5 HTML tags for successful web copywriting

To some of you, the following post will be classified as Dead Simple. To others, I hope it can be classified as Very Helpful.

One of the things we often do for clients is teach them how to write for the web. Beyond the style and tone that’s suitable for the web, we often help them with simple HTML for formatting their text. This isn’t HTML that will let you design a full webpage. It’s simple HTML that will let you write into a blogging or CMS system with some style.

As a result the copy will be better layed out and easier for people to read on a screen. To help our clients we’ve developed a simple HTML codes cheat sheet that we pass out. Clients have found it very helpful for referencing while they’re writing. We’ve found it very helpful because it means clients can teach themselves.

Many of our clients print out a copy of this quick guide and have it pinned up beside their computer for reference. I remember seeing a client who had colour coded the cheat sheet so it was easier to read. It didn’t make sense to me, but it made sense to him, which is what matters.

So in the interest of sharing what we’ve created, here it is, the Work Industries simple HTML codes cheat sheet. I hope you find it useful. If not, let me know.

I’m interested in feedback. Did I miss anything? Is anything not clear? What improvements could be made? Please leave a comment, we’ll collect our wisdom, and I’ll revise the text file as needed.

If you find the file helpful, please use it liberally and pass it on, with some kind of attribution to James Sherrett and link to Work Industries, please.

Update: Thanks to some quick fine work by Derek Miller, we now have a PDF version of the HTML cheat sheet (PDF, 56k).

Update 2: Thanks to some more fine work by Allyson McGrane, we now have a Word version of the HTML cheat sheet (.doc, 32k) too. Awesome, possum.

The Economist Discovers Peer-Produced Media

A friend and I have an ongoing discussion about technology and change. It goes like this: change opportunities in the organization she works for only really exist once The Economist writes about them. Before that, as far as her boss is concerned, nothing noteworthy has happened. From my experience, this kind of follow-the-established-follower mentality pervades many organizations. So I want to let you know that you (yes, all of you out there with tremendous frustration at not being able to sell your innovative ideas internally without some random external article) are not alone.

The best stories I get from my friend (because they provoke the most outrage in her) are when she tells me about her boss bringing copies of The Economist to her desk to show her articles. Topics like podcasting, blogs and wikipedia have recently appeared in The Economist, and dutifully, they have then appeared in her boss’ outstretched hand at the corner of her desk.

‘Look at this,’ he’ll say (as my paraphrase of her paraphrase). ‘Isn’t this interesting. Do you know about this? We should think about doing this.’ Then he’ll dawdle off to take a conference call, completely missing the fact, my friend assures me, that she had sent him an article on the exact same subject 6 to 10 months prior. A week later the boss will knock at her desk again to inquire how the new, new thing he’d pointed out was coming along.

At this point in her story my friend will make choking noise, squeals of derision and, if in dire straights, will violently shake her hands. I love it. This is the source of Dilbert resonance. I ask her to tell me more. I snort in agreement. I provoke her by calling to her attention the indifference with which her boss received the aforementioned article, 6 to 10 months prior. She indulges me and raises her rancour another level. It eats away at her like an unfilled cavity in a sensitive molar.

This story comes to mind because today I was pointed to an article in The Economist about new media entitled Among the Audience. The article introduces a broad survey that ropes in some of the bright lights of the current web vogueness. Its topic?

The era of mass media is giving way to one of personal and participatory media… that will profoundly change both the media industry and society as a whole.

Interesting and well written. I recommend it. Andreas Kluth does a nice job of laying the current cultural effects of digital technologies into a common and simple historical context, from Gutenberg’s movable type to MovableType, the blogging software. There’s also someone calling a big, brand-name media honcho an ‘ignoramus!’ which is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Unfortunately, most of the components of the survey require me to sign up as an Economist subscriber to read, so I’ll never know what it says. Audio files from some of the luminaries are also available, to anyone, though I have not listened to them.

I guess I should go warn my friend that her boss is due to come knocking.

7 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Podcasts

To follow up on yesterday’s 10 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Blogs Britt Bravo presents 7 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Podcasts.

Once again Bravo does a nice job of highlighting some great examples of podcasts working for the organizations producing them. And once again I’d like to reconfigure his article and suggest that it’s really a list of tactics non-profits can use to distribute and collect audio content. Need a primer of podcasts and podcasting? Wikipedia has a great podcasting definition with details on the distinctions of podcasting from other audio production and distribution techniques and formats, such as broadcasting and streaming audio.

And speaking of podcasting, this Saturday I’ll be at a day-long workshop hosted by Tod Maffin called From Idea to Air. The day will be dedicated to learning about the business, craft and process of telling stories with audio. Let me know if you have any items you’d like me to bring up at the session, or any questions you’d like me to ask.

10 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Blogs

Over at NetSquared Britt Bravo has a great article listing 10 ways non-profits can use blogs.

The common point of all 10 items on the list at once indicate a blog’s role as a clearing-house and collection-point for information among the various constituents involved in a non-profit. This is a great way of seeing a blog, but this strategy is certainly not limited to blog websites. An effective website, regardless of whether it includes a blog-type structure, offers a great opportunity to non-profits that need two-way communication with the world. And really, isn’t that all non-profits?

The article does a good job of orienting the strengths of blogging to the non-profit sector, and using the right language to describe the phenomena. I recommend it as a primer for those new to blogging and a refresher for those familiar with social software.

If you’re interested in learning more about how non-profits can use blogs to connect in the networked world, you’ll want to check out Word Power, a strategic blogging workshop coming May 17-21 to the Hollyhock Centre on beautiful Cortes Island. Local Vancouver blogger Rob Cottingham is wired into the event as his company, Social Signal, is presenting it.

I think I’m going to be in Toronto the days before (May 15 and 16) at the Mesh Conference, but if I was available I’d have loved to participate in Work Power.

Nature versus Nurture in Music Recommendations

Steve Krause writes a lengthy review / overview of two different approaches to music recommendations: Pandora and Last.fm. As he sees it, Pandora‘s algorithm-based approach is equal to the nature school of thought while Last.fm‘s behaviour-based approach is equal to the nurture school of thought.

Algorithmically, Pandora versus Last.fm is something like the nature versus nurture debate. Taking the nature side, Pandora’s recommendations are based on the inherent qualities of the music. Give Pandora an artist or song, and it will find similar music in terms of melody, harmony, lyrics, orchestration, vocal character and so on. Pandora likes to call these musical attributes “genes” and its database of songs, classified against hundreds of such attributes, the “Music Genome Project.”

On the nurture side (as in, it’s all about the people around you), Last.fm is a social recommender. It knows little about songs’ inherent qualities. It just assumes that if you and a group of other people enjoy many of the same artists, you will probably enjoy other artists popular with that group.

Like Last.fm, most music-discovery systems have been social recommenders, also known as collaborative filters. Although much of the academic work in the area has focused on improving the matching algorithms, Last.fm’s innovation has been in improving the data the algorithms work on. Last.fm does so by providing users an optional plug-in that automatically monitors your media-player software so that whatever you listen to—whether it came from Last.fm or not—can be incorporated into your Last.fm profile and thus be used as the basis for recommendations. Compared to relying on users to manually provide preferences, this automatic and comprehensive data capture leads to far better grist for the data mill.

I don’t have any experience with either music-recommendation system, but I love the way Krause connects software product design, data mining of enormous sets and basic psychology so people can understand the respective approaches. To me, this is one of the finest things an expert can do - make a subject approachable and comprehensible to a wider, general audience.

For some background on the N-vs-N expression, check out the nature-versus-nurture wikipedia entry.