Web Write 101

Whenever I teach I’m often asked how I set up on my own, how I am surviving in these harsh economic times, how to set up as a self-employed web writer and designer.

These last few months have seen me work on numerous site launches, email newsletters and courses for my clients.  I have never been busier. But there’s no denying that starting up is tricky when budgets are particularly tight for clients.

This is a round-up of some recent articles and forthcoming courses that look helpful, whether you’ve chosen to go freelance or are forced to be self-employed (in other words, have been made redundant).

Always full of insight, David Airey, has recently written on:
Becoming a self-employed graphic designer
The design pricing formula

Nick Usborne has written extensively on freelance web writing. Some recent excellent articles and sites from Nick:
New Path to Riches blog
Freelance Writing Success

NMK (New Media Knowledge) run courses on setting up a web business. This one on March 10 looks good:
Drumming up Business – sales tactics for the digital freelancer
And NMK have a case study: Building a Web Business from Scratch
Follow NMK on Twitter.

Freelance Advisor have an excellent free 32-page guide to download: Go Freelance 2010
Freelance Advisor also have a podcast series, February 2010 was on The Challenges of Working from Home.
Follow Freelance Advisor on Twitter.

If you have any tips then put them in the comments.

• Tweet with users’ words in mind – so that Twitter’s search can find your posts
• Use the appropriate hashtag for things like conferences and events
• Link to your Twitter profile page from your website
• Choose a ‘real name’ carefully as that will be first in your <title> tag, therefore it will be very visible in the search engine’s results pages.
• You may want to put a few relevant keywords in your real name too.
• Put your main website URL in your profile.
• Add keywords to your short bio
• Write twitter posts for Retweets so that you encourage others to spread the word.
• Tweets are now indexed in real-time by Bing and Google.
• Write keyword-rich tweets if possible.
• Select the initial characters of each tweet carefully as this will be shown in the search engine results list too.
• The links you post aren’t counted towards your ranking by Google. However you should ensure that any links to your site, that use a URL shortening service, use 301 redirects in case anyone chooses to link to your pages from their site, using the shortened URL.

Mashups are the combination of several data sources to create a new tailored service.

Government has the data.

Some useful mashups have been made with Government data, for example there’s a useful recycling map on Recyclenow.com.

Here’s a Google Map, made by the British Government, the UK Met Office and the British Antarctic Survey, showing the effects of global warming.

Sutton Council’s Grit Bins Map was useful a few weeks ago during the South’s heavy snow.

To help people make the most of government data, a major new website has been launched which gives free access to government data in one place: data.gov.uk

I’ll keep you posted on the innovative uses of this data. At the moment some developers are complaining that they can’t make use of the data easily.

In the meantime, here’s some of my favourite mashups:
Newsmap
Healthmap
Weatherbonk
Trendsmap

Most users don’t know what an RSS feed is. I’m putting together a site for a very non-techie audience at the moment and we will call our RSS feed a ‘News feed’. What do other sites for non-techies call them?

Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page.

read more »

After 12 years as a tutor of courses about Web publishing, I thought I’d experienced all training calamities: a person reading The Guardian all through a course (the first time I’d taught at PTC), the Internet connection going down, the training laptop being stolen mid-way through a course, an in-company course where all the websites I needed to look at were blocked… I could go on.

Just after lunch, whilst teaching my Search Engine Optimisation course at Book House, we were told to quickly gather together our things and leave the building, as there was a strong smell of gas downstairs.

So I grabbed my memory stick – it has all my passwords on it – and the remaining handouts and left the building with my delegates. I suggested that we go to the Huguenot Graveyard behind Book House and finish the subject we had started looking at. But it was too wet to find anywhere for us to sit. We made it onto the traffic island and were about to go to the East Hill pub to continue, when we were directed to the Steam Bar over the road. We found a little private dining room at the back of the restaurant, removed the glasses and napkins from the tables and carried on.

No computer and no Internet connection.

Now 12 years ago the thought of teaching a course about that most interactive of web services, search engines, without an Internet connection, let alone a computer, would have filled me with horror. But a kind of ‘Blitz spirit’ kicked in amongst the delegates and I. We vowed to carry on. I ‘drew’ my examples in the air. Thankfully the delegates had good imaginations and a lot of experience with using search engines and could imagine my examples and diagrams.

After being accompanied by gentle folk music for half an hour the music was turned off and we offered tea, coffee and biscuits. Thanks to the kindness of the staff at The Steam Bar I carried on and successfully finished teaching for the rest of the afternoon. Teaching will never be the same again.

Here’s an introduction to SEO and social media, sometimes known as Web 2.0.

read more »

A plug for my partnership with Web Editor Nancy Duin:

The Thing Itself (TTI) is a partnership skilled in web organisation, content, design and training. We specialise in:

• expert critiques of websites, to identify why they may not be achieving their aims and how this can be put right
• training in website writing, editing and structure tailored to each client’s needs
• combined critique and training that enables clients to identify where their websites are going wrong and quickly get their staff trained to rectify this.

We are also hugely experienced in writing, editing and designing websites that work, and can help clients focus on their users through scenarios and personas.

In addition, clients come to us for the creation and maintenance of email newsletters and for training in and consultancy on search engine marketing. Finally, we have on tap an impressive array of expertise in all areas of website creation – editorial, technical, aesthetic – to meet all our clients’ needs.

I seem to be doing a lot of public speaking over the next few months so I thought I’d share with you an excellent article I came across by Donna M, a web writer and information architect:

10 tips for conference presentations

‘Final Curtain At The Theatre Royal’ – featuring the poetry, music and art of Billy Childish, Lupen Crook and Oliver Burgess

Recorded at the Theatre Royal in Chatham a few days before it was demolished in May 2009.

21.36 minutes long.

Final Curtain at the Theatre Royal from Dave Wise on Vimeo.