Giraffe Forum

We don’t scan a webpage. Instead, we scan a particular block or section of it.
I was working with a company who, based on research, had discovered a top intranet task. It was interesting that the web team initially had no idea what this task was about, even though there was huge demand for it in […]

On the Web, nothing is more damaging to your organization’s reputation and brand than out of date content.
On Monday September 8, 2008, a story about a UAL bankruptcy began circulating on the Web. (UAL is the parent company of United Airlines.) Within hours of the story’s being released, UAL’s shares had dropped by 76 percent. […]

Low-value content is destroying the usefulness of intranets and public websites. It needs to be stored separately.
Andrew Leung is a computer science researcher at the University of California. His team analyzed a large data/content environment over a three month period. Their findings included the following:

More than 90 percent of the files were never accessed.
Of those […]

Giving control of a website to a communicator can be like giving a pub to an alcoholic.
Writers and communicators have many of the skills needed to achieve great things on the Web. Public websites and intranets run on content. Writers and communicators have been trained in creating content. There should be a natural fit.
However, when […]

Press releases are a form of propaganda. Publishing them on your website shows your customers how you are attempting to spin the media.
The Web is where we go because we don’t believe the hype, because we don’t like being spun. The Web is the land of the thinking customer. So, why do so many […]

Words are the building blocks of every website. But then, words are the building blocks of modern civilization.
Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, was recently accused of being all words and no action, of being lots of rhetoric and little substance. Here’s how he replied:
“Don’t tell me words don’t matter. ‘I have a dream.’ Just words? ‘We […]

The words people use when searching are not always a true reflection of what they’re really looking for.
Millions of people search for cheap hotels but are they really looking for a cheap hotel? Or are many of them in search of a five star hotel at a cheap price? And even if they are looking […]

Sears Roebuck was one of the very first large corporations. It was in the mail-order business. It used content to make the sale.
In 1906, Sears Roebuck opened a mail-order plant in Chicago. It was the largest business building in the world. The Sears catalogue stated that the plant was using “every known mechanical appliance for […]

Out of 18 choices, why does one piece of content get 49 percent of the vote while another gets 0 percent?
Over the last six years, I have tested a range of headings and summaries. The tests were carried out in 14 countries with almost 3,000 people. People were asked to scan 31 headings and 18 […]

Senior managers don’t take content seriously because people who write content don’t come across as being serious. If content professionals want more respect, they need to present content as a science, not an art.
I have spent most of my adult life writing content, or else advising people on how best to write and manage it. […]