sales pitches, others with heartfelt enthusiasm for the buzzword d’jour.

The more I think about Content Strategy, the more I see it centered in and around project scope. As budgets tighten, content measurability logic matures and ROI has a smaller and smaller proof of concept window. Defining a robust scope for CS-related projects is paramount for all involved.

For the Client

At the simplest level, scope defines what the vendor is going to accomplish for price of the contract.

In my experience, there are four client attitudes about scope:

• Those who see the value in digging to the root of the problem and do have the budget
• Those who see the value in digging to the root of the problem but don’t have the budget
• Those who don’t see the value in digging to the root of the problem
• Those who don’t see the value in digging to the root of the problem because they don’t have a budget

And there are two strategies clients administer for scope definition:

• The formal RFP process (Scope is brought to the table as part of RFP)
• The relationship process (Client comes to table with loose scope and the practitioner digs deeper)

For the Vendor

Scope defines what the vendor is and isn’t responsible for.

I’ve spoken with some other agencies and this is what I hear about scope:

• Clients with  the bigger budget get the better end-product
• There is cheap, good and fast—pick two
• I’ll work with you as much as I can, but at the end of the day we all need to make money
• There are no problems, only opportunities, but opportunities cost money to investigate

On the vendor side, there are two methods of scope definition and estimation.

• Plan for the worst and price accordingly
• Price reasonably and define what is and isn’t included, and carefully outline rates for out of scope work

The problem with these methods of thinking about scope (for both parties) is that the balance between the “best solution” and the “appropriate price” are at odds. The RFP is often not broad enough to get to the heart of the problem. And the vendor can only solve what he/she has access to, both politically and financially. So what usually happens is the client will cut what doesn’t seem relevant, fit the budget, or have a clear ROI. And the vendor will reduce services/deliverables to maintain profitability.

Scope Management

Scope Management, a content strategists’ most powerful tool, is often as much about Change Management (a.k.a. getting everyone to agree that there is an elephant in the room) as much as it is about Content Strategy. Proper Scope Management empowers the vendor to perform the difficult, time-intensive work and empowers the client to tackle real change at the root level. A project may be RFP’ed for a new website on an existing infrastructure—while the answer may lie in a CMS assessment that is outside that scope. Scope is not about padding the bill, it is about finding the best solution and implementing it.

Content Strategy is the tool that unearths and assembles the puzzle pieces spread across legacy systems, marketing agendas, newsletters, content, code, DB’s and design.* CS will grow in proportion to the depth it digs, both across other practices and intra-project. The marriage of Scope Management and Content Strategy requires content strategists to push for the deeper digging and clients to be open to a little more work for a much greater return.

*Not all the puzzles pieces are listed. And there is no picture on the box.

—Ian

Twitter me @eatmedia

Is it ever OK to lie with your content?

Quick answer: Yes, but only if you are very good. More on what “good” means in a second.

Back in July, spy photos and brief video surfaced on several automobile enthusiast websites. Depicted was a prototype Porsche station wagon, known in automotive parlance as a shooting brake.

The photos and video caused a sensation and spread throughout the enthusiast community, driving loads of comments on blogs and rampant speculation as to when the boys from Zuffenhausen were going to release the official car to the public. The Frankfurt Auto Show? Tokyo? People wanted to know.

The questions continued to pour in. Did this mean Porsche was abandoning it’s oft-maligned SUV, the Cayenne? Was this new shooting brake, clearly based on the entry-level Cayman, going to be Porsche’s only venture into the world of station wagons? Was Porsche going Volvo on the world, and completing its sellout?

The company had nothing to say. And if the voices clamoring in the blogosphere had calmed down for just a minute, they might have heard the faint sound of snickering.

As it turned out, Porsche’s shooting brake was a fake. The whole thing was dreamed up by the then soon-to-be-unemployed staff of Top Gear America as a parting gift to the show’s many fans.

Most people hate being duped, but in this case, there was no backlash against the show. Accumulate enough goodwill in a community and you will be forgiven the occasional whoopee cushion on the chair.

If you were inspired by the Top Gear crew’s antics and are determined to set the world afire with your own tall tale, here are a few things to keep in mind if you want to be good and do it right..

1. Execute. The only way you have even half a chance is to come up with something clever and then make it sing. It ain’t going to work if people don’t believe it.

2. Don’t mess with people’s emotions in a negative way. I think we can all agree that the Balloon Boy fiasco—originally dreamed up as a publicity stunt—managed to generate only the wrong kind of attention once the truth came out. Nothing that ends with a criminal investigation is worth it.

3. Enhance your cool. Some people don’t react well to being pranked. There isn’t much you can do about this, but you are required to have a sense of humor when dealing with those who don’t.

4. Don’t forget your audience. The Top Gear stunt worked well because the automobile enthusiast community is used to manufacturers trying to hide new models (often in plain sight) and used to manufacturers building show cars that never make it to production. Plus, these are enthusiasts; they love to talk about cars, the good, the bad and the ugly.

5. Be prepared for blowback. Some people, bless their gullible hearts, won’t understand the joke and may begin acting on some of the falsehoods you’ve laid out. Years ago, I wrote a newspaper column, published on April 1, which stated that the legislature had just passed a law changing Daylight Savings Time to mean a two-hour forward leap instead of the customary one. Despite naming my fictitious governor’s press secretary Jacques Strap and despite reminding readers to look carefully at the dateline of the newspaper, we were deluged with calls wondering when this was taking place. Exercise your power judiciously.

—Jonathan
(@bentpiton)

Still not using social media to its full effect to promote your content? Well, maybe you can take a lesson from the President.

A couple Sundays ago, President Barack Obama pulled a what’s known as a “Full Ginsburg” by appearing on all five major Sunday morning political talk shows on the same day. Obama was plugging his healthcare reform package, and hitting all the talkies at once, and although politically risky, was really the only way to spread his message far and wide.

Why? The multiplying effect.

• Obama makes his plea on each of the news shows. Most politicians, policy wonks, assigning editors, and the entire staff of Politico are watching.
• The first round of stories and blog posts come out that afternoon. Other bloggers and commentators weigh in.
• The first round of response stories gears up and the second round of stories moves on smaller news outlets. The number of readers and commentators grows.
• And so on and so on and so on.

By Monday morning, anyone who follows the news knows what Obama’s healthcare plan is.

So for your next blog post, I want you to try what I’m going to christen a “Full Brogan,” named after social media marketing maven Chris Brogan.

Your blog post starts with you. It will be read by the usual visitors to your blog, but unless you are Seth Godin, that’s probably not a really large chunk of the populace.

So seed the post all over the place: via your Twitter feed, on your Facebook page, on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Fark. If you are feeling really jaunty try Mixx, Newsvine and Sphinn, among many other choices. All this Johnny Appleseed activity comes with a two-part caveat. If you are not already a member of one or all of these communities, you are going to have to join; and likely, until you’ve spent some time there listening, adding to existing conversations and starting some of your own, it’s not likely that the pebbles you are tossing in these very large ponds are going to make waves of consequence.

But if you keep giving and keep sharing quality content, eventually, the multiplying effect will take over. In August, I seeded a blog post on MIT’s Personas project around on several sites. The next morning, I checked the hit count on our blog and the numbers had gone through the roof. We’d had three months worth of hits in one day. A look slightly deeper into the blog stats saw the bulk of the traffic coming from one source: Reddit.

Determining why the post got so much attention gets a bit trickier, but it ties into how you take care with making your contributions to social media sites and not just start seeding willy-nilly.

Make sure you write a descriptive headline. This may be the only part of your material that gets read by most people and is likely your only chance to hook them.

If the site has communities within the community (like Reddit), take the time to find the right one to post to.  If you have a story about programming, but you place it in the general story pool, you may miss the core of your audience.

Pay attention to the metadata requested by the sites, especially tags, keywords and summaries. It’s should be obvious, but it bears repeating: This is how people will find your contribution when they search within those sites. (And this should not be any extra work; you should have created this data at the same time the story was written, right?)

Finally, all this is not to say that you should ignore Mother Google by failing to keep up with your SEO best practices. It’s not the active seeking of content consumers that you’re doing through your social media seeding, but it’s still important (and requires much of the same metadata).

Let me know how your “Full Brogan’s” go.

—Jonathan

(@bentpiton)

Art from http://www.timboucher.com/