Team Update: 15 – 26 February 2016

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This is probably going to be the last update from our team in its current state. In mid-March we’ll be moving from King’s Gate to the Daysh Building. At the same time we’ll be welcoming three new members to the team. Read on to find out what we’ve been up to recently and how these changes affect our plans for the next few weeks.

Go Mobile programme

Jane and Lisa are continuing to tag up the Careers website to get it ready to migrate to T4 next week.

Linda got back into proofing and went through two sites: Institute for Agri-food Research and Innovation and the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Both are due to go live in the next week.

Design and technical developments

The tech team are currently supporting technical work needed for the Careers and Study Abroad website migrations.

We have received the final batch of updated virtual tours, giving us 80+ tours optimised for use on mobile devices. You can see some of the new tours on the Accommodation website and the Virtual Tours website.

Campaigns and other developments

Lisa has been making content updates to the Study website, and adding some Google analytics tracking to the Open Day website.

Emma B has been hard at work organising the team’s impending move to the Daysh Building as well as providing support for various smaller web projects around the Hass Faculty. She’s currently building a new site for the Newcastle Centre for Research on Entrepreneurship, Wealth and Philanthropy (REWP). Emma’s also spending time thinking about the best way to move the team to an Agile way of working – more info about this to come!

Steve has been developing some web content for the SAgE Faculty around the SAgE Professionals website and for two events: MINT Day and Makeup Your Mind.

Planning for Clearing is underway – it barely seems like five minutes since we were wrapping up the last campaign. The Clearing site is moving into T4 this year and NUIT are working on a new database to support the phone lines.

Training and support

Lisa wrote a blog post about editing other people’s content – take a look if you’re struggling to edit some complex content for your website. And Linda’s written up the blog round up for February – it’s heading your way on Monday.

Anne’s delivered workshops in both T4 CMS Basics and Contribute this week. She’s also been working with Staff Development Unit and NUIT to develop the training administration process for our new Training Room.

Emma C delivered another media management session this morning to a packed room of editors from schools in the Science, Agriculture and Engineering faculty, Marketing and Student Recruitment, Corporate Affairs and Careers.

Plans for the next few weeks

Anne will be working with SDU to setup some of the systems we’ll use to manage the training bookings for our new Training Room.

Emma C is working on the final edits to the new International websites ahead of the planned go live date in early March.

Linda’s preparing inductions for our new team members. And we’re all having a clear-out in readiness for our move to the Daysh Building. It’s amazing how much stuff even a digital team can amass over the years.

Editing Other People’s Content

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So you’ve attended our Writing for the Web training and you know all about the inverted pyramid and writing concise, scannable web content. Now you’re faced with a request to add some new content to the website…

It’s a wall of text – full of long sentences, a lot of jargon and it’s about a topic that you don’t have any subject knowledge of. A feeling of dread washes over you, questions start racing through your mind. How will I prioritise the information? How can I shorten sentences when I don’t really understand them? What are the important points that I need to emphasise with bold or a bulleted list?

In our recent Writing Web Content training there were a few questions about how to edit other people’s content – particularly how to prioritise and edit complex content.

In Corporate Web Development (CWD) we face this challenge on a daily basis. In this post I’m going to share my top five tips for editing other people’s content.

1. Find out the purpose of the content

For any webpage you create you need to know why you’re creating the page and how it fits into your site purpose.

You need to be able to answer the following questions:

  • who am I creating this page for? (your users)
  • what do the users want to find out? (their questions/tasks)
  • what does the organisation want the user to do after reading your content? (business goals)

Without these answers you’ll struggle to edit the content so it’s important to speak to the subject-expert or the person who provided the content.

Discuss with content author

Set up a meeting with, or speak to, the author of the content so that you can find out the purpose of the content.

“initial face-to-face or verbal briefings need to give content creators an understanding of where their work will sit in terms of the wider project and give them the chance to ask initial questions”

Jackie Kingsley, Sticky Content

Armed with the knowledge of who the users are, their tasks, and what the author wants to achieve, you’ll have the confidence to start prioritising and reconfiguring the content for the web – and deleting any unnecessary words!

It’s also important to get the agreed content purpose in writing and send to all involved. This acts as a written record so that you have something to refer to when editing and it makes it clear and transparent for everyone involved.

2. Agree deadlines

It’s important to agree on specific deadlines.

“It’s impossible to keep your content production slick and manageable without well-enforced deadlines”

Rhiannon Jones, Sticky Content

There might be deadlines for:

  • completing a first pass edit and sending content back to the author
  • the author and stakeholders to send amends
  • the author and stakeholders to sign off content
  • content to go live on the site

Again getting deadlines in writing (even if it’s just an email) gives you a written record to refer back to. Then, if additional content is needed or if the author misses the deadline for sign-off, the record shows there will be an impact on content going live.

3. Take ownership of the content

When editing other people’s content all the rules of writing for the web still apply. Often as editors we can feel nervous about changing someone else’s words but it’s important not to fall back into the role of a content-putter-upper.

You’re the one publishing the content so it’s important that you take ownership of it. Remember you will probably know more about writing for the web than the author so it’s up to you to edit the information so that it’ll work across devices.

Proofreading

If possible, get someone else to check the content after editing and before sending back to the author.

“In an ideal world no one will proof copy they have created. That’s because it’s extremely difficult to see your own mistakes”

Jackie Kingsley, Sticky Content

Again, if you’ve got the purpose of the content from the author in writing you can use this at the proofing stage.

“Content can also be checked against the written brief during the QA process”

Jackie Kingsley, Sticky Content

4. Ask the author to check for accuracy only

When you send the content back to the author for sign off, ask them to check for accuracy only. It’s important that the facts are correct, which may have been misinterpreted through the nature of editing. However, you don’t want lots of opinions about style, tone or format as the content has already been edited for the web.

I often find it helpful to compile a document of any content gaps or questions that I’ve come across while editing the content. You can also use this document to explain any editing choices you’ve made and why the edited content works better for different devices. Again, a written record makes everything clear and transparent.

5. Schedule time to review content

Often content is edited and polished before it’s published but then after it goes lives it’s left to languish on the site. Links become broken and content becomes out of date – resulting in frustrated users and the credibility of the site being questioned.

So whatever the content you’re editing, however small it might be, make sure you schedule in time to review it. Speak to the author about whether it is still relevant to their business goals and their users’ tasks.

Share your tips

And that’s my whistle stop tour of editing other people’s content.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve got a challenging editing situation, or share your tips for editing other people’s content.

Further reading and references

Related posts

Nicely Said – a Book Review

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In the introduction, Erin Kissane calls Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose (by Nicole Fenton and Katie Kiefer Lee) ‘a writing guide that grounds its wealth of practical advice in empathy for readers and their needs’.

If you read our blog regularly you’ll know this focus on the user resonates with us.

It’s the perfect introduction for anyone new to writing for the web. It also offers valuable tips and advice for experienced web editors looking to develop their writing.

Let’s get in to some of the advice for writing for the web with style and purpose.

Do your research

In our training we’ve been hammering home the need to plan your content. In a chapter on ‘getting your bearings’ this book offers some key points you should consider when preparing to write:

  • understand the material
  • define your goals and mission
  • identify your audience and address their needs
  • decide how you want to talk to your audience

Writing guidelines

To achieve a good level of writing the authors recommend you regularly practice this set of guidelines:

  • be clear
  • be concise
  • be honest
  • be considerate
  • write how you speak

We provide a similar list of top 5 tips for writing for the web to our editors. If you get these right you’ve got a good foundation to build on to develop your writing style.

Writing style

Something I found incredibly useful about this book was the clear definition of voice and tone – and the difference between them.

Voice is your personality; it influences how people perceive you and doesn’t change much.

Your tone changes depending on the situation; it’s directed by the audience you’re writing for.

Voice + tone = writing style.

The power of words

I want to round of this review with a quote from the book. In a single sentence it conveys a clear message about the power of your words and the importance of good writing:

“Your words can guide readers, bolster their decisions, and encourage them to take action.”

Read more

I’d encourage you to read this book to get more detail on the topics I’ve introduced, and so much more. I’ve definitely picked up some valuable advice that will improve my writing.

You can find out more about the book and its authors on the Nicely Said website. There’s also a good list of free resources, including articles and essays, for you to read around the subject.

Team Update: 1 – 12 February 2016

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It’s that time again – read on to find out what we’ve been up to over the past couple of weeks.

Go Mobile programme

The Science Central website went live on Friday 5 February.

We’ve handed over the Employers site to the site editors who are currently working on the content in T4 and sourcing new assets.

Jane and Lisa are building and tagging up the Careers website to get it ready for migration to T4. They’re also doing a first pass edit of the content to get it ready to hand over to site editors.

We’re planning the induction of some of our new starters (March 2016) – there’s a lot for them to learn about working in our team and the Go Mobile programme.

We’ll be advertising for one more Web Content Officer role in the next few weeks.

Skills development

Gareth and Emma B have completed their project management training – they and are now fully-fledged Certified Scrum Masters and Agile Practitioners. Well done Gareth and Emma!

Over the next few months, we will be looking at how we can change our methods of working to adopt Agile principles with the aim of making our work faster and easier for everyone.

Office Move – all change!

A quick heads up that the Corporate Web Team will be relocating in mid-March from Level 5 of Kings Gate to the ground floor of the Daysh Building in the space formerly occupied by Combined Honours. This ties in with our need to work in an Agile way. We’re therefore moving to a more collaborative space where our progress can be made visible on walls and whiteboards.

The new office will also mean that we can more easily assemble as a team every day to monitor progress and troubleshoot problems. We will of course let everyone know when we have a firm date for the move.

Design and Technical developments

The Video Wall and Central Virtual Tours website went live on 11 February. The Virtual Tours website now includes optimised versions of the tours that work on mobile devices.

Campaigns and web developments

Steve has been working on a recruitment website for the new batch of Graduate Ambassadors – Join the Team, which went live last week.

Training and support

We ran our first web editor community event on Wednesday 3 February. This session was for editors whose sites have been through the Go Mobile treatment and are now live. We shared some tips for using the new content management system and looked at some content types that we’ve developed since we began the programme.

Find out what one of the editors who attended the event thought in our Go Mobile web editor community event guest post.

So far, we’ve received 35 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 15 of them.

Plans for the next few weeks

Over the next few weeks we’ll be busy getting ready for our office move and continuing work on the first batch of sites in Phase 2 of Go Mobile.

Go Mobile Web Editor Community Event – a Guest Post by Anna Jenner

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Anna Jenner, Student Recruitment Officer and Web editor. Anna Jenner is a Student Recruitment Officer in the Student Recruitment Team.

She is the web editor for the Information for Schools and Colleges website, which went through the Go Mobile process last summer.

Anna attended our first Web Editor Community Event (held on 3 February 2016). Here’s what she thought of the session.

I was invited to attend the Web Editor Community Event, the first of a series of events offered by the Corporate Web Team. Its aim was to build and empower the community of web editors across the University and allow us to keep in touch, ask questions and share advice.

I loved the sound of this immediately as I thought it would be a great chance to pick my colleagues’ brains about their websites and learn from their experiences of the Go Mobile process.

Cake and networking

There was also the promise of cake so I signed myself up eagerly (having sacked off my New Year’s Resolution of no cake on the 4 January when I came back to work!). My high expectations were met when I walked through the door and saw a pile of proper size cake (none of these tiny portions!) and lots of tea and coffee.

There was a lovely relaxed atmosphere from the start with ample opportunity to have a chat with colleagues from across the University. Many mirrored my own thoughts and spoke highly of the level of support they had received throughout their Go Mobile experience and celebrated the greater functionality, responsiveness and design of our sites leading to improved audience engagement.

Go mobile: the story so far

After the refreshments and networking opportunities we had a short update on the overall story so far with regard to Go Mobile. You can’t argue with Google Analytics and it is clear to see the positive effect that the Go Mobile process is having on traffic to the University webpages.

This was uplifting to all of us who have worked hard to improve the content and update the assets on our websites, whilst also getting to grips with a new content management system (T4), and made it seem even more worthwhile by seeing the bigger picture.

T4 show and tell

I found the next part of the event particularly useful, where members of the Web Team shared some useful hints and tips about the different features of T4 including:

  • how to use box types to create grid layouts on different pages
  • using the ‘Gallery’ to rotate three or four images on a page
  • different ways to move large amounts of content quickly from one part of your site to another

We got to see how these content types were created in T4 and then shown how they would look on the webpages. This information was very timely for many of us at the event as after the initial setup of our websites, we were now looking to add new features.

I have really enjoyed getting to grips with this CMS and find the functionality and navigation to be so much better to any I have used previously. It took me a while to get my head round but the training offered by the Corporate Web Team was comprehensive and easy to follow. Nevertheless, having the opportunity to get some further hints and tips was very welcome!

Question and answer session

We then got the opportunity to ask any questions about working in T4 and writing for the web. The questions that were asked were very useful and explored topics that I hadn’t thought about in detail, such as how to archive events correctly.

We finished off the event by discussing ways in which we can develop the community of web editors and share content, ask quick questions of each other (rather than constantly bothering our Web Managers – apologies to Emma Cragg, who is quite often harassed by me!) and extend our knowledge through our peers.

This event was informative, clear, concise and a great start to what will I hope become a thriving network of web editors. I am very much looking forward to the next one!