Contented

Wal-Mart Has a Blog

2008-03-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I come not to bury Wal-Mart, but to praise it.

Quietly launched late last year, Wal-Mart's Check Out blog provides a good example to all would-be corporate blogs. Most corporate blogs seem to be either mere extensions of the company's PR department--every post sounds like a press release--or bland soulless entities that would have its readers believe that the blog is actually penned by the CEO or other ranking executive (you can just smell the vetting in those too).

Unlike the vast majority of white-bread company blogs, however, the authors for the Wal-Mart blog actually have their own voices and personalities (as well as pictures that make them even more immediate). Even more surprisingly given the passions that Wal-Mart can stir among some segments of the population, from the posts I've been seeing over the last couple of weeks, the bloggers and company itself takes a pretty liberal stance on commenting. There's no evidence of censoring negative comments or stifling debate withing the comments. Take note companies. This is how it should be done.

Blogs require real voices to even past the lowest muster test for authenticity, and real conversation and community is another must in this medium. Does the Check Out blog pass these tests? Check. So far, I've found some of the posts to be very interesting. This will bear following for a while. If anything changes, I'll be the first to jump all over.

Of course, Wal-Mart has been burned once already by this whole blogging thing. So it's nice to see them do it right this time around.

Brand Obama

2008-02-27T21:03:00.000-08:00

A Newsweek blog has an interesting post describing how Obama's branding efforts are more thorough and complete than any campaign thus far, and certainly more so than his rival. It explores something I've been thinking about as well. Obama's "brand" looks way more Apple or Target than Hillary's or McCain's (Dell and Wal-Mart/Army circa 2003).

Also, his "O" logo scales much better online than Hillary's.

From a copy perspective, Obama definitely has a tagline, whereas Hillary doesn't that I can find. "Ready from day one" just doesn't cut the mustard. While "Change I can believe in" isn't great (is that a preposition I see at the end of that sentence?), at least it's an attempt.

What does this mean. Not a heck of a lot, but I still think it's interesting. Could something like this influence those of us that work in such matters? Perhaps, but we were probably pre-disposed to support him anyway.

Of course these brief thoughts prompt me to start a content comparison of the major candidates websites. I'll try to get to that perhaps this weekend.

What I am Going on about Here Anyways?

2008-02-25T14:12:00.001-08:00

After many, many years of writing for the web and dealing with content strategy for various and sundry clients, I've found that I repeat myself a lot from engagement to engagement. So much so, I thought I'd start writing about writing for the web and about content strategy in general since I've seen so few resources of this type to point these things out. I don't expect that I'll be repeating myself any less, but at least I'll be able to document a lot of things, spark a few discussions, and generally get things off my chest (the pessimistic view) or provide some insight into how best to deal with the written word and such on the web (the optimistic view).

Don't Click Here

2008-02-24T20:13:00.000-08:00

One of the things that it seems that I always have to tell my clients is avoiding using "Click Here" as a link. Surf around the web a few times, and you'll see this phrase countless times in countless environments in countless treatments. Other than being imperative, what does this tell the person reading the page? Nothing. It's merely an exhortation, an instruction without inducement. If you wrote "Jump off a bridge," would you expect anyone to follow the instruction without further information? That's really all "click here" is.

Think about the most frequent use of this phrase is. Banner ads, pop-up windows. Do you really want to equate your links with an exhortation to shoot a duck on a banner ad?

Instead of taking this easy way out, your links and calls to action should give the end user some indication of what they will find once they select a particular link. I'm not saying it should always match the title of the page it leads to. I'd never be so dogmatic. In any event though, it should give a bit of a preview as to what a user will find on the other side.

This Is My Career on Drugs...

2008-02-18T17:52:00.001-08:00

Here is the full text of a legitimate business e-mail I just sent in response to a request for helping out with a couple of hours of content work for a project I'm not assigned to:

I'm pretty busy helping out with Don't Ask, or I Don't Know (I can't keep them straight), but I may have some time at the end of the week. I'll try and catch up with you on IM tomorrow to try and figure something out.

Any questions?