Writing for the web
Greetings!
I'm the administrator for a large intranet for a fortune 25 company. At this time we're just now implementing a Content Management solution, Websphere portal & personalization servers. Our goal after implementing this is to empower alot of non-technical people to create and publish content with very little expertise in html and web publishing. I think we've got that wrapped up.
My concern is that alot of these people are not familiar with writing for the web. Does anyone have any good resources about actual writing for the web? We'll be having at least 800 regular content creators on a weekly basis and more than 150,000 unique visitors to the intranet on a daily basis.
We're thinking about hiring a consultant to educate our training department, divisional and departmental admins, and some content creators about effective writing for mass audiences on an intranet.
Any ideas or feedback on how to educate our content creators on writing to the web would be helpful. If you're in charge of a large intranet and have gone through all of this before, i'd REALLY like to talk to you.
thanks tons
PUNKK
mmi posted this at 05:53 — 28th December 2001.
They have: 457 posts
Joined: Jan 2001
hey PUNKK - I got these on a search return:
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
http://wdvl.internet.com/Internet/Writing/
http://www.webreview.com/2000/03_10/strategists/03_10_00_4.shtml
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/us-writ/?dwzone=usability
http://home.netscape.com/computing/webbuilding/studio/issue19980827.html
http://www.gooddocuments.com/homepage/homepage.htm
http://www.webreference.com/new/webnotes.html
http://www.dsiegel.com/tips/
http://www.scripps.ohiou.edu/webpublishing/book.htm
http://www.iss.stthomas.edu/studyguides/writing_content.htm
http://www.efuse.com/Design/web_writing_basics.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~atomic_rom/web.htm
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~kvivian/html/writing_for_webs1.html
I'm only in charge of a small profitless biz, but if ya need some help writing/editing...
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punkk posted this at 17:21 — 28th December 2001.
They have: 40 posts
Joined: Jul 2001
It's really my content creators that need the info. I'm not about to audit/edit 100,000 artifacts in our intranet for formatting errors. I've poured over all of Nielson's information and been to a ton of resources on the web but still have really only found very broad suggestions.
I'd like some detailed info/white papers on how proper writing could increase efficiency and usefulness of the intranet. Hopefully with ROI numbers in it.
I'm really interested in the minutae of writing for the web.
Thanks again
PUNKK
mmi posted this at 18:49 — 28th December 2001.
They have: 457 posts
Joined: Jan 2001
hey - I guess I wasn't sure where you were with this - looking at that list, I figure the page on IBM's site would have a strong emphasis on the bottom line - there are links to some studies at the bottom of that page - you might try to find references to that work in analyses that relate to your focus - I'd probably use my "annoyance" strategy by contacting people like the author of that article (Ms. Peterson at smartisans.com) to try to turn up leads
I offer research services as well
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I'm still not quite sure what you mean by "proper writing"
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mmi posted this at 13:42 — 29th December 2001.
They have: 457 posts
Joined: Jan 2001
hey punkk - don't take my crass attempts at self-promotion seriously - I'm interested in this topic - I guess I was thinking that tracking down the material you're looking for (if it can be found and accessed) would require some effort, perhaps more than responding to a forum thread justifies - the only potentially useful idea I have is that I've found that a number of corporate libraries (here in the Northeast at least) make materials available to the public - I'm thinking they're likely to be interested in stuff like
and I was suggesting using those major studies as handles in a search
what did you mean by "formatting errors?"
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