Monthly Archives: October 2014

0 How to Tell a Story

I’ve no idea how to tell a story!  Let alone how to do it online. Story-telling is not my natural habitat.  Perhaps it needs to be.  I’ve found this simple formula which may be helpful and will share it because you might find it helpful.

I don’t remember where I first saw this but the idea is that you can write in four modes.  The first is the most popular with writers and least read by site visitors.  The fourth is the hardest to write but is more popular.

Theory

Most writers, myself included, write in the theoretical mode.  I trained as a scientist and so that cold distant, objective approach comes naturally.  I have no problem writing in this mode and the words flow.  I suspect those who attempt to read it have difficult staying awake.

As I’ve explored this I see the value of this style of writing as a resource I can adapt to other styles in the future.  When the words flow, I can at least capture them and then work out how to use them later.

Technique

This style answers the question, how?  I have a post category called Technique and on Thursdays I try to focus on the practicalities of looking after a website.  This style of writing is more popular than theory because people often need to find instructions about how to do things.

Transformation

This style answers the question:what change do you want to make in the world?  This is not mission statements (Theory!) but genuine accounts of change I have witnessed or change I hope to see.  This is where telling stories is the primary style of writing.

Transcendence

This final style answers the question: why?  Occasionally a story touches on something deeper.  It is at those moments that a story will go viral, because it moves people when they read it.  Perhaps it is not possible to set out to write such a story.  But it is where a story somehow communicates how things are or perhaps a possible future.  These stories reach out and touch the lives of their readers or hearers.

How have you learned to write stories that transform or transcend?

1 Using Tags

Tags may not be so useful as categories. WordPress features both and most blogging applications feature something similar.  They are navigational aides.  There are usually more tags than categories and posts might have several whilst they typically have 1 or 2 categories.  Using tags offers more detailed information about a post’s content and help visitors find relevant posts.

Categories work because there are relatively few of them. They can be nested and used in navigation. Tags can’t be organised like categories but there is no practical limit to the number of tags.

If you click on one of the tags listed at the end of a post, it will open a page listing all the posts that share the same tag. Also if you search for something on a site, if it exists as a tag all those posts will appear in the search results.

Things to Watch Out for Using Tags

Tags can get out of hand. Large numbers are not a great problem but for example, do I use “blog” or “blogs” for my posts about blogging (or “blogging” for that matter)?   These 2 or 3 names should probably be a single tag. But then which do I choose? What are my visitors most likely to search for?

In the post editor there is a useful box in the far right-hand column, headed Tags. When you start to type a word in the box, type slowly because once you make a start, all the tags containing that sequence of characters will appear. You can check the tags you’ve used before.

If you click on “Choose from the most used tags” you get a cloud of tag names, the most frequent ones bigger. The least frequent ones don’t appear in the cloud. But it is an inspiration sometimes to glance through it.

If you click Tags in the left hand column subcategory of Posts, you will see a similar cloud and then below it the means to create a new tag. You are unlikely to use this as you can easily create new tags within the post editor.

0 You Don’t Need Coding or Mark-up

Last Wednesday, I challenged the idea organisations are not the website designers’ job. To make that claim implies you don’t need coding or mark up.  The expert is perhaps redundant.  Whilst this is something many people accept it is still not widely understood.

Two reasons you may still need coding or mark-up

1. There are occasions where you need coding (because you want your website to do something and there’s no suitable plug-in for it) or mark-up (because you want a special design for your site).  This is when you might need the services of a web developer.  They develop themes, plug-ins and platforms to their clients’ specifications.  You will not need these services unless your site needs a distinctive appearance or you want to do something and cannot find a plug-in or application that does it.
2. Even with a standard theme you may want to make a few changes and knowledge of html and css may be an advantage.  Whilst you may not know how to do this yourself, it is a small part of the work of a web designer or consultant.

So, most of the time you don’t really need this expertise. Most of the time the issue is understanding your organisation’s needs and not the technical side of web design.

With a robust content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, with thousands of plug-ins, you can do pretty much anything. But like any other walk of life you need to choose to do the right thing and to learn how to do the right thing properly. These days the problem is choosing, from a number of viable options, the one that works for you.

Beware the Rush to a Solution

The temptation is to rush to a solution. Sometimes clients will approach a designer or consultant with a solution before they have described the problem. Often there is more than one solution and the rush to a favoured solution can prove to be a major disadvantage.  You wouldn’t walk into a doctor’s surgery demanding he remove your appendix on the spot.  You expect an interview where you discuss the problem before moving onto considering possible solutions.

A feature that a few years ago was too expensive or too difficult is easy today. For example, videos are relatively easy to make (perhaps easy to do badly but still easy to do). Many people walk around with the means to film live action videos in their pockets and never use it.

They don’t know that for a few hundred pounds they can download software that will enable them to edit a professional  looking video from recordings. Of course there are pitfalls but they exist because the technology has advanced so much.

If you need a professional video you can still find businesses that will help you produce it. But for most purposes you can easily produce something usable.

So, you have many more options at your fingertips at lower costs. This raises many issues but my point is this: these issues did not exist a few years ago and for many the power and potential of working online is unexplored territory. They simply have no idea about what is possible.

To build a website without this awareness is a big mistake. There are still many designers out there who will do you a website and never mention the potential of modern content management systems. These designers are not interested in organisations and design to the abilities of usually one contact person. This is why so many organisations find their websites a liability.

2 Stories

These days stories are the cutting edge of marketing theory. In this last of a short sequence of posts looking at approaches to marketing online, I’ll discuss two approaches to using stories on your website.

The first approach is your personal story. People will respond to your message if they trust you. They may have never met you and so they need to hear your story. The chances are they have a problem and what they need to hear is a story that shows you understand their problem.

Why a story? Probably because stories are memorable. You might be a qualified divorce lawyer with many years’ experience. But perhaps the story of your own divorce is what people need to hear to appreciate that you really understand what they’re going through. If you can find the right story, it may give you a competitive edge over other equally qualified people.

I am sure you can see the potential of this approach and its dangers. Perhaps there are people out there who can concoct a story that rings true but misleads. This is why it is important to provide other content that demonstrates you do in fact understand your topic. Caveat emptor applies online whatever marketing method is in use.

The second approach might broadly be described as case studies. These are the stories that illustrate the problem and your solution, eg testimonials.  Stories are memorable and good case studies with in-depth testimonials are helpful. The usual type of thing you see where someone you’ve never heard of says something anodyne about how brilliant the product is may be better than nothing, but not much! If you can interview your customers and draw out their story and go deeper, this is likely to be much more effective.

One final point: consider using video or audio for your stories. OK it’s not always practical but it is effective. People seem to find video more convincing than text, I suppose if they can see a real talking head they find it more convincing.

So, what is the point of all this?  Through stories and other site content, you aim to be divisive.  You want to attract those who relate to your offer and deter those who do not.  You can never appeal to everyone and so your site must communicate decisively with those who are your natural supporters.  If they visit your site and don’t get it, then they will not support you.  The challenge is to find the content and the stories that do this for your business or organisation.

Have you found sites that have communicated in this way to you?

4 Why is the Local Economy Important?

As a community development worker for over 30 years, I have seen many community audits. Very few even mention the local economy; it seems to be a blind spot in the world of community development. Why is this? How can we bring about lasting change for the better without developing the local economy? The alternative is dependence on grants or mainstream funding; with the recession these are less of an industry than they used to be. Grants and mainstream funding are dependent on decisions made by people who live and work outside of the applicant community. The big advantage of the local economy is it is something to which local people contribute; they do not need permission.

I have written several posts about the marketplace. The upshot is we’ve  allowed the neo-liberal right to hijack this word to favour the activities of the big corporations; they’re the opposite of the market because they undermine it. They

In summary the marketplace has little to do with profit and everything to do with community. When people can meet and freely interact they will naturally make deals and develop new ideas. The omni-corporate extraction of decision-making from the local and its relocation to the global means the interactions that generate genuine innovation are less likely to happen.  Views tend to polarise and competing ideologies are a poor basis for building trusting relationships.

Large scale activities are always better done by the statutory sector who have (or had) the infrastructure to employ people on reasonable wages. The argument that the private sector is more economic depends on lower wages. This reduces money circulating in neighbourhoods. The current recession was caused by this neo-liberal approach.

The other part is the role of banks. We need to understand how the banks create money. Every time they make a loan, they create money. Once upon a time you needed money to make a loan. It seems obvious. If I loan you £100 in bank notes, I must have £100 in bank notes to start with. However, if I credit £100 to your bank account a I don’t have to actually have that £100. So, you can calculate the percentage of money loaned covered by reserves.

If I am trading, I am helping  money circulate in the local economy. The corporate economy creates money through loans to corporations that tend to concentrate money in fewer hands and takes it out of local economies. First, banks make loans to bigger corporations because they trust them. Second, repayments return to the bank, translating newly created money into real money.

This fractional reserve banking practically extracts money from the local economy and concentrates it in the hands of banks and large businesses. To legislate to prevent banks loaning more than they have (or at least to restrict it) would be a good first step. But banking also needs to be deployed to support small businesses and not the corporations.

2 Needs Assessments and Audits

About 8 years ago I worked for the national office of the Methodist Church in the UK.  I was responsible for £1 million per year of grants for Methodist Churches and one of the issues was encouraging applicants to plan their work and think critically about their plans.  We designed our grant application forms to encourage applicants to tell their story and show they could deliver their objectives.  Needs assessments like this are common in grant applications.

So in 2006 we published a CD-Rom (remember those?) called “Building Confidence”.  These days it would be on a website and we did consider that as an option but decided that at the time many member churches did not have access to broadband.

The CD-Rom included a document called “The Hard Questions Workbook”.  The idea was you would attempt to answer its questions after you had designed your project.  It aimed to encourage project managers to take a step back and look critically at their plans before they applied for a grant.  I would have preferred to publish it on cheap paper like the old children’s dot-to-dot books.  Then a small group could have sat around and scribbled their ideas on it.  We were very excited by it in the office but I don’t remember anyone ever claiming to have used it!

Needs Assessment Questionnaires

Earlier this week I heard a story from an experienced web consultant who had struggled getting his clients to complete questionnaires for needs assessments or audits.  The questions switched them off and he was losing friends as a result!  This conversation was in the context of a massive new questionnaire a group of us are working on to help organisations design their websites for conversion.  This, supported by a team of consultants, will be a powerful tool if we can persuade clients to use it!

I too have a needs assessment questionnaire and have found it switches off my clients.  By off I mean really totally and completely off.  I mean so far off that I have not been able to gather any helpful information about what the problem actually is.  It seems people do not like being asked about their organisations.  They do not like having to think carefully about what they are doing.  Whilst I have no doubt at all this accounts for why so many websites and real life projects are a bit rubbish, I am at a loss to explain why there is such adamant resistance.

I love going deep into organisations and don’t find deep analysis at all threatening.  Experienced consultants can charge thousands of pounds because there are plenty of big businesses who understand the value of it.

Reasons Third Sector Organisations Reject Needs Assessments

They

These are all guesses.  Maybe some apply in some cases and maybe there are other reasons I have not picked up.  What’s to be done?  What we have is a product few people want and many organisations need.  I think there are three things needed to help organisations take up this approach.  We need to

Have you encountered similar problems?  If so leave a comment.  Thanks!

0 Categories in Navigation

Last Thursday I wrote about how to create new categories. One of their most powerful features is they can be added to your WordPress site navigation. If you click on a category name in the navigation it will take you to a page with all the posts within that category, starting with the latest.

In wp-admin hover over Appearance in the left hand menu and click on Menus. Towards the top of this page you will see the words Menu Name in italic. The name beside this heading identifies the menu you are working on. If your site has one menu, you don’t need to worry about this. With more than one, you need to check you’re working on the right menu.

If not, click on the Manage Locations tab at the top of the page and select the correct menu. I’m assuming you have set up your  menus; at some stage I shall look at how to set up menus in more detail.

So back to Edit Menus using the tab. Now you need to look at the left hand side of the page. Depending on your plug-ins there will be several options. Select Categories and the arrow alongside it.

This opens with the categories you are using most. If you can see the category you want to add to your menu, select it. If not use the View All tab to open up all your categories.

Once you have selected one or more categories, click on Add to Menu.

WordPress will add your new category to the bottom of the list on the right. You can then drag it to the place where you want it. If the left hand edge of its box is as far to the left as it will go it will appear on your menu. The category at the top will be at the top of a vertical menu, or furthest to the left, and the later ones will follow on.

If you indent your category it will appear in a submenu of the category immediately above further to the left. I don’t think there’s a limit to the degrees of subcategory although three is probably the limit for most practical purposes.

Your theme will decide exactly how your navigation appears and so, once you’ve pressed Save Menu at the foot of the page, it is a good idea to refresh your site and look at exactly what you’ve done. If you haven’t got it right, simply go back and try again. This way you can work out the best configuration.

This approach to menus is at its best if you are using a Noticeboard approach to blogging. You may find with a long diary or large library you need to use additional navigational aids to help your visitors navigate your site (follow the link for the meaning of these terms). The fact that blogs list backwards from the latest post can be a problem when reading a post sequence.

1 Is Your Organisation the Web Designer’s Job?

It can be difficult to explain the web consultancy role to clients. The client wants a website and may not have a clear image of what their website will be for; its purpose or what they can do with it.  If they want to market a product, service or cause, they need to consider how their organisation will use their site and this will have implications for the organisation.  This is the first of the five main reasons organisations lose their sense of purpose.

When their website consultant starts to ask questions about their clients’ aims and objectives and other details of their organisation, they are sometimes seen as stepping outside their role.  So, it is important to be clear from the start, why it is important to ask these questions.  Many clients do not appreciate the central role a website can play in the life of their organisation.  It doesn’t have to play such a role.  Organisations that are not in business may not have a marketing mindset and strongly hold to the view that their website has no implications for their overall practice.  Some businesses may share the same mistaken beliefs.

Some of this can be accounted for by not understanding what websites can do for organisations.  Many people’s beliefs are simply out of date although they can be strongly held.  Others have a stake in their organisation that overrides the new website.  The costs of a website that doesn’t work for them, that is a liability, may not be as great as the perceived loss of power to the people who run the website.

Many organisations see appointing a consultant or a designer as analogous to appointing Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It does not change the chapel’s function. The life and routine of the Vatican are not affected by the artwork in the chapel.  Of course that is not strictly true.  The Sistine Chapel is a tourist attraction because of the ceiling and so does affect the life of the Vatican.  If this is what the client wants, then they don’t need a consultant.  They’re looking for an old-school website designer.  Their website is a badge and they can be blissfully unaware of the costs in time and money such a site will have for them.  There are many such sites and perhaps some organisations are happy with them.  They might still be happy if they were aware of what the site could do for them.

It is acceptable to have a brochure type site if it is used as a paper brochure would be used, simply to display the organisation’s credentials.  Potential clients, partners or customers can be directed there for more information.  What is not acceptable is to charge the client for a site built on an obscure platform, with limited potential functionality.  Organisations change and can find they have to scrap the old site entirely to bring in new functionality when they do decide they need more from their site.  Bad decisions are not so serious when they can be easily remedied.

The consultant’s role is perhaps more analogous to an architect. Asked to design a chapel, the architect will need a lot of information from the client to find a design that meets their requirements. The architect will ask a lot of questions the client might not expect. That is the role of any consultant, to ask the questions the client has not anticipated, to make connections the client has not made. The more the client can take part in planning the website, the better the finished website will be. A good architect may be an artist but unlike Michelangelo cannot work without a strong relationship with the client.

I’ve already pointed you to my previous sequence about non-directive consultancy.  Consultancy is usually understood to be about bringing in someone with knowledge and skills absent within the organisation.  Non-directive consultancy understands the consultor or client has more knowledge than the consultant.  Whilst I think non-directive consultancy is most appropriate for website consultancy the reality is more complex.  The consultor has unique knowledge about their organisation and business but the consultant also brings in knowledge absent within the organisation.  The skills they bring are as much about online marketing as they are about website design.  Indeed many claim the consultant needs no technical knowledge to build a website that works for the organisation.  Nevertheless consultant and consultor both bring unique knowledge to the table.

Developing your website implies changing the ways you do things. A simple example is newsletters. They are often a benefit offered to members of third sector organisations. Many organisations send their newsletters by email. The reasons for this are usually cost related.

However, if they set up a website and want to seek new members through it, a common approach is to enable visitors to subscribe using an email list. This keeps them in touch with the website and over a period they can be encouraged to become a member.

This is a big advantage, especially for local groups who can promote their cause and recruit members this way. The question is what they offer to subscribers. The newsletter is an obvious answer. It is a reason to be in regular contact with subscribers and if it is worth reading, may be exactly what they might sign up for.

But then the knock-on question is, what do you offer members? If subscribers get the newsletter, what is the advantage of becoming a member? The organisation may depend upon the members dues for its income.

There isn’t a single solution to this problem. Some organisations will be able to offer something beyond the newsletter to members, whilst others will find some other incentive for subscribers. Whatever they decide, they need to review their membership arrangements.

If you enjoyed this post, you can sign up to my email list at the top of the right-hand column. You will receive a weekly summary of my posts, an email sequence about community development and occasional emails about community development online.

1 Content Marketing

In content marketing, it is claimed, “content is king”. I’m not sure about the monarchical turn of phrase but that’s what they say.  It is still news to many website owners who believe the technical challenges of design and site maintenance are more important.  This means they often undervalue the content on their site.  Content has to be the site owner’s first responsibility as it is likely their designer will have no idea what the owner hopes to achieve through their site.  Of course the designer should discuss this with the owner but many are “techies” and have no idea.  There are many wrong ways to approach content.

Is content really the most important thing? Well, yes although it does depend on which content you mean. If you have followed this sequence, you may remember the product launch sequence must include high quality content. This means content of real value. The reader or video watcher should be able to do something useful with the content and not find they are missing vital information. This is marketing based upon generosity. The idea is people are more likely to buy if they are grateful for the free content.  And this works if what they buy is of equal or greater value.  Perhaps it is easier to produce great value than it ever has been but it still requires hard work.

Conversion depends upon good content. If people arrive at your site and find it is full of high quality information, they are more likely to buy your products. This seems to apply just as much to information products as it does to products that arrive by post.  So, someone who sells jewellery might blog about how they make it, the origins of the materials they use, the history of particular pieces, etc.  Readers might buy out of gratitude for the stories and information they read.  They can be encouraged to subscribe and so be invited to return to the site when you post something that interests them.

So, what benefits are there in providing high quality content?  Well

The aim of all of this activity is to build a tribe. That’s the usual term used although I would prefer community. Tribe to me implies conversations between a chief and various members of the tribe. Community implies a space where people can share with one another.  These are the people who will help you design your online content, market it and purchase it.

One interesting emerging thought is much content marketing lacks one essential for building community online. The technical stuff is all in place but it seems one thing is lacking. Any ideas? Let me know what you think it may be. I’ll tell you next Tuesday.

If you enjoyed this post, you can sign up to my email list at the top of the right-hand column. You will receive a weekly summary of my posts, an email sequence about community development and occasional emails about community development online.

0 So, What is the Local Economy?

What is the local economy?  It is easier to say what the local economy is not!

The local economy is where traders, small businesses and self-employed have a personal stake in the economy. They have their own businesses and solidarity with others who are active in the same neighbourhood.  By neighbourhood I mean a part of a city or possibly a city or region.  It varies depending upon the nature of the business.  Trading outside the neighbourhood is crucial for many businesses, the key to the local economy is solidarity and this takes many forms, not all financial.

Local Scenarios

The degree to which businesses practice solidarity is important. So, let’s imagine a few scenarios:

• An estate or small town built to accommodate a major business. In the past these were coal mines, steel works or other large companies, the relationship between ICI and Billingham springs to mind. The economy depends upon the survival of one key industry. Everything else in the neighbourhood will be to some degree dependent upon it. There will be shops whilst people have money to shop in them. This model fails when the main industry disappears, there is not enough money circulating to keep other businesses going and the entire economy collapses.
• So, the second model is the estate or small town there the economy has collapsed. It seems difficult to re-start a collapsed economy.
• A more stable model is where there are several large businesses so the economy is not dependent on the survival of one. This perhaps describes most of our major cities. They may be dependent on one type of industry but not on one company. Sheffield for example is still known as the Steel City. It still has several significant steel mills even though the numbers have fallen and so have the numbers employed by the remaining businesses.
• The city allows pockets of local economies to grow within it. So, Hunters Bar and Spital Hill are possible because they are a part of a larger economic entity, where a neighbourhood has a critical mass of small traders and self-employed working behind the scenes. Traders need footfall and so it’s difficult to open a shop where there are no others unless there is some reason people will pass your door. So, the most successful small trader areas will be either city centres or places where people visit, to view some attraction. Such attractions draw visitors and so attract other self-employed or small businesses. Where there is sufficient footfall, a number of businesses and other attractions accumulate, and we have a local marketplace.

Conclusion

To summarise, every neighbourhood has a local economy. The degree to which it is a satellite economy to some large-scale enterprise, a strong or robust coalition of small businesses or an economic wasteland depends on local circumstances.

The problem for many neighbourhoods is the local economy is invisible. Community development usually focuses upon the needs of disadvantaged people; so the focus is on children and young people, or the elderly or unemployed. Business people have other priorities and so are less inclined to engage in community activities. And yet arguably they are the people who build community through the local marketplace.