Gadgetopia

Rachel McAlpine wrote a great book years ago called Web Word Wizardry. It was about a revolutionary topic: how to write well on the Internet. I absolutely loved it.

Even five years ago before SEO really started to dominate conversations about content, Rachel was talking about it in completely rational terms that absolutely hold up today. In fact, five years later, I’m tempted to read the book from cover-to-cover again.

She used to send an email newsletter as well, but she’s switched to the blog format with “Contented,” her site about “content that makes people happy.” The site is in service of her Web writing course called QWICKIT:

QWICKIT exists to solve a mammoth problem: expensive web sites and intranets overflowing with unusable content. QWICKIT’s online course can train all your on-the-job writers continuously and economically.

I’ve harped on this subject before. See:

• What Content Management Won’t Do
• Where Have All the Writers Gone?

There’s really nothing that will give more value to your site than a bunch of content contributors that (1) know how to write in general, and (2) know how to write for the Web specifically.

There’s a higher education marketing firm down in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that I’ve done some work with that does a lot of high-level site planning. They include a “Writing for the Web” workshop for the organizations they do work for. I think this is an absolutely brilliant idea.

Remember, for content management to be worth anything, you have to have content worth managing.