11 tips for getting the most out of conferences

23 October 2011

Tomorrow at 4 AM I’ll get in a taxi and set off for two conferences in Australia. I started writing down some realistic aims to remind myself what I hope to gain from this expensive exercise. In the end, it’s all up to me: as usual, what you give is what you get. I admit, [...]

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Training staff in business writing: not a hit-and-run project

18 October 2011

Training staff to write well is not a one-off project for new intranet: it should be business as usual. Business writing skills need to be regularly updated and refined, and spread around the entire staff. Sure, Strunk & White taught the unchanging essentials of clear writing in 1918, but they did not have to cope [...]

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Photos as web content and the emotional content of photos

14 October 2011

We’re running a contest for photos of places that convey a contented feeling. Alice and I choose spot-prize winners each month on the basis of their emotional impact. For the September round, we chose from a mere seven photos! (More have been added since then, happily.) Even so, it wasn’t easy, because all the photos [...]

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Writing tip: Beware the floating starter phrase

12 October 2011

Sometimes you’ll start a sentence with a descriptive phrase, for example: Sprinkled with chives, [...] Smiling broadly, [...] . What comes after the starter phrase and the comma? Make sure it’s the same thing that the phrase describes: Sprinkled with chives, cold potatoes are loved by kids. Otherwise you risk writing a very silly sentence. [...]

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The literary writer’s lament

8 October 2011

From poor poet to wealthy corporate web writer in 5 minutes? I don’t think so! We often get letters from literary writers that, in essence, say: I want to succeed as a poet (or novelist or children’s author or playwright). I have done a Masters in Creative Writing (or another literary degree). I need to [...]

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E-government web content problems—in Arabic

4 October 2011

E-government web content problems in Arab nations? Yes, there’s quite an overlap with what we see in English language government web content! In Ras Al Khaimah (RAK), one of the United Arab Emirates, Basem A. Shahin is fully involved in training government employees to produce usable web content. He is a consultant for IforU magazine [...]

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Making videos on video: we’re learning by doing

28 September 2011

Video. It’s so daunting. You make one, it’s not very good, so you conveniently forget about video for weeks, or months, or years. Then you make another video, which is also not particularly good. Alice and I have decided to take the bull by the horns and learn by doing. So we’re launching into a [...]

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Bread-and-butter pudding and The Filter Bubble: video

21 September 2011

Hey, your own web site shows at the top of search results! Not so fast: Google or Facebook has shown you exactly what you want to see. Rachel talks about the impact of data gathering plus personalization, trends described in Eli Pariser’s ‘The Filter Bubble.

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Facebook for business, marketing, professional development

16 September 2011

Facebook: it’s all about you—yes you—and us too! You probably write or manage content of some sort, like most Contented readers, and that’s certainly a big part of what we do here at Contented. By now, we’re all aware that content includes everything on social media sites and social intranets. So you are probably writing [...]

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Contented places: photo contest, 2011

16 September 2011

Many people told us they loved last year’s Contented places photo competition, so we are running it again this year. Think of a place where you feel (or felt) utterly contented. It might be beautiful or not, at work or at play—surprise us! The contest is not about getting the perfect photograph (although that’s a [...]

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