Elements of Editorial Style for the Web

Last week, while sitting at Starbucks, I overheard a guy tell his friend, "Making websites is so easy these days. You just buy a template and move text around." I joked with Georgy about asking the guy to do a Meet Content guest post on "Cut-and-Paste Content Strategy." Although most people don't describe the process as being that easy, many do have an oversimplified understanding of what is involved in creating effective … [Read more...]

On-Brand SEO Keywords for Meaningful Search

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential component of content strategy. If audiences can't easily find or discover your content through search, its value and usefulness is diminished. We need to understand the words our audiences associate with our content so that we can cater to their search habits with relevant keywords. This is a fundamental task for SEO. However, people often confuse valuable SEO keywords with the right SEO … [Read more...]

Aligning Content Online and Offline

Traditionally, we have viewed offline and online experiences as two separate things — complementary, perhaps, but separate. Today, the distinctions between physical and digital are dissolving — campus events are experienced both from the audience and via the hashtag — revealing themselves to be two sides of the same experience. This begs the tough question: Are we aligned? On June 12 and 13, I delivered a presentation at Penn State Web … [Read more...]

Web User Experience Starts Here (And So Does Your Content)

There's more than one doorway to our websites. People come in through the garage, basement, window, chimney — well, you get the picture. Colleges are learning that their website user experience doesn't always start on their homepage. Sometimes the first web content people see is a blog post or a student handbook PDF or an inquiry form. Or is it? Actually, the user experience never starts on your website. The doorway to your site is … [Read more...]

Web Content Insights Through ‘Understanding Comics’

I am not a comics nerd (I don’t think my Archie obsession as a kid holds muster), though I have befriended many — and married one. So while I’ve never sniffed at comics and graphic novels as child's play, I didn’t fully realize the complexity of the form until I picked up a copy of Scott McCloud’s seminal text, Understanding Comics, in which he explains many principles of visual communication and what makes comics tick. I had heard of the book … [Read more...]