Tickets have gone on sale for the next Networx event The art of persuasion – communicate and influence featuring Marissa Tree and myself.

If you are Brisbane on 28 July 2010, consider coming along to listen to us speak about how you can develop and refine your communication tools so that people sit up and take notice.

We are going to give lots of practical examples (it won’t all be theory), so you’ll walk away with tips and strategies that you’ll be able to apply easily within your business.

See you there!

Cheers

I am speaking at a Networx event in July with the wonderful Marissa Tree on the topic of Persuasion. The idea is we are going to go through different methods that you can use to persuade people to get them to do what you want.

I was sharing this with a friend, who looked at me, rolled her eyes and said

“You mean you are going to tell them how to trick people.”

I was actually quite shocked.

Then by chance I saw an advertisement on TV for an upcoming current affairs show that was going to “expose the tricks that supermarkets use to get you to buy more groceries”.

It all sounds so negative.

Sure, there are unscrupulous people out there who deceive and lie about their products or services, and as a result consumers feel ripped off.

But I firmly believe that if you have a great product or service that is relevant and useful for your audience – then what’s wrong with ensuring you do you best to sell it? It doesn’t even have to be something for sale. You may want people to register for community consultation, download a whitepaper, sign up for a newsletter. Whatever your call to action is.

Sometimes understanding just a little about the psychology of persuasion will make a huge difference to your conversions.

What are your thoughts?

If you are in Brisbane on 28 July 2010, keep an eye out on the Networx site for ticket details.

I was lucky enough to go to the first networking event for Interactive Minds today. The topic was ‘Measuring online success – Beyond the click’ and had guest speakers from the REA Group and Omniture. It was a great event, good to see something like this starting up in Brisbane.

October’s event will focus on ‘What customers want’ and also offers some good guest speakers, including Tania Lang from Peak Usability.

If you are in Brisbane, make sure you check out the Interactive Minds website for more details.

If you subscribe to any freelance writing or content related blogs, you’d know that everyone is vying for votes in Michael Stelzner’s (Writing White Papers) 3rd Annual Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest.

The competition highlights the best of the best. I’ve found it a great starting point when you are first looking for blogs that offer good advice and case studies.

I’ve placed my vote for Men With Pens, one of the few blogs that I look forward to every new post. If I had a couple of extra votes I’d give them to Copyblogger and Daily Writing Tips. Also excellent blogs – well written, interesting, and achievable. What more could you ask for?

Take the time to cast your vote.

I’ve been a follower of Jakob Nielsen for a number of years. Love him or hate him, his theories on usability are tried and tested, and I’ve been in a number of workplaces who have implemented his guidelines and as a result have very successful sites.

Last week I went to Melbourne to attend Usability week 2008. It was great. Unfortunately Jakob wasn’t able to make it, but there were a number of excellent presenters. Chris Nodder held the writing for the web workshop.

So, as promised, here are some key tips that I picked up from his workshop. There isn’t anything earth shattering here, just some good advice on how to write quality web content.

• Most online reading is done for research, not entertainment. Be to the point, don’t tease, and clearly have a purpose to the content you are writing.
• Uppercase letters slows down your reading speed. This means that sentence case (which I’ve always advocated) is best practice for headings and titles. Title case isn’t completely bad; it just means that readers can’t scan content as quick.
• It’s important to have a good understanding of the reading age of your content. By making your content suitable for a lower reading age, you not only help those with lower literacy levels, you also make it easier for those who can read at a higher level. MS Word does a basic reading age check under Tools > Options > Spelling > Readability. Most sites should be written for a primary school reading age.
• Having a low reading age doesn’t mean that you are uneducated or stupid. Intelligent people can still have a low reading age, as can people with English as a second language, and older people.
• Short sentences, short paragraphs, and short words all make it easier to scan text.
• Keywords should be at the start of sentences and paragraphs as online readers don’t usually read content word-for-word.
• Bold text can draw people’s eyes to key words or ideas within content.
• Sub headings and bullets are great for readability.
• Have one idea per paragraph.
• Meaningful links are very important: they help with search engine ranking, screen readers, and allow people to know what will happen if they click on one. ‘Click here’ as a link is very BAD.
• The first paragraph on a page should be a summary of what’s on the whole page (inverted pyramid theory).
• Use simple words; don’t make up words, no jargon.
• Write concisely – there should be 50% less text than in a printed document.
• Have a consistent ‘voice’ for your site.
• Images should have a purpose and add value to your content.

Sorry for the briefness of the notes, but I think most of them are very self-explanatory. Chris offered his del.icio.us page as a source of reading.

I am looking forward to this week as I’ll be flying to Melbourne to attend one of the full day tutorials that will be held as part of Usability week 2008. Some of my colleagues have been to previous NNG events over the years, but this will be my first. I’ll report back soon!