Writing For The Web...... one day workshop

Activity:
On a gloomy Monday morning the in house training for how to write on the web began.
This was a more hands on update of corporate websites' usability, structure and basically how it should be done and how it shouldn't be done. Our talker of the day was from an agency called AI Digital (http://www.ai-digital.com/) as knew how our organisation works and has worked for a number of organisations. Did I mention it was a Monday morning??

Learned:
We covered things like:

• Difference between online and off line content; why you can't just upload the same info that you published in your leaflets and so on.
• Structure, how do people actually read a page; it is not from left to right as we do when reading something in hard copy, its a more zig zag approach - like when women do shopping during sale season, we scan left, right and centre instead of looking at each item in chronological order. A lot of psychology there.
• How does Google work in terms of search results, ranking, ad words and how to promote our site rating in the search results. SEO basically.
• Creative writing which is consistent, user focused and in compliance with our brand guidelines and style guide.

In the exercises we trashed our own website which makes one realise how much work there needs to be doing. Even after the launch of our new website, the things we learnt will be good as a checklist for what is good practise.

Applied:
So far it has been a real eye opener for a lot of people who did the course, but as I said to my manager, a lot of it is something I learnt while doing my LIS degree and something I am quite aware of, but it was very beneficial because it was hands on, it was only concerning our organisation's website and it was information that was up-to-date. Keeping in mind I finished my studies in 2005, a lot changes in 3 years.
For the time being, it doesn't seem that I will be updating anything on the website as these responsibilities have not been passed on to me. But my manager is aware of my interest and promised she would make sure to involve me so I can put my interest and knowledge to work.
It would be a pity if, despite doing all the web 2.0 courses and reading up and testing and with the background I have, not to have any responsibilities in the IT/web area at work.

The ideas and tasks from this workshops are as followed:

• Everytime we write an article, for example a factfile or any heading on our websites and so on, we should keep ranking in mind and keep the way the Google spider works in mind.
• DDA: I need to work on guidelines for disabled visitors, not the facilities part of things, but the accessability of our information. Apparently 17% of users are affected by some sort of disability e.g. visual impairment. For this the www.w3c.org guidelines and the DDA which is based on this, are good sources along with gathering information on how other corporate libraries deal with this.