This started as a comment on the the above titled post written by Carl Douglas on the Intranet Connections blog. The topic is a catalyst for my one soap box topic affecting professional communication.

I’ll start off by trying not to offend anyone but…

Would it be safe to say that you Carol and the other commenters have been principally text content creators in your professional lives?
Everyone has made points about what is good communication. And some have made the point that video is bad except when it’s good.

THAT is the point. Bad anything is still bad no matter what medium it uses.

Carol you posed the question about why someone would sit through a video wherein “the company CEO (is) talking about corporate initiatives”. Why would an employee sit through reading a 2 page text or worse, email, about the same thing? Answer is they wouldn’t.

I know all of you do this before you write something – you determine the audience, figure out the overall objective and determine the goals you want to achieve after someone has read the piece. You may not write this down at this stage in your career because it’s second nature and a kind of “Duh!”

The missing element is for THAT audience, for THAT objective, for THOSE goals which medium is best. If you’ve been a writer for years and years and you’re given an assignment then a written piece is probably the first thing that comes to mind.

As a professional communicator you must have much more in your bag of tricks than writing speeches, releases, documentation, etc. In the multimedia world we have lived in for the last ten or fifteen years you MUST understand all media and it’s optimal use. If not you are limiting your own professional growth and not serving your employer or client professionally.

I have a video production background. I have done the huge budget productions and the one man band productions. I have produced interactive multimedia for both consumers and business people, again from hundred thousand dollar budgets to Frankensteining PowerPoint on the cheap. I have designed websites for large e-commerce companies and for the neighborhood mom and pop business.

And no matter what kind of medium my client has asked for I scratch my head before every project and figure out if they have chosen the RIGHT medium. Sometimes they listen and thank me and I either use the medium I recommend (or I refer it out to someone who REALLY knows what they’re doing.) And sometimes they don’t hire me. And sometimes I walk away when I know their big mistake doesn’t have to have me as the fall guy.

So, I do all this electronic based communication. And I know enough about print communication to know that I need to bring someone in or refer it out. I can write a script or a web page but I know I am not a annual report or PR or documentation writer.

One last point. We are not the audience. We used to be but not anymore. The digital native is the audience. Those who have grown up with never NOT knowing a technology mediated environment. You can try to force them to read more than two pages at a time but they expect the message on a screen. Whether it’s well chunked web or email copy, audio clips (like podcasts) or video they want it when they want it and how they want it. In the 80s we all discovered “time shifting”; taping Magnum PI so we could watch it later. Digital natives are fully evolved time shifters.

Is video useful? Yes. Is PowerPoint (and Slideshare by extension) useful? Yes. Is text useful? Yes. But we have all seen bad uses of all of them. What we all want to avoid as communications professionals is to not have any of those bad uses be something we created.

This comes via NTEN- The Non-profit Technology Network. The post, “25 Ways to Increase Your Organization’s Communication Capacity” has some great ideas for making communication easier no matter what kind of organization you have – sole proprietorship, big business, government, non-profit, education, association or club.

Here’s the highlights.

Clarify Your Strategy

Automation

Get Everyone Participating

What part of “Duh!” do advertisers not understand? I’ve ranted about the term “user” before. I am a “person”, don’t know about you. Generated, Schmenerated! I “create” or “write”. And content is, well, content.

This quote is what got me:

“Marketers want to advertise next to content they can trust, so this frenzy of nonprofessional content generation is not likely to produce adequate monetary rewards. Advertisers continue to shy away from attaching their brands to unpredictable content.”

via eMarketer: User-Generated Content Difficult to Monetize.

Content that advertisers “can trust.” They’re kidding, right? Ad execs are right up there with lawyers and auto mechanics on the “Don’t Trust ‘em” continuum. So if an advertiser’s customer creates the content it isn’t trustworthy. If I say Brand X is great that’s bad for Brand X? And if I say Brand X is the scum of the earth then, well, that’s bad I guess. Maybe that’s what they mean by “unpredictable content.” If it goes your way it’s a benefit but if it goes against you then we can’t have that, can we?

Even if it’s true. Like “I almost died when I ate peanut butter.” True, but obviously bad.

The bottom line though is that traditional media and advertisers don’t know what to do. They’re faced with competition for message from these uncontrollable content creators. That can’t be fair.

Oh, wait. That’s like that freedom of the press thing, isn’t it? Only traditional media doesn’t own the presses anymore.

What a sunny day for people who communicate!

I have been reading A List Apart since it was an actual listserv. It is a great resource, nay, one of the best resources, for user experience, user centered design, information architecture and web standard coding information.

In mid-December 2008 they ran a couple of articles/posts on what they referred to as “content strategy.” I wrote a couple of lengthy comments on both.

Step 1, Step 2…

The gist of  “The Discipline of Content Strategy” was that content always seems to go last in a website project and often the wrong person does it. And that the role of content strategist needs a clearer and more respected definition. I don’t disagree with any of that really. People involved in content “strategy” and creation deserve respect for their skills. But the post seemed to continue the current website creation practice of placing content after IA and design.

That I have a problem with. Website creation starts with the audience — who is the site for? Next is objective and goals — what defines success and what do you want the audience to know, do or feel after they visit the site. Next is the content that will carry the message to achieve the objective and goals. Only then can you execute a design. Otherwise you just have a bunch of shapes and colors arranged in a pleasing manner.

Another point made was that one person can’t know it all. I’d contend that if you don’t know enough about the different roles in the process then you can’t be effective. And that the Renaissance person is possible.

Hello, I am a Content Strategist

In the  “Content-ious Strategy” post the author described where content occurred in the process of a website execution. He even included a link to a cocktail napkin drawing showing where content strategy fit in the website design process. His main point I think was to describe who should be doing content strategy. He (rightly) determined that information architects, content analysts (library science specialists) and subject matter experts were not appropriate content strategists. And especially not project managers. So he created  a new role, content strategist.

Enough with the new roles already! Website creation professionals seem to think that nothing else is like website creation. And it often seems that IA, UX, UCD and now content strategy professionals have a kind of duality complex. They feel inferior because they never seem to get their due respect for the expertise they have. And they feel superior because their role in the creation process is most important. And they are all missing the point. It is a team effort. And every team member has a role that is vital to the success of the project.

Wheel Reinvention

Most of my comment referred to the successful model of film and video production. Nearly a century in the making, the model of producer, director, writer, cameraman, etc. has worked. But the website creation business, like the multimedia business before it, seems to feel that their business has no equivalent. I think that must be because of the roots in software development. The role that is really missing is that of producer. Project managers are not producers. They manage projects. Producers lead the creative team. They do the upfront analysis, define the initial content and creative vision, and then assemble the team of experts to execute it. I think the contention about content strategy is that so many people claim all or a piece of that producer-type role: account execs, PMs, IAs, user experience people, coders and now content strategists. Why not just create the role of Producer and be done with it? The ideal team for a website project, in my opinion, would be, in order of hierarchy: producer; creative director and writer; technical director; project manager, graphic artist; and coder.

I have always liked the Boxes and Arrows site for the latest on information architecture and interaction design. This post, Information Architecture for Audio: Doing It Right, caught my eye. I had never consciously considered information architecture principals while creating audio.

Here’s the key points:

• Write with your audience in mind
• Structure your content by providing an overview at the beginning…include a summary at the end
• Follow the rules of radio journalism
• Rely on a familiar interface.

I’ve written about similar concepts here at DoingMedia. I think this will be great information for podcasters.

If you like what you read why not subscribe? And if you have already, thanks and tell a friend!