Well, maybe not “a bit.” Maybe I’ve plunged headlong into the depths of abject dorkitude in my enthusiasm for really creative, inspired copy.

At any rate, I noticed, I sure do spend a lot of internal monologue time assessing copy—whether it be web copy, radio advertisements, news stories—whatever.

Why not turn all that excess of opinionation into blog posts?

So I present to you the first of a hopefully regular feature on the Prose Kiln blog: the Copy Roundup.

The Good

Old Spice YouTube campaign

Why It’s Good

• The jokes are 95% hilarious.
• The tone is flawless.
• It was written and performed on the fly.

Background

If you live in a cave in Antarctica, then you may have missed the Old Spice promotion that ran online a few weeks ago. That promotion, has made a star out of Isaiah Mustafa, aka “the man your man could smell like.”

I know I’m a little late in commenting on this. But Mustafa is only one piece—however crucial—contributing to the campaign’s success. The other, equally essential element, was the copy.

I’m not gonna lie. The original Old Spice Super Bowl ad left me cold. I didn’t even think “I’m on a horse” was that great. But the YouTube vids are flawless. I freaked out over “live pufferfish and decommissioned hand grenades.” I laughed at the pirate pinata and rolling candelabras. More than anything, though, I was amazed at how perfectly the ads conveyed the tone of the campaiagn.

Unlike its classless competitor Axe, Old Spire is no lowbrow shortcut to getting skanks to chase you through a mall. It’s hilariously high-class, yet friendly. There is no hint of misogyny—or misanthropy—here.

To consistently, hilariously get this right, under pressure I can only imagine, is a feat that leaves me in awe. My proverbial hat is off to Craig Allen and Eric Kallman, the copywriters who wrote all these videos within the space of TWO DAYS. These guys are my new heroes.

The Bad

Aloft Hotel print materials

Why It’s Bad

It’s largely nonsensical gibberish that values cuteness over clarity.

Background

When I attended the STC Summit in May, I stayed at an Aloft Hotel. It was my first time at an Aloft, which is a scaled-down, yet ultra-trendy Starwood joint.

Not being a big traveler, I was enchanted by the hotel décor, including the faux exposed brick in my room. But I noticed something about the print flyer that had been placed on the desk.

Aloft, simply putting “A” in front of regular English words does not constitute branding. It does, however, make me a-nnoyed, and a-mazed that I have to decipher what should be a simple set of instructions for dialing out.

The Meh

McDonald’s Billboard Campaign

Why It’s Meh

• Most of the copy shots are surprisingly weak.
• McDonald’s has lots of money—it can do better.

Background

I commute through Houston every day, so it was tough to miss the new McDonald’s billboards that popped up along the highways a couple months ago. The copy tries—a little too hard—to be cute, clever, and casual, while of course selling the deliciousness of McDonald’s food.

The copy shots include:

• “Good things come to those who wake” (next to a picture of an egg McMuffin)
• “Nooooooo…” (next to a picture of an empty carton of fries)
• “Our hotcakes are going like…”
• “If coffee is joe, consider this Joseph.”

These aren’t terrible. But yeesh. Considering the resources McDonald’s has at its disposal, it’s tough to imagine they couldn’t get a better, more consistent copywriter. Or at least an editor who could let the decent lines, like “Good things come to those who wake,” through while axing lame ones like “Joseph.”

So, what about you? Seen any great, meh, or terrible copy lately?

In any case, I’m back! So let’s get to it.

What Whitney said

In my last post, I talked about attending the 2010 STC Summit. Since then, I’ve been wanting to respond to one specific session I sat in on.

I didn’t intend to listen to Whitney Hess’s presentation. But its title—Evangelizing Yourself—intrigued me, so I ducked in.

I was glad I did. Whitney gave an upbeat, invigorating talk. It didn’t so much encourage us to evangelize ourselves, actually; it encouraged us to promote ourselves, so we could promote the principles we believe in. Projecting a public persona, for Whitney, is just a means to that end.

How to become a public person? Share your message by blogging, writing, and speaking. Build a network, both online and in person. Be confident.

Awesome points, all. But Whitney’s a UX Designer. And there were three points I wanted to tack onto her excellent talk, to tailor it for writers like us.

1. Make friends with designers

Selling the value of good writing to your typical busy, cash-strapped entrepreneur can be tough. Unless that entrepreneur is a designer (or other creative type).

Designers love to code and design websites. All too often, they’re asked to provide content. Most designers hate this—it’s just not their thing. They understand the value of good writing, but they know it takes lots of time and work to create.

As a result, designers are some of the strongest advocates for us as writers.

Make an effort to understand designers. The more you know about your designer friends—their strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes—the more insight you have into the whole process of website creation. And as a web writer, that can only help you.

Plus, designers with lots of clients would probably love to team up with you—so THEY don’t get asked to write the copy.

2. Read—and comment on—others’ blogs

There’s a knowledgeable, supportive cadre of writers online. Whether you’re a tech writer, content strategist, web writer, copywriter, editor, trainer, or some wacky combination of everything, you can find people who share your passion. They’ll provide awesome links on Twitter, give you tips on running your freelance business, and alert you to the types of clients you should avoid.

Reading these experts’ blogs is a great way to keep up with what’s going on in your field. Commenting on them makes you part of the community.

And on a related note…

3. Collaborate, don’t compete

You may have noticed that, in that last section, I used words like “community” and “share.” For writers, content strategists, and other web nerds, our industry is, by its nature, NOT competitive. It’s more collaborative.

We have folks like Kristina Halvorson basically begging us to enter her field, content strategy. Steve Krug and Ginny Redish write and speak about making websites simpler and more usable. Meetups are springing up in cities around the world. Everywhere you look online, folks are sharing their knowledge—not hoarding it.

If you try to enter this crazy new world with an adversarial, “me vs. them” attitude, you won’t do well.

So, that’s what I got.

Have you seen Whitney’s talk? What points would you add?

Since I’ve only been an STC member for a couple of months, I was pretty much in awe and amazement the entire time. It was a nerd’s paradise.

The list of luminaries I saw is a pretty good match to my bookshelf and Google reader; both include names like Ginny Redish, Caroline Jarrett, Rahel Anne Bailie, Colleen Jones, Rachel Lovinger, Ann Rockley, and tons of others.

Here are the main points I gleaned from the Summit. Since a detailed summary would take all day, I’ll keep it brief.

Bad content is a business liability

Monday morning, the keynote address started with a bang, as outgoing STC President Cindy Currie noted that 10 to 15% of all product liability lawsuits arise not from defects in the products themselves, but in product documentation. The lesson was clear: bad documentation is a serious liability. Tech writing has business value.

I had this point reinforced later, when a consultant told me about a client whose outdated documentation had cost its company a $1 million fine.

Ouch.

Sounds like not paying attention to content can really cost companies. Businesses are wise to make quality content a priority, and give it the attention and resources that it deserves.

Which leads to my second point…

Good content is a business asset

We can nerd out about words as much as we want. (As we did while listening to keynote speaker and noted lexicographer Erin McKean.) That’s good fun.

But at the end of the day, tech writers only have value in the marketplace to the degree that we can improve our employers’ or clients’ revenues, or prevent their losses. When content is well fed and cared for, it improves the customer’s experience, ultimately boosting sales and minimizing support costs.

I saw examples of really well cared for documentation that inspired me to keep advocating for quality content. The ExactTarget documentation team’s session on their wiki deployment was the most striking example. With the help of a full-time implementation engineer and Mindtouch software, they’re able to publish high-quality content in a ridiculously fast-paced environment.

Similarly, Colleen Jones and Kevin O’Connor led an amazing session on usability testing for content. Their focus on iterative testing was completely new to me. Definitely something I’d like to learn more about, and ultimately try.

Inspired and … okay, a little starstruck

I left the Summit with tons to think about, motivated to do everything I can to plan, create, and maintain effective content.

And getting to meet a who’s who of writers and experts was a pretty sweet perk.

Bryan is an awesome humor writer, which requires that I be jealous of him, since I’m terrible at writing laugh-out-loud funny stuff. Nevertheless, despite my jealousy, I maintain a grudging admiration for his wit.

ROLE PLAYING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
By Bryan Allain

Admit it. Some of you, when you saw the words “role playing” in the title of this post, got a glunch look on your face. Chances are you thought of:

a) using your imagination to spice things up in the bedroom, or

b) video games where you walk a character through a story that involves dragons, warlocks, and princesses with cleavage.

But there’s a third, and decidedly less kinky way to think of role playing, and it’s something that will absolutely help you as a writer.

A few months back I planned on sharing an excerpt from the book I was working on with my blog audience. I was 20,000 words into the book, and chose a short passage that I thought my readers would enjoy. But as I took one last look through the piece, something strange started to happen.

This part of the book, which I had written and re-written a dozen times before, suddenly seemed inadequate. There were lazy word choices, yawn-inducing sentences, and jokes that needed to be completely uprooted like a dead terebinth tree with a nasty blight.

I couldn’t figure out why something that seemed perfectly fine the first 20 times I had read it suddenly seemed sub-par. And that’s when I had my “Oh Jingo!” moment.

The reason I was picking up on new things in my book piece was because I was reading it through new eyes. Every other time I had edited those pages I had been thinking like an agent or a publishing house editor (which, to be honest, I am completely unqualified to do). But this time, because I was about to post the passage on my blog, I was reading the piece through the eyes of my blog readers. And wouldn’t you know it, I held my blog readers in much higher esteem.

Mediocre jokes that I was okay submitting to an agent weren’t good enough for my blog followers. Lazy word choices that I figured would go unnoticed in a 60,000 word manuscript needed to be improved upon for a 600 word blog post. In fact, the writing voice itself just wasn’t as funny as my blog readers were used to, and I was afraid they’d call me out on it.

In the end I posted the book excerpt after making some changes to it, and while it was well received, it didn’t set the world on fire. But that was fine with me, because I walked away having learned 2 important lessons.

1. One more round of editing never hurts. Sure at some point you’re gonna have to ship your work off, but sometimes when you think you’re finished…you’re not. Maybe you need to put the piece away for a week or two. Or maybe you need to read it through the eyes of someone else to see what’s lacking.

2. Know the audience you want to write for and write for them. For humor writers this might mean trying to write things that will make your funniest friend laugh. For romance novelists, maybe you have your sister in mind, knowing how much she loves reading sappy love stories. For some folks this means writing for themselves, trying to craft the best piece they can. Just don’t write for some nebulous entity. Write with purpose for a specific audience.

That’s how role playing has helped me become a better writer. I hope it can help you too.

So grab your sword and your laptop, and go slay your writing dragons.

(Bryan Allain writes about the humorous side of life, faith, pop culture, and living among the Amish every day at his blog, BryanAllain.com. You can also find him on The Twitter at twitter.com/bryanallain.)

In my job, I write lots of stuff, including user guides, documentation for some techy software interfaces, and sometimes copy for websites.

Recently, though, I realized that writing isn’t the only thing I do.

Before we ever write stuff at my company, we have to decide what our customers need us to write. Then, we have to write it, and find a way to distribute it to the people who want it. For us, that means some type of website, with a CMS (which we have to choose, then learn to use) that lets us input and maintain the documents. Then we have to arrange the documents in a way that makes sense and helps people find what they need. And when they’re outdated, we have to move (or remove) them.

So, yeah, like I said. Writing isn’t the only thing I do after all.

I’m surprised it took me so long to figure that out.

Enter content strategy

Around the time I realized this, I started noticing a lot of people online talking about something called content strategy.

It sounded … cool. Experts were giving talks at super-fancy conferences like South by Southwest, and other geeks were treating them like rock stars. These “content strategists” seemed smart and assertive. They knew their stuff. I watched ‘em on YouTube and read their blogs.

Something clicked in my brain. This sane, smart, strategic approach to content was what I’d been missing out on.

In a nutshell:

• You figure out what content you need.
• You plan it.
• You write it.
• You figure out whether it’s working.
• You maintain and, eventually, remove it.

And there were tried-and-true methods for doing each of these things. This was content strategy.

I had a new obsession.

The constant reality check

Of course, there’s more to it than my simple bulleted list. Each part of the process can be broken down into what seems like hundreds of bits. I still have a lot to learn.

On top of that, the steps themselves are not that simple. At work, we have hundreds, if not thousands of pages of content to manage. Other people in the company have a say in what we publish, and how. It can get messy, and I can’t control all the moving parts.

But before I just write something because someone thinks we might need it, I can stop and think. I can plan. I can ask questions. I can strategize. And that will make the content at least a little bit awesomer.

That’s why I love CS.

Unlike with fiction, or blog posts, or journal articles, we usually don’t get a great idea for web copy in the shower or walking the dog. We usually have to write copy—it’s a job. And we gear up for that job by sitting down and asking ourselves a question. This foundational question determines how we write.

Too often, that question is: “What do I want to say?”

How the wrong question makes your copy suck

Why is that the wrong question to ask?

Because when I think about what I want to say, I’m focusing on the wrong person: myself. When I do this, I end up writing copy that reads like this:

ABC Corporation sets the standard for widget manufacturers worldwide. With over 50 years in the widget manufacturing business, we hold over 2,000 patents. We are the exclusive manufacturers of the TurboDeluxe widget, the most durable widget ever devised.

Snore.

In this example, I want to tell people how great my company is and what it’s achieved. As a result, I include too much detail about that. I never think about the basic questions that readers have, and what they want to know.

The right question to ask

Have you ever wondered why novels, nonfiction articles, and newspapers don’t have usability experts working on them, the way websites do?

It’s because websites are different.

While readers of fiction or newspapers (and their online equivalent, blog posts) are genuinely interested in reading what the writer would like to tell them, website visitors come to a site with a specific need for information. The website is not pleasure reading. The website is a utility.

So we can’t approach writing for the web the same way we approach all those other types of writing. We need to ask ourselves a different question: “Who will be reading this?”

When you understand your audience

Web writing requires a radical focus on the user. Web designers and information architects understand this: they make personas and do in-depth studies of what people want and how they look for it. Web writers have to learn to think the same way.

Of course, it’s not enough to just know who’s reading our copy. Once we ask that question, several more follow:

• Who will be reading this?
• What is she looking for?
• What does she already know about this topic?
• What does she need to know?

Et cetera.

Asking the right question improves your writing

If we start by asking these questions, we consult our analytics and observe users reading our copy. We start to realize that they don’t care how many patents ABC Corporation has, or how much better it is than other companies. Eventually, our copy about ABC Corporation starts to look more like this:

ABC Corporation has crafted durable, effective widgets for over 50 years.

Straightforward information without excessive (self-laudatory) details. Just what a typical visitor would want.

What do you think? Which questions do you ask yourself when you write?

But something puzzled me. If I wrote a sentence like “Melanie is a superb human being,” he would red-ink that too, marking it as passive.

Now, that sentence is not passive. (Its truthfulness may be suspect, but that’s a different post.) You can tell because there’s no other verb participle in it — just “is.”

Eventually I realized that he was categorizing any use of auxiliary verbs (also called helping verbs) as a passive construction. But technically, they’re different.

While passive constructions will often use forms of “is” and “has,” they also include other verbs.

The weak verbs: “is” and “has”

Even though he had his terminology a bit mixed up, my boss was right. Forms of “is” and “has” are weak. Especially when you use them in copy, slogans, taglines, or any other type of text where you should economize on words.

Here’s an example:

Marjorie is the best designer I’ve ever worked with.

That doesn’t seem so bad. But let’s say you want to reword it to take out the “is.” You might try:

Marjorie creates the most beautiful designs I’ve ever seen.

Of course, the two statements don’t mean exactly the same thing. But notice that the second provides more description and specificity.

That’s the point. Using more active verbs forces you to be specific: you have to say exactly how or why Marjorie is so fantastic.

It’s more interesting, because it gives the reader more detail.

Eliminating weak verbs makes your writing more concise, too

Just today, a co-worker called me on this exact point. I had written, “Let’s define what web hosting is.” It looked fine to me.

She edited it to say, “Let’s define web hosting.”

Dang. That’s much better. It gets right to the point, without that pesky “what” and “is” buzzing around like Houston mosquitoes in summertime.

Examples of stronger verbs

It can be tricky to avoid using “is.” How would you rephrase the following?

• Acme widgets are the best-selling widgets.
• Acme is the nation’s leading maker of widgets.
• Acme widgets are a great value.

Some options include:

• Acme widgets outsell the competition.
• Acme leads the nation in widget manufacturing.
• Acme widgets deliver performance and value.

I’ve found strong, active verbs like “provide,” “deliver,” and “offer” invaluable in creating colorful, descriptive copy.

How about you? What are your favorite verbs, and your most hated ones?

Actually, two things.

1. The link to nowhere

A friend sent me a link to the website of an application he’s thinking of getting, called The City.

I was curious to see a demo of the app, so I clicked the Evaluate tab.

As I glanced at the page, my eye caught the huge CTA (call to action) at the top. I clicked. Nothing happened. I clicked again. Still nothing.

Click. Hey! Nothing's happening.

As it turns out, the enormous CTA is just a banner. Yep. The large, green GO button next to the message See It For Yourself doesn’t link the visitor to anything.

2. Sometimes the ‘word on the street’ isn’t worth repeating

Being curious about the company, I clicked the About tab. I found something very surprising there: a live, uncurated Twitter stream based on a search for the company’s handle.

Every tweet that mentioned @thecity appeared on the page — including a tweet by me, mentioning the poorly devised banner. I also saw tweets from folks who were having technical problems with the application.

The live, uncurated Twitter feed on The City's About page.

Obviously, this is trouble.

The fact that anyone still publishes an uncensored Twitter stream on their site comes as a shock, since the well-publicized incident in which Skittles got showered with ridicule when they implemented the same idea. As they found out, there’s nothing to keep defamatory or obscene tweets from appearing on the company’s own site — the exact place where potential customers are most likely to see them.

How content strategy could have helped

If only somebody on this company’s staff had been assigned the task of auditing the content before launch.

It would’ve needed to be a fairly meticulous soul who could effectively scrutinize all that content. Someone who could put himself in users’ shoes, so he’d know whether the content works. He’d also be savvy with web tools, and he’d understand the right and wrong ways to integrate social media into a company’s overall content publication efforts.

That person’s job title would have been content strategist.

A decent content strategy can prevent all sorts of missteps. It’s time we recognized its value.

The other day when I was doing some research for my friend’s apartment locator business (hit her up, she’s great!), I came across this Craigslist ad.

It is freaking awesome.

The ad seemed familiar. Eventually, I realized that it sounded like something Noah Stokes would write, if he were a single dude with an extra room.

If you haven’t seen Noah Stokes’s website, you’re missing out. I can only say that it’s simultaneously the best and worst design portfolio site I have ever seen. Go ahead and click it, I’ll wait.

You back? Cool.

This got me thinking about “krazy kopy,” and how effective it can be. How many retweets have Noah and Chris gotten for free, just for being funny?

When you’re doing “krazy” wrong

Obviously, not everyone can, or should, do this.

A few years ago, my husband and I moved to a new town, and we needed a bank. I suggested we try IBC, which I had heard good things about. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of describing it as “the bank with the bumblebee man on the billboard.”

I'd totally trust this bee with my money.

He declined.

Similarly, Ginny Redish cites a great example of krazy kontent gone wrong in her book Letting Go of the Words. She shows a screenshot of an old IRS website styled to look like a tabloid page, complete with big, splashy headlines terminated by exclamation points.

I’m not particularly keen on giving my money (either willingly or compelled by federal law) to an entity that likes to joke about … my money. Business is business, and I trust organizations that recognize that.

But in a roommate or contractor I’ll be spending a lot of time with, I like a sense of humor.

How about you?

But sometimes it happens to me. Like today. A couple months ago, Dustin Curtis’s blog featured a guest post consisting of an extended metaphor for the current American health care crisis.

The health care topic isn’t the reason that I keep thinking about the post. Instead, it was the metaphor: the author compared health care to fried chicken.

Yep. Fried chicken.

While fanciful, this analogy hardly bears serious consideration. It’s not that the author is necessarily wrong in his views on health care. To be honest, I have no clue whether he’s wrong or a hundred percent right.

It’s just that the analogy is absurd. Health care has absolutely no similarity to fried chicken.

And yet, several well considered responses populate the comments section. I wondered why.

It may be important to note that Dustin Curtis’s site is really less of a blog and more of a vehicle for its designer author to showcase his artistic chops. Honestly? The fried chicken article is gorgeous.

Then I remembered an article by Ken Myers, editor of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. He wrote:

In print, with words, one makes proposi­tions. With propositions, one makes arguments and draws conclusions…. One of television’s effects is the subtle inculcation of the assumption that it’s not very important to be able to work with words. Working with words requires working with logic. It requires habits of reason…

Image-based communication is not so much irrational as a-rational…. Image-domi­nated forms of communication are nonlinear, nonpropositional, and hence inconclusive; they do not move from propositions to conclusion.

Since 1993 when this article was written, a post-television world has emerged. But the Internet is no less image-driven than television and movies are. Rather, it incorporates text and images into an interactive experience in which the user/viewer/reader plays a more active role than ever.

While we’re not quite the passive consumers of images that Myers wrote about, we still do more than reason by propositions. We bolster propositions with images, and substantiate images with text — more thoroughly than ever in history.

In my post about Twitviewer, I noted that subpar content uncovered a shoddy hack masquerading as a legitimate app. The chicken article is Twitviewer 2.0: an a-rational argument validated by downright beautiful design. It’s the visual as rhetoric.

I don’t believe that the new a-rational, image-based approach is “bad” … even though I’m a writer who loves words and logic. But we need to recognize the rise of the image as logic, so that we can use visuals and text hand in hand to make reasoned, truthful arguments.

And so that we can tell when our judgment is being hijacked by the high gloss of well executed art.