Directors of content strategy: why corps need to create this post to save us from digital garbage

In the time I’ve worked on corporate sites, now nearly ten years, I’ve learned a lot about the variety of tasks and skills involved: content creation, SEO and PPC, social media,  analytics, corporate (website) politics, metadata strategy, taxonomies, globalization, CMS, and this…

Corporate websites (incl. non-commercial organisation sites) haven’t really progressed beyond the ill defined goals they started with more than a decade ago, and in some cases almost double that: “It’s new. We need it. Do it. Content? Whatever’s available in the brochures will do.”

Edelman digital trends series

Edelman’s Steve Rubel is publishing a series of  ‘insights‘ into digital trends.

I’ve read the first one (17 Feb, pdf 2mb) and it’s a pretty good overview.

More about blogs

The BBC has an editorial strand called City Diaries, in the business section (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7788608.stm).

Are these blogs? Are they user generated content? Are they vox pops? Are they amateur journalism?

Press releases, templates, activity over passivity

Todd Defren, Shift Communications, has posted the company’s updated social media press release.

Helping companies structure their online content is always a good thing. It’s quite generous of Shift to offer the template for free.

One of the template’s strengths is it’s using the medium’s innovative structuring potential and moving beyond the metaphor of the *page* (avoiding using the web as a kind of backlit book).

Why content editors shouldn’t design web pages

There are a few content editors out there who have been told or who think that using Dreamweaver (or whatever) and designing web pages for their company is a good idea. I was in that position for a while and my pages looked nasty and the content suffered. I’m a writer, not a designer or a coder.

While there are thirty or forty reasons why content editors and writers shouldn’t design, the most important of them is not knowing what on earth is going on behind the scenes.

Rankings from the Financial Times/Bowen and Craggs

The FT’s annual website effectiveness index was published on April 2.

Customer service does email

I tried out website/email customer service this week. My chosen companies? British Telecom and Siemens.

British Telecom answered my question within a day, which is excellent. Happily the response to my question was in the second line, just after they thanked me for my enquiry. The entire email, though, is 700 words and formal. Having received my answer in the second line, it’s unlikely I’ll read the other 680 words.

Need to cut costs? Hit delete.

The rate of profit is falling for USA corporates (see EUI: 40% risk of recession in the United States by Robin Bew).

It doesn’t take a genius to predict there will be a (further) spending squeeze for most companies.

How will that translate to online channels?