My Webdom for an FTE

ME: So how’s that web editor position approval coming?
CLIENT: Oh, I still don’t have anyone. No dollars yet.
ME: Common, really. In fact, some of our clients have asked to outsource all of their editorial work to us long-term.
CLIENT: Sigh. I was hoping to use that new position to teach some of our people to write complete sentences.

Nothing produces head nodding more quickly than a conversation about staffing. Or, more appropriately, understaffing for the web within colleges and universities. Indeed, every year around budget time, our clients wrestle with the mentality among powers-that-be that their web presence is a capital expense, that content is free and easy, and that websites maintain themselves.

Was an era (small era) that large institutions got by on one web editor and one technical person managing the entire public site. Now, the core team we recommend is four to five times that size to account for editorial, design, training, statistics analysis, etc.—all the functions that don’t go away, but instead, increase, after a big, CMS-driven, site relaunch. The latest must-have: a rich media producer/editor.

I’ve used Shane Diffily’s terrific article about web staffing as a touchpoint in building the case for more staff for our clients. And from our own experience, we’ve found that each page of content on your site takes three hours to produce, roughly 15 minutes to build out, and an hour each year to update and maintain. And then there’s the project management …

Posted by Voltaire Santos Miran
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It’s Not Just Your Imagination: Spelling is Getting Worse

So I’m not surprised to read that a new study on the digital family sponsored by Nickelodeon reveals this:

Being a good speller is no longer felt necessary by 27 percent of parents and 21 percent of kids. Twenty-six percent of parents and 25 percent of kids believe it’s no longer necessary to be able to use a printed dictionary. The use of sites like MapQuest and Google Maps makes 20 percent of parents and 21 percent of kids think map skills on paper are no longer necessary.

Not too surprising. Let’s put this in perspective: a couple of generations ago, if I’d lived where I do, I would have needed to know a lot of skills that I don’t need now. Like how to cut down a tree, for example. On the other hand, to work effectively within an organization like mStoner and for most other businesses, one needs exceptional communications skills. The ability to spell is fundamental. So parents (and kids) need to be reminded-apparently pretty often!-that spelling is not just a trivial skill and that learning the difference between witch and which is still essential.

Nickelodeon also learned that 82 percent of teens 12-14 use the web. When kids stopped using the Net for ten days, “many noticed schoolwork became a bigger challenge. Parents had to help children by taking them to the library and sometimes conducting the research on the Internet for their children. In most cases, more time was required to complete homework assignments.” More, here.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Old Media vs. New Media: Guess Who Wins?

One of my favorite blogs is Jason Kottke’s blog. One of the interesting posts for January looks at new media (blogs and citizen media) and uses Google keyword searches to see which ranks higher in coverage of major issues from 2006. Would you be surprised to know that blogs & citizen media fare better than the New York Times? Part of this may be due to coding and such [not-so-minor!] issues as the fact that after a week the Times allows only registered visitors to view its content. But it’s clearly also an indication that the lines between the old media and the new media-Wikipedia and the blogosphere-are blurring. More here.

This in a week when we also read in TargetX’s inestimable “Email Minute” that paper is where words go to die. And where there’s interesting data in reports from Ball State University and Pitney-Bowes reports that indicate enduring value in print. I’m working on some thoughts about this for a blog post and article for our Intelligence newsletter, but in a nutshell, my thought is that it’s not an either-or world. Even for millennials.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Guidelines for online engagement

Alexandra Samuel, a blogger and consultant on online engagement, offers ten guidelines for online engagement that are both sensible and succinct. Here’s the synopsis—though you’ll want to read her complete post for explanations of some of these points:

1. Keep your goal visible.
2. Keep your rules visible.
3. Use moderation effectively—and sparingly.
4. Open a parking lot.
5. Create an alternative channel for free-form input.
6. Offer outside spaces for outside discussion.
7. Try and try again.
8. Be a role model.
9. Reframe off-topic comments.
10. Redefine “on topic.”

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Scott (Intuit) Cook on innovation

A quote from a recent talk that Cook gave to a group of accountants:

“To achieve game-changing innovations, he said, a company must upset expected beliefs, overcome its own ingrained beliefs, listen and learn from customers, customize its offerings and team up with experts.”

He goes on to say that when Pierre Omidyar founded eBay, he built an empty store and spent hours on bulletin boards listening to feedback, and built that feedback into his software. How often do we really seriously listen our our audiences—alumni, prospective students, etc.? Intuit employees talk to 50,000 customers a year!

Read the (all-too-short) report: Intuit founder sings praises of innovations.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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