There is only one type of food that I’m willing to work for, and that’s crabs. It could be because I’ve been living in Maryland for the past seven years of my life. On the other hand, I dislike needing to peel my shrimp when it’s already in my pasta. It might seem silly, but it’s the same thing with content; people do not want to work to consume what we have to say.
While we have somewhat of a captive audience, they are the reason we do what we do. For most programs, we don’t measure our return on investment in all the same ways a restaurant would. Instead, we often measure success on how many people we’ve educated, cases we’ve prevented, and feedback from the community.
As stewards of taxpayer monies, these measurements of success are critical. Let’s look at four things we can keep in mind when getting our content ready for the web, print, or social media:
1. Consider the Audience
The first step is to consider the people we want to engage with. While we write many things for everyone, some content is for a smaller group of our community. The best ways to communicate with one group may not fit the other. For example, advertising our upcoming summer program on Facebook wouldn’t reach the youth but their parents or grandparents. That completely changes the way we say things and the images that we use. Observing the way the private sector markets its products can help us to better market our services.
2. Avoid Governmentese
Choosing our language goes hand-in-hand with considering our audience. The public is not interested in the organization chart or the special language that only we understand. One of my favorite examples of this is the gubernatorial election. That’s the technical term for the midterm election, but is it really what people expect? We work hard to post timely content, which helps to make sure they can find it. That includes searching on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or skimming the navigation on our sites. We are helping ourselves by using the words that people expect.
3. Write at an 8th-Grade Reading Level
There is a large group of constituents with reading comprehension or other cognitive disabilities. In addition to this, most people visit our sites on their cell phones while doing a million other things. Therefore, our goal should be to write most content at an 8th-grade reading level. At first, that can sound like a daunting task. I know it did for us when we scanned pages to find them at a 15th-grade level (a junior in college). It’s not as difficult as it may seem and it doesn’t mean we have to ‘dumb down’ our content. What it does mean is that we use shorter sentences and words. It is highly achievable and provides an immediate boost to your overall digital accessibility footprint.
4. We are Never Done on Our Website
One common misunderstanding is that when a website or some sort of online presence is launched, the hard work is over. The truth is that it is just the beginning. These aren’t temporary projects but continuous works of art. We can launch a beautiful, accessible, and well-written website tomorrow, but the real question is what happens the day after when content begins to be updated? Look for ways to keep the audience at the forefront at all times. Maybe there are creative ways for us to communicate this with the different editors and divisions.
The public is our customer, and great content is a service to us all. Keep up the great work!