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I found this posted by a number of blogs today. And no wonder. Its a good refresher course on web writing. Wait, we never got the course to begin with.

Seven deadly sins of web writing by Gerry McGovern: sample: “Headings are the single most important piece of content you will write on the Web”

In the last few days I have been cleaning up ‘brochure talk’ on my website, mostly on less popular products that few people click on. But what a difference. What did I do?

Targeted contents with the primary benefits of the product to the user

Added a header that summarizes the benefits

Made a bullet list of benefits

Put certain key passages in bold text

Added an in-line link to additional content about one feature

I look at what I did and think that a visitor will feel compelled to learn more about this model. Even if I’m too much of a fan of my own writing, the old content certainly didn’t have any compelling message.

Running a website, even a blog, is a combination of technology, content, and design, per Jeff Veen. I’ve spent too much time this week trying to figure out the technology of CSS layouts for this blog. The design is a nearly-stock template from Blogger. It has a problem (even unmodified) of not allowing the page to scroll past the bottom of the right-hand column when browsing in IE6. I thought I fixed it originally, but I was wrong. Now it is better.

So what did I have to do? I had to change the HTML header to a non-standard type, per the advise of Phil Ringnalda. Better to make the site usable for readers, than be use standard format rules–a hack, in other words.

Let me make my fix instructions even more explicit than Phil’s.

Fixing Blogger or other CSS multi-column scrolling problem:

1. Delete the first 1-2 lines in your HTML that look like this:

&lt !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt

&lt html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" &gt

2. Substitute this text:

&lt?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1'?&gt

3. Post and yell ya-hoo!

I’ve often called the trade publications I use as “the devil you know”, as their editorial standards are pretty low. I don’t think the actually set them low, they trapped by their history. Justin Hitt makes some more detailed analysis: Iunctura Daily — Center for Strategic Relations.

UPDATE: The link now takes you to Justin’s full article.

An interesting article that basically says that in order to avoid marcom speak like “flexible, scalable solutions” (barf), you need to understand and be able to talk to potential customers. Then develop ‘positioning’ documents to record their interests and the company’s solutions. Multiple documents for multiple market segments. Then you have something to refer to when writing (or hiring a writer) to allow you to focus and engage the reader.

Because I interface with the customer in a sales function, I already do this instinctively without making such a document. But there is always room to learn more about their needs.

Product Marketing

I’ve recently been getting Brand Packaging Magazine for some reason. It’s cool to see how product packaging and design is thought thru, although it is something we don’t worry about in industrial marketing. Packaging is where a lot of commodity sellers are being able to become “Purple Cows”. Just think of what a pourable plastic container has done for Dutch Boy paints recently.

I found the article “Seven warning signs your culture is hurting your package” by Lee Sucharda III to be useful for any marketing program, especially product development/launch. These need to be overcome to even think about becoming a Purple Cow.

Here is my summary of the seven warning signs:

1. Working backwards from a key date, like a trade show, which can stunt innovation.
2. The budget isn’t designed to plan for innovations in product or process, just marketing.
3. Closely related, packaging (or another development item) is considered an expense and not an investment.
4. Research is rarely done–learn what the customer will really buy.
5. Existing products aren’t updated. Continous improvement as a culture is rewarded with market leadership.
6. Poor reaction to market changes. It is harder to recover market share than to maintain it.
7. Being engineering-driven versus user-driven, or the “inside-out” company.

Looks like GlobalSpec has figured out how to leverage their content to gain partnerships. They are now offering their content thru Test & Measurement World’s website.

Because they have actual product data from their advertisers, they become a useful content source for such a site. Thomas Register, without such content, has no hope of creating such a partnership. Ouch!

GlobalSpec starts partnership

Imagine being able to have articles about your company’s new innovations published in a peer-reviewed setting, much like a scholarly journal? Imagine it is powered by the web, allowing publication within ten weeks. Very targeted, very truthful, very timely.

The company Vertilog is attempting such a service, initially launching for semiconductor-manufacturing applications.

Here is a different take on the survey of test engineers by T&MW I previously wrote about, this from the Info Commerce Report.

“Our read of this study is that engineers have no inherent objection to using an intermediary site such as a directory, as long as adds value, such as normalizing data to make it comparable across suppliers, offering CAD drawings, or adding e-commerce functionality.

The top ten list of non-vendors sites is also revealing. There are three types of sites on this list: 1) major search engines (that efficiently move the engineer to a supplier’s Web Site), 2) directories that offered added value through deep content and/or increased functionality, and 3) Test & Measurement World magazine which is accessed as a trusted source of new and objective information (and offers a buyer’s guide as well). Bottom line: directories have a role and can compete, but they need to work harder in a Web-based world. “

The lack of posts this week is due to my trip to visit my brother. I’ve been happy to see greater-than-usual traffic on my blog anyway. Why are they coming here? Search terms people have looked for include: (Posting them again can only help my pull for these terms!)

153 blog

146 b2b

139 marketing

112 thomas

78 adwords

77 all

76 register

72 promotional (people looking for ‘promotional codes’ to get discounts on AdWords, mostly)

70 hanson

66 code

65 publications

55 google

54 scam

51 b2blog

51 search

45 ecommerceregister

42 globalspec

41 topsites.us

I do get a number of incoming visitors from this blog’s original home at www.gvsu.edu (if you came from there, tell me why).

See my stats page to learn what you can about my visitors.

(And I am still having some problems with the whole page showing. If you have this problem, try resizing the window.)

Last April I wrote about a promotion by a trade publication offering unlimited ads for a year for $25,500. According to my ad exec, since then the publication’s quantity of ads has increased from 42 to 114! Publication thickness is up from 3mm to 5mm. Will they survive, or go out in a blaze of glory?

Trade advertising at any price?