I have had the privilege of reviewing Gerry’s upcoming book Creating Killer Content; It is unquestionably one of the best books I have read on writing copy for the web — accessible yet packed with practical advice. Gerry knows how to bring together disparate concepts and weave them into a cohesive strategy, including readability, usability, search engine visibility, conversion and online sales.

Gerry has pioneered a powerful technique for online marketers called Customer Carewords. His clients who have used this technique successfully read like a Who’s Who: Rolls Royce, BBC, Wells Fargo and Tetra Pak.

Gerry is an incredibly entertained public speaker with an enchanting Irish accent. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing him speak live in person and via webcast. As a professional speaker and a consultant, Gerry sells his time at many thousands of dollars per day, which I can say in all candor is an excellent investment. I have been a long-time reader of Gerry’s weekly email newsletter “New Thinking.” Each issue delivers hard-hitting advice. Subscribe here.

Without any further ado, my interview with Gerry McGovern…

What is the biggest mistake that companies make in regards to their website content?
Thinking that customers care one little bit about the company. Customers care about themselves (their loved ones and their community). They hate websites that are organization-centric. How do you know if you have an organization-centric website? If any of your sentences or headings begin with the name of your organization. Stop talking about yourself. The customer knows who you are. They’re at your website, for crikes sakes. There’s a big, fat logo at the top of the page screaming out your name. You’ve already got their attention. Now it’s time to give them some attention.

What’s the best way to be customer-centric? Talk about benefits. Use second person–YOU. Paint a picture for the customer. Speak their language. Use their words. Stand where they stand, feel what they feel. Forget you’re part of the organization and think like the customer.

You ran an agency with over 100 staff. You have also been a solo consultant. What was the greatest lesson that you have learned from each of those two experiences?
The first lesson I learned was that I should have cashed out earlier. I was part of the whole dot com craze and had a company valued at $200 million at one stage. 12 months later it went bust. Seriously, what did I learn? Patience and focus. I’m a slow learner. I make a lot of mistakes, but I’m persistent. Sometimes I hate to learn so I have to work hard to keep my mind open. I think you need a long term plan. Even in an age of major change I still think you need a vision.

When I started on the Web around 1994, I felt that content was going to be really important. I stuck with that idea, and began to research how to create quality web content. It may sounds obvious now, but it was hard to sell the quality content concept during the Nineties. So many people bought into the idea that all you needed was some content management software and that then–magically–quality content would get produced. Without any management. And with little or no cost. Doesn’t happen that way.

Who are the people who most influenced you in your career choice?
I don’t mean to sound arrogant but I was pretty much self-motivated because I had to be. I come from a very rural part of Ireland. The idea of going to college was pretty new around where I lived. I chose marketing, and I really didn’t have a clue what it meant but I knew that it sounded different.

Peter Drucker would be a major influence now. He wrote in such a simple, clear manner, and he was so incredibly insightful. One quote I keep coming back to from him is that we have spent the last 50 years focusing on the T in IT, and we’ll spend the next 50 years focusing on the I.

Why have you dedicated yourself career-wise to website content? What is so special about that, that it has become your passion?
I always wanted to be good at something. I think someone once said that they had failed their way to success, and I certainly feel like that. There were so many things I found I wasn’t that good at–or that I found that I couldn’t really excel at. However, all along I was–in one way or another–working with content. And when I saw the Web the first time, it looked like this World Wide Web of Content. And it also was this huge opportunity. It was new. It was vast. It still is full of the smell of adventure. And I liked that. So I got up on my horse and headed out West to the new lands that content was building.

There is so much content on the web already. I get stressed surfing the web trying to keep up with the blogs in my industry because there is so much content. It is just exploding. The content is already out of control. Our brains can’t take it. Where is this all heading?
It’s a good question. I’m reading a book at the moment on how the mind works. It estimates that we are exposed to 11,000 bits of information a second, but that we are only conscious of 40 of them. (The word ‘bit’ being a technical measure of information.) Whatever the measure is, we’re exposed to a lot more today that we were 10 years ago.

But I think we’ll be fine. We’re going through a period of flux now as we move from an industrial age society to an information age one. The essence of what we need to know remains reasonably stable, in my opinion. Wisdom is not about volume. Quality does not always come with quality. There are long term trends at play. There are core patterns beneath the hum of noise.

First and foremost, we need to manage the content, not be managed by it. We have to stop being email slaves. Being constantly busy is not productive, and it’s certainly not good management. We need to focus more now on what we’re not going to do, on whose blog we’re going to stop reading this week because they’re repeating themselves. And ironically, in an age of content we need to get out more and talk to people–particularly our customers.

Consultants often talk of going after the “low hanging fruit” — the easy stuff that yields the biggest impact. What do you think is the lowest hanging fruit for companies with an online presence today in regards to their website content?
That’s a tough question. I think a lot of websites suffer from a belief by management that all the fruit is low-hanging. That if they just buy this fancy technology they get this amazing ladder that makes all the fruit low-hanging. Unfortunately, I think that if you visited a lot of websites today, you’d find a lot of rotting fruit lying around.

Basically, it’s time for management. The Web has been around long enough for a typical organization to be able to answer this question: Has the Web the potential to deliver real value to our organization? For a lot of organizations, the answer will be no. The website will deliver a little value, but will have negligible impact on the bottom line. For some organizations, the Web has the potential to deliver substantial value. And in that situation, it’s time to get serious. Time to manage, not administer.

Quality content is hard work. I’m sorry. I’d love to say otherwise, but it’s just not the case. But quality content can deliver significant return on investment on the Web.

I notice that you haven’t started a blog. Do you think this whole blogging trend really has something to it? Or is it all a bunch of hot air? Do you encourage any of your clients to blog? Is blog content too ephemeral?
You’d never know I might start one yet! In fact, because of your constant prodding, I’m talking with a group of my partners about starting a joint blog. I think blogging is amazing, and such a positive reflection of an open, inquisitive, questioning culture. There will always be a role for the book but the blog is the conversation where the next book might just be born.

Everything in its place. Let’s not get carried away. Blogging is a new form of conversation; a rough and ready way to share knowledge. It’s a form of research, a way of getting down and dirty and digging into the roots of an idea. To watch a brilliant thinker and writer blog is very illuminating. But I find that quality blogs–that I can go back to time and time again–are pretty hard to find.

I have so far not encouraged any of my clients to blog. Most of my clients–and they include some very large organizations–are still mastering the basics of how to manage content professionally. Blogging may seem simple, but it’s quite a sophisticated strategy, and it requires a very open, sharing culture.

Great content can persuade the reader. What should a company do to convince its website visitors that it is a responsible corporate citizen, one that gives back to the greater community and the greater good?

I buy a lot from Amazon. My sons keep telling me to use play.com because it’s cheaper, but I’m a loyal Amazon customer, and it would take a lot to make me change. The reason I’m a loyal Amazon customer is because I actually genuinely believe that they care about me. Every time I’ve ever had a problem, their response has been simply fantastic–every single time.

There’s so much bullshit in marketing. So many organizations spinning that they love the environment or whatever just as some “branding” exercise. There are organizations out there that I detest because of the way they treat me as a customer. Citizenship begins at home. Organizations should treat their customers right. Show you actually, genuinely care about your customers. If we all did that, I think we’d make society a better place.

Irishman Gerry McGovern, an internationally acclaimed guru on website content, spoke at a recent Wellington conference on the topic. McGovern has spoken, written and consulted extensively on web content and knowledge management issues since 1994. He’s published two books: Content Critical and The Web Content Style Guide, and a third, titled Killer Web Content, is due out later this year.

McGovern reckons most websites, until recently, have been administered rather than managed. Stuff was put up on them and then left there. Here’s his 12 tips on creating and maintaining killer web content:

Quality over quantity: Publish the size of website you can manage easily. Too many websites are a dumping ground for obsolete or irrelevant information. The value you deliver matters more than size.

Fresh: Continually ensure your site has accurate, up-to-date content. This is a growing problem, particularly for government websites. At past workshops, McGovern asked web managers to stand up if they could swear in a court of law that all of their website content was accurate. Nobody stood. He asked the same question at the recent Wellington conference. Again, everyone remained seated.

Have a common web information layout: This is especially true for all government websites. If every government website looked the same from a layout point of view, it would save citizens a lot of hassle. Otherwise, site visitors have to spend time figuring out how the website works, instead of completing the task they came to the website for.

Task completion: Identify the top three tasks for your website and make sure they shine. Task completion is the only real measure of website success.

Action versus reaction: If a visitor to the site does something on your web site that then results in a lengthy wait they won’t bother coming back. The time they spend on their action should be matched by the time it takes the website to react. For example, clicking on the File menu tab only takes a second, so the time it takes for the menu bar to appear underneath should take no more than a second.

80/20 rule of content: For many sites, less than 20% of the site content accounts for over 80% of the page views. On Microsoft.com, 1% of content accounted for 99% of the page views. In fact, 35% of its pages had never been viewed. That’s well over a million pages of content, which people at Microsoft worked hard to write — for nothing. Focus your efforts on the copy that will be read, not on the copy that won’t.

Columns: Readers use their peripheral vision to keep track of the beginning of the next line down while they are reading across a line. So it becomes difficult to read text that has a long line width. McGovern recommends a three-column format, with 20% or so of the width going to the first column (use this column for navigation), 60% dedicated to the middle column, and the remaining 20% or so for the right hand column.

Call for action: Always end your pages with a clear action for the reader to take. Never leave the reader hanging, wondering what to do next. The centre column at the end of the body copy is a critical piece of real estate for these calls for action.

Links: Links in the middle of body copy distract readers, making it difficult for them to read the paragraph. The message you’re giving them is, “Click on me, the rest of this text is really boring!” Instead of embedding links within the body copy, consider using the right hand column for the related links. You can also repeat them underneath the body copy in the centre column.

Simplicity: Einstein purportedly said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Apply this to your web copy. Web readers tend not to read long copy. Typically, with a 300 word page, 50% will read it to the end, 20% will read 500 words, and 5% will scan 1,000 words. McGovern advises headings should be around four to eight words, summaries 30 to 50 words, sentences 15 to 20 words, and paragraphs 40 to 70 words.
Kill your darlings: If there’s a particular expression or way of saying something that you’re particularly fond of, delete it from your copy, because you’re probably overusing it.

Search engine optimise: Incorporate words into your page that people care about an type into the search engines. People are unlikely to find you under search words you don’t use yourself in your body copy or page titles. Tools like the one at inventory.overture.com can help you find out what words are popular with searchers.

Search engine optimisation
You want to get to the top of the search engines? Ah… but which search engines should you target? What keywords are your prospects searching for? And how do you get your site to the top for those keywords and then stay there?

Learn the tactics that will make your site ’scream’ in the search engines - ethically and sustainably - without costing you a fortune ongoing.

• Hands-on keyword research
  
• Fine tuning your content, HTML, design, and site architecture for optimal rankings
  
• Workarounds for poor search engine practices (such as frames, question marks in URLs, Flash, pop-up windows, links that say “click here,” page titles like “Welcome to ABC.com”, pull-down navigation menus)
  
• Making your e-commerce or database-driven site “search engine friendly”
  
• Building links (directories, niche sites, etc.)
  
• Google’s secrets revealed (PageRank, hyperlink text, etc.)
  
• Pay-per-click search engines (Overture, etc.)
  
• Benchmarking & competitive intelligence
  
• Measuring the return on your search engine marketing investment

• Developing a unique voice / personality
  
• Active vs. passive tense
  
• Verbs vs. adjectives
  
• “You” vs. “we”
  
• Toning down the marketingspeak
  
• Fine tuning your offer
  
• The call-to-action
  
• Segmenting
  
• Personalizing the content and the message
  
• Marketing metrics: cost per click, cost per conversion, customer lifetime value, churn rate, etc.
  
• “Blogging”

• Writing a strategic brief, creative brief, functional spec, content plan, etc.
  
• Budgeting and resource allocation
  
• Vendor selection
  
• The art and science of estimating time and costs
  
• The web development process
  
• Change management
  
• The project extranet
  
• Web development contracts
  
• Liability and disclaimers
  
• Ownership of source code
  
• Terms & Conditions for your website users

We guarantee that after this intensive workshop you’ll walk away with loads of practical, actionable tactics and tips. So what are you waiting for? Register today.

BIOGRAPHY
Stephan Spencer, M.Sc., is the founder and president of Netconcepts, a full-service interactive agency with specialization in search engine optimisation, e-commerce, email marketing, and Web site auditing. They count amongst their U.S. clients: Birds Eye, Wella, Midwest Express Airlines, InfoSpace, Homestead.com, The Sharper Image, Cabela’s, and MP3.com; local clients include Westpac (NZ), The Fletcher Trust, nzgirl, SmokeCDs.com, TrustPower, and Business in the Community.

Stephan is a columnist for Unlimited. He has also written for Marketing Magazine, Management Magazine, Catalog Age, and Building Online Business. He has been featured on the cover of In Business magazine in the U.S. Stephan is a frequent speaker at Internet conferences around the globe - Berlin, London, Toronto, Santiago, Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco. He currently serves as a director of Sales & Marketing Executives International.

• Search engine optimization
  You want to get to the top of the search engines? Ah… but which search engines should you target? What keywords are your prospects searching for? And how do you actually get your site to the top for those keywords and then to stay there? Learn the tactics that will make your site ’scream’ in the search engines - ethically and sustainably - without costing you a fortune ongoing.
• Improving conversion rate
  So you’ve got visitors to your site, but will they purchase? Improving conversion on your site is an art and a science that involves a mix of clever copywriting, compelling offers, a follow-up strategy, meaningful metrics for measuring success, and more.
• Email marketing
  Email can get you in front of your customers and prospects without relying on them to remember to come back and visit your site. But pitfalls abound. Get it wrong just once and you’ll significantly trim your list and burn your relationships. Learn what it takes to make great campaigns and newsletters, get the permission you need from your intended audience, and then test your assumptions scientifically.
• Working with your web developer
  What are the ingredients for sucess when launching a redesign or a new site? What processes are helpful in keeping the project and the vendor on track? What are reasonable expectations of the client and the vendor? What goes into (and what doesn’t go into) an effective brief or specification? How do you manage the legal risk?

Presented by Kelly Goto, Principal, gotomedia, Inc.:

• Usability
• Information design
• Workflow
• Metrics for ROI from a user experience perspective