CopyDiva

Great post today on copyblogger about the effects of social influence on the value of messages online - specifically, in social media. The gist of it, is, how you say it (your message) ends up being your message, so make sure to frame your initial message carefully. Read more, its worth the read: How to Change the World Using Social Media

Over the years that I’ve written this blog, one article consistently brings people to my site via search. What is it? A how-to post on how to write a multimedia script and storyboard. I’ve made a few minor updates to the article and corrected some weird text errors that must be from a recent Wordpress update. Follow the text link above to learn for yourself what’s worked for me in creating compelling multimedia and video scripts.

Nothing sucks worse that a 404 error message. What’s a 404 error? Well, its when you click a dead link on a site and you get “sorry, this page doesn’t exist.” This can happen when a company changes or updates their website, when they yank down a promotion, or generally make changes to the navigation structure of a web site.

But, how cruddy is it when you change your blog URL, causing all the old article links to become dead? For a company, this is really bad form, and for a blogger too, especially if you want to have some kind of credibility. I mean really, how difficult is it to put up proper re-directs?

Bottom line: If you want people to find your amazing prose or deft analysis of something and hope to gain from the “long tail” of search, you will need to do one of two things:

1. keep the old site up and linked to the new one indefinitely: Jeremiah Owyang managed to do this very well, and even links to the archives from the old blog on his current blog
2. point re-directs from every post on the old blog to the URL of that post on the new blog: there are automated ways to do this when transferring over from one URL to another, but if you are prolific, Option 1 might be a better approach
3. (marginal at best) link back to the main page of your blog. NEVER link back to the main page of your web site, because the original link was for a blog post — that’s a sure way of getting people to leave - they want to read an article, not your sales pitch

Either way, if you are a company, chances are you’re blogging to improve your SEO, be seen as a thought leader and, generally speaking, gain more business. It makes you look bad if blog links go back to your main web site instead.

If you’re a blogger, you really want people to find your content, so don’t make it hard, otherwise you loose the long tail advantage of keeping your content up there, at least for a period of time.

Chances are pretty good that at some point, your department or company will need to work with an outside writer. Some reasons to hire a professional writer:

• you don’t have writers on staff
• you need a specialist — a scriptwriter, a Web content writer or editor, an email marketing specialist, etc
• you’re overwhelmed with too many projects for your existing writing staff
• you need someone who can see the forest from the trees — someone who can look at your positioning with an outsider’s eye

Whatever your reason, it helps to know how to work with a writer to get the best results. What follows are some guidelines to help you forge a good working relationship.

Bring’ em in early

When at all possible, bring a writer in during the conceptual stage to bring in the outsider’s eye and ideas early — it works to your advantage. Allow all players of the assembled team — designers, strategists, and the writers — to work together to create communications that will really work. All too often concepts get left to the design team, with very little consideration to what the particular audience needs to get your message. Give designers a verbal stage on which to address the concept.

Develop a creative brief for high-profile projects

Having a signed-off creative brief just eliminates miscommunication later on. This is good place to formalize the goals of the project, and the key components needed. It doesn’t need to be long (that’s why its called a brief), but there are some important elements, including target audience, budget, deadlines, style guidelines (if any), communication goals. Clearly, a good creative brief for a large web site will be more detailed than one for a trade ad.There are certainly projects that don’t need a creative brief — e-newsletter articles come to mind, or press releases. But, you probably already have something written up that explains the goals, style, etc for these. Provide this information to a writer.

Don’t edit by committee

Don’t let the project get away from you! If your company routes to everyone including the office manager, you’re in trouble. The best marcom efforts are handled by a small group of competent people — that’s it. Of course, there are peripheral players — those that need to review copy for accuracy, legal or regulatory considerations, etc.If you have a regulatory requirement, route copy close to the final draft — don’t send it each time the writer produces a new draft.

I have a medical client who does it this way: first draft goes to product managers, then back to the writer, then to regulatory, then back to the product managers. This helps eliminate regulatory issues within a reasonable timeline.

If you need to send the copy through engineering for technical accuracy (a really good idea), make sure to tell the engineers or product managers you want comments on technical accuracy only. Otherwise, you’re bound to get their opinion of the copy,
which may not be pertinent to your target market. Don’t give them the expectation they’re in the business of headline re-writes — you’ll just be frustrated with the end result.

Rules for routing:

1. Be specific about the kind of feedback you need — technical accuracy, grammar, corporate tone, etc.
2. When humanly possible, resolve internal conflicts about the copy BEFORE sending it back to a writer for editing. Don’t leave it to the writer to resolve an internal dispute UNLESS this writer understands your corporate dynamics well and is respected enough within your company to exert influence.

At this same medical products company, my job is to help resolve content conflicts between product managers and marketing managers. But, I have also worked with teams where it makes more sense for them to hash it out without me.

Trust your experts

Don’t hire a writer if you’re just going to end up writing it yourself. Professional writers with experience usually have a good idea what works. Give your writer the information needed to do the job right for you: your product benefits, your target market, your unique selling point, your goal for the piece. Then, let the writer do their job.

Give concrete feedback on copy

If you say to me, “I don’t like it, but I’m not sure why,” you give me nothing to work with. Without concrete feedback, you can’t get the kind of changes you want. Try to think of specific things to critique, such as:

• The writing is too technical; the target audience has only a high-school education
• This doesn’t address the key benefits
• This is too long, it needs to be trimmed down

Be specific with your comments if you want to see changes made.

The best working relationships involve clear direction and honest communication between the client and the writer. Hopefully, these tips will help you create a productive and successful relationship with a writer for your next marketing project.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Should You Employ a Writer to Produce Your Articles?
• Outsourcing - Secrect To Any Writing Success

These days, there are many ways to create a demo or presentation (Flash, Camtasia Studios, others). But, no matter what method you use — or where you post it (YouTube, Hulu, company website, etc), the most important part of the process is creating the storyboard and script that tells the story. This really helps you focus on the specifics of what you want to accomplish.

But where do you begin?

General principles: keep the demo or presentation short

The best multimedia presentations are succinct and get to the point quickly. No matter how fascinating your CEO, product managers or anyone else at your company thinks a product or service is, people tend to tune out after three to five minutes of a presentation. It just gets too long winded. Be adamant with your team about that timeframe, otherwise you’re wasting this valuable tool. You gain more time if you’re writing a tutorial script. Tutorial viewers are typically seeking out information or trying to learn how to use something. They will be more motivated to listen and watch longer.

First things first: get all the details
Before you begin, make sure you understand the goal of the presentation. Is it to interest potential leads at a key point in the sales cycle? Eye candy at a trade show to get people into a booth? A tool to present compelling or interactive information on a web site? A simplified demonstration of a complex process?
How much technical or industry knowledge will viewers know about the information presented? This is key — it will help you target the script to the right audience.

Will there be a voice-over script? Sometimes, particularly at trade shows, it doesn’t make sense to have a voice-over, because it won’t be heard. Perhaps a music bed would work better, or no sound at all. In that case, you’re writing the story of what’s happening on-screen, the storyboard. What’s on-screen needs to explain everything and stand on its own, without a voice-over to explain animations or other visuals.

Create an outline
Even if you typically do not outline a writing assignment, this is the type of creative project where it really helps. The outline doesn’t need to be detailed. It only needs to organize the major components:

1. What needs to be covered? For example, if you are showing any processes — such as the steps you take to drive a car — remember in your outline to break out every step in the process so you won’t leave any out.
2. Will you need transitions? If your presentation covers more than one narrow topic (more than one product or process), or if there is some kind of introduction — say a brief corporate branding intro — make sure your outline includes transitions so you remember to write them into the script.

Writing the script
Whether you have voice-over or not, you need a screen-by-screen template, a tool you’ll use to write the script and storyboard. Creating one is really easy. Here’s what I use:

Now, here’s what goes into each cell:

Screen #: When the programmer builds the presentation, he or she will need to know what graphics and animation go on each screen. Numbering screens makes it easier to keep track of each screen. It also helps the recording engineer (if you have a voice-over). By having each section of the script numbered, the engineer can record each screen’s-worth separately. When the track gets added to the final presentation, it’s already conveniently recorded by screen. All the programmer has to do is plop the voice-over into the right screen and make adjustments for animation timings.

Script: Use these cells to write the screen-by-screen story of a voice-over.

As you are writing, keep in mind what you think should happen on-screen as the script plays. I generally write out the entire script before I go back and add the visuals and on-screen words. However, if I think of something while I am writing, I’ll jot down some quick notes in the “visuals” cell to remind myself of the idea.

What’s going on on-screen?: Here’s where the storyboard, or visual story gets played out. You’ll probably want to brainstorm an overall look-and-feel with others in your company (or a creative director), and also to discuss any kind of limitations imposed by the budget (photos, video, complex animations and the like). Knowing the limitations, figure out what will work well with the script.

The storyboard should reflect the voice-over script. There should be enough change and movement to keep the viewer’s eye interested, but not so much that it distracts from the overall message.

Highlighted words on-screen: if this presentation has voice-over, the words on-screen provide reinforcement of the voice-over. Sometimes, the words will just be suggestions as to what you want the viewer to walk away with. They also act to reconnect the viewer if they stop paying attention to the voice-over.

If there is no voice-over script, the on-screen words could be more involved. They may need to explain what is going on visually or set a mood for what you want the viewer to walk away with. Make sure to keep the phrases short and easy to digest.

Tips for writing

Write out anything that is not an everyday abbreviation. This will prevent confusion for the
voice-over artist as well as the viewer.

Examples of everyday abbreviations:

• Time: just write 7:00 am, you don’t need to write out 7 o’clock pm
• Web and email addresses: most people understand that @ means at

Abbreviations that are known in your client’s industry will not be known by the voice-over artist — and may not necessarily be known by the viewer. If you must use a particularly long and awkward grouping of words that is typically acronymized, follow the first-use rule. At first use, the script should include all the words, followed by the acronym.

Example: the Big Nasty Technical Explanation, or BNTE

Time it
Get yourself a timer. You will need to read the script aloud to make sure you aren’t going over the allotted time. You may also need to time individual screens if you think they might run too long, don’t have enough animation, have too many words, etc.

Trim, edit, make it sharp
Read the script aloud to catch any difficult or awkward phrasings. Trim as much fat during your editing process and get to the essence of what you need to say  — quickly. This keeps the pace moving and makes for a more successful presentation.

What do you want the viewer to do next?

Finally, what is the viewer supposed to do at the end of the presentation? I can’t tell you how often this becomes an afterthought. Don’t let that happen to your project! This is marketing or at least customer interaction. Send them further down the sales process. Tell them to sign up for something. Get their feedback. Give them more support. Just give them an idea to do something!
True, sometimes, a call to action may not be appropriate, however, most of the time it is. Here are some possible calls to action that are effective and give you a way to track the success of you demo:

• Go to our website to sign up for… (have an onscreen click-through)
• Contact your sales representative today by calling … or visit our website (on-screen click-through to get in touch with a sales rep)
• (for a tutorial) to view the tutorial again, click the restart button. You can also download other helpful documentation from our website at www.xxx.com (have a link that goes directly to the documentation page)

Last chance for changes
If there is time in the production schedule, it’s helpful to run through the voice-over script with the completed screens. You will catch any dead spots — places where the script drones on and on but nothing happens on-screen. Fix these now, either by adding action on-screen or eliminating some of the script. Once you record, it is a major hassle (and can sound really awful) to make changes without re-recording. The cadence of the voice-over becomes stilted when you edit out words and even whole sentences.

Copyright 2006-2008, Copy Diva
Like this article? Want to re-publish it *unmodified* elsewhere? No problem. Either link directly to the blog post or contact me to get a brief blurb to add to the end of the article.