Making Videos for Your Website, Part I

We've talked before about the benefits of having videos on your website. I've also suggested that we're currently in a window of opportunity for casual videography.

After all, there was a time when really poorly made websites were acceptable to most people. This is no longer true. Your amateur website (if that's what you have) now makes people feel less trusting of your business. And there was a time when mechanical-sounding midi files were acceptable to people on the internet. This is also no longer true.

There must have been a time when poorly-written stuff was widely acceptable, but no one now living can remember those days.

Still, I think people are still pretty accepting of amateurish video, so you might as well go ahead and put some on your website while you still can. By next year, your visitors will expect quality.

So let's say that you want to add video to your website. What software or hardware do you need?

At the lowest end of the spectrum, you can film with your phone and upload it directly to your blog, or to YouTube and then embed it.

However, video editing software is readily available. It's good to be able to add titles, soundtracks, and still images to your videos. So it's worth considering a bit of software if you plan to make much video.

If you use a PC, you probably have the Windows Movie Maker. Here's how to use it:

• Open the program.
• Import pictures and videos from your computer or your camera. This can be a lengthy process. The pictures and videos will show up on your screen.
  
• Drag the images from the screen to the Storyboard.
• You can apply effects and add transitions. You can add music, too. Watch out about copyright on the music, and don't get too carried away with effects and transitions. People may be tolerant of bad video, but there are limits.
  
• Click the button to publish your movie. It takes a couple of minutes.

You can see an example below. I put it together in just about ten minutes.




My favorite movie-making software is Corel Video Studio 2010. Like Windows Movie Maker, this program lets you use both still photos and videos in the same movie. The process is about the same, too. However, you have a lot more control over the content, and more choices when it comes to editing. Not so many fancy effects, but those are often the irritating part of amateur video, so it may be just as well.

Since you have more control, the Corel product is also harder to use, or at least has a longer learning curve. However, there's lots of online support, and the program isn't difficult by any means. It'll upload automatically to Facebook, YouTube, etc. and save in multiple formats.

Here's a very similar movie made with Video Studio:



Video Studio costs about $100, and Movie Maker probably came with your computer. If you want to take a step up from those choices, you should probably go ahead and choose Adobe Premier.

Before deciding which software to use, think about your future plans. I think we can assume that the public tolerance for poor quality in video won't last. You should probably either plan to budget for a pro for next year's videos (so don't spend much now), or to learn to do it well yourself (so spring for the software and get to work learning the skills you need).

Writing for the Web

I'm working right now on an enormous content update the Kennedy Center is doing for its educational site. One of the main things we writers on the project are doing is making the content suited to the way people read online.

It's not the same as the way people read print.

Above, you can see the way people read books -- they settle back in comfort, intending to read for an extended period of time. Even if they have several books on hand, they usually plan to read one for quite a while before shifting to another.

People reading online, as you can see below, approach the words differently, at least at first.



It's usual for people reading at a computer to keep their hands on the mouse or keyboard most of the time. They begin by making a quick decision about whether to stay and read, or to go elsewhere. If they scroll, it may be part of the process of looking over the resource to decide whether it's useful. The young man in the video scrolled swiftly to the bottom of the page and back up, far too fast to read all the content; the young woman never scrolled at all.

The first seconds of interaction with the screen are just about deciding where to go. Only once that decision is made will visitors actually read your page.

This means that your homepage must, within seconds, let your visitor see that it's worth reading.

• It can't look like an ad.
• It can't require a lot of commitment -- like signing in -- before showing some good stuff.
• It can't be a dense block of text that requires reading before deciding to stay. It has to be possible to get an idea of the value by scanning.
  

How can you make your homepage accessible to web surfers?

• Avoid large blocks of text.
• Use headings that give clues to the content.
• Use bulleted lists
• Make sure that the spacing makes scanning easy.
• Add images to help clarify the point or captivate the visitor.
• Put longer content in a place where people expect to read -- your blog, FAQs, pages people click to when they choose to get more information.
• Don't expect people to scroll before deciding to stay.
• Use a consistent format to help people find what they're looking for quickly.
  

Along with the big project, I'm also working with a client who is in the process of rewriting the homepages for a couple of his sites. The same changes that the Kennedy Center needs, this client also needs.

Look at your site. Can your quick visitors enjoy it, or do they need some cushions and a cup of tea first?

Photos for Your Website

We've talked about whether to use stock photos or to use your own images. Say you want to create your own images, how can you go about it?

First decision: should you hire a photographer, or do it yourself? Assuming that you are not yourself a skilled photographer, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:

• How important is quality? If this is the photo of your building which will provide the centerpiece of your web design and indeed of all your graphics from now on, then hire a photographer. If it's one of the hundreds of images you need every year for your blog, then you might want to do it yourself.
  
• What post-production options do you have? If you're a wizard with Photoshop, you have more flexibility in choosing photos than you would if your skill extended no further than clicking the "autofix" button on your computer's built-in photo editing program. If your photos have to go onto the screen just as they are, then you need better pictures to begin with.
  
• Are you a good judge of quality in photos? We say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," but research has shown that visual artists across cultures are generally in agreement on what makes a good picture. Non-artists, on the other hand, have widely varying judgments. Just as some of us can tell whether an instrument is in tune and some cannot, some of us can tell whether a picture is good or not. Find the person in your organization who can tell -- if there isn't such a person, hire someone.

If you're game to try it yourself, you don't have to have an expensive camera, but there is a difference in results from one camera to another. The photo of Josepha doing the photo shoot above was taken with a Kodak EasyShare, a good basic digital camera. The photo she took, below, was taken with a Nikon CoolPix, also a good basic camera.




In addition to the difference in the cameras, there's also a difference in skill and composition. Do a little honest evaluation of your abilities, and plan out your shots to make the best use of your skills and resources.

Did I say "plan"? Yes. We were taking pictures of a party for a client's blog, and we got some nice shots during the actual party. However, we also took lots of shots beforehand, and then the next day we reconstructed the scene in daylight to get the shots we wanted, but which hadn't come out as well as we wanted. It's worth taking the time to do this.

My dad was a professional photographer, and his advice was always to take lots of pictures. The professional photographer, he said, was the one who took three rolls of film to get three great pictures. We don't use film nowadays, but it still makes sense to take lots of shots. Your chances of having great pictures increase when you do that.

Diary of a Website: Launch Day

GraysLland Acres, Steve and Myra Grayson's Oklahoma farm, now has its own website.

Oh, Rosie has some things to check off her list, and Shan hasn't quite pushed the button yet, but by the time you read this, the site will probably be live.

Launch Day is always exciting for all of us. But, like a wedding day, it's not the end, even if it is the day you bring out the champagne. We now will submit the site to the appropriate search engines and directories and tell everyone we know about it.

You don't have to do this, of course. Search engines will notice you eventually. We just don't like to wait for eventually. But we recently saw a quote for "submitting to 200 major search engines" with a price point in the thousands of dollars.

Over 70% of all U.S. searchers use Google. Bing is becoming more popular, especially among the tech crowd, and it recently hit the 10% mark. Yahoo and a bunch of other little search engines divvy up the remaining share.

Do the math, and you'll see that there aren't 200 search engines worth submitting to, let alone paying all that for. Check out "When Your New Site Launches" for the URLs of the big three, plus DMOZ, which is important for other reasons.

Josepha's going to do a linkbuilding campaign for this baby to get it off to a good start. Go over and check out all the cute pictures of llamas and goats!

Telling Your Friends

I wrote the other day about communicating about a website while it's in progress. I made some light remark about how emails back and forth can get confusing.

In conversation among the team working on the GraysLlland Acres website, it struck us that I might have been understating the case.

Looking back over the past month, not particularly among ourselves but including all the teams we work with, plus the classes I teach which communicate largely via email, we were able to come up with multiple examples of problems:

• lost emails
• overlooked emails
• unanswered emails
  
• files which people thought were attached, but which weren't
• files which were attached but couldn't be opened for various reasons
• files which were attached and opened but then went astray and had to be sent again
• files people thought they'd copied someone on, but hadn't
• emails people thought they were merely being copied on and therefore ignored
• emails people copied someone on unintentionally
• emails people copied someone on unnecessarily
• emails people failed to copy someone on
• emails that were superseded by later emails that were forgotten
• emails that people thought were superseded, but actually weren't
• emails that were passed along, but which were superseded by emails that weren't passed along
  

There were probably more, but this is enough.

Tom suggested Basecamp and told us how great it was. Last week, software designer Kuty Shalev had also raved about Basecamp, and on his recommendation I'd read their book, which seemed sensible and honest. We're getting Basecamp.

Now, it's not that we didn't know of the existence of Basecamp. I've written about it before, in fact. However, that didn't cause us to take action. Recommendations from our friends and colleagues did.

It doesn't really matter that it's Basecamp we heard about. It could have been a new laundry detergent. The fact is, we take our friends' recommendations more seriously than we do ads.

How can we get people to recommend our products to their friends? I read an article recently by the people at Fog Creek Software that detailed all the clever marketing efforts they'd made in this direction, all the special offers they'd given to affiliate marketers and all the attempts they'd made to get those all-important personal recommendations.

Their conclusion? Making their software better was what did it.

That's why people trust their friends' recommendations, after all. We're sure that our friends aren't recommending things because someone paid them to do so. We trust them. That trust spills over to the product they recommend -- but it can't be bought.

Do a good job. Be seen doing a good job. That's what it takes.

Maybe Your Website Doesn't Need a Redesign

I've written about a lot of redesigns here. Often, someone comes to me with a website that isn't performing well, and it's clear that there are usability issues, major design issues, obsolete coding, or other issues that mean that a complete redesign is the best option.

Not always.

Appsolute Media's Kosher Cookbook for the iPhone had a website that didn't have the allure their app deserves. You can see, looking at the "before" picture below, that it had no clear call to action, and in fact that it was hard to tell what they were selling. In tests, visitors were confused and didn't explore the site.



The "after" shot at the top of the page is the same design, and uses the same basic navigation, but it's enormously more effective. The change was in the content.

I rewrote their main points in a way more suited to the web, we changed out the images for some that made the nature of the product clearer, and it's a complete transformation -- with content changes only.

When this works, it's an economical approach -- a few hours instead of a dozen or more. If you're saving up for a redesign, consider whether a content-only makeover might do the trick.

Diary of a Website: Communicating About Your Website

We're getting to the last stages before launch with the new site for GraysLland Acres llama and goat farm, so there are last-minute things that need doing: captions for the photos, final decisions about information architecture, little changes to the text. I send the analytics code to Tom and he sends the files to Shan.

Even after launch, there are often little things that need to be discussed or changed.

So how do you communicate about them?

I'm not talking here about the kind of language to use. I've written about that before (links at the bottom of this post), but today I'm just talking about the logistics. We have so many options, from Adobe Share to sitting around a laptop at the coffee shop, that it can be hard to know what will work best.

Here are some things to consider:

• Who's involved? While I like email, emailing back and forth among a group of people can become complex and confusing. If you have several people involved in the decision making, consider getting everyone together in one physical location, or with a program like GoToMeeting, so that everyone can see the screen and hear everything at once.
• Where are you? First, where are you geographically, because if you're in much different time zones, that may limit your methods. But there's also the question of where you are relative to the various communication media. Since I work at a computer most of the time, I prefer email, but let's just try a quick experiment. Complete the following sentence: "My email...

* rings when it reaches my phone, and I check it as soon as it's convenient for me.
* flashes silently on my screen, and I see whether it's important -- if I'm not in the middle of coding or something, or if I'm not in a meeting as I so often am.
* goes to one of my many inboxes, and waits till I get around to checking that particular account.
* chirps when it hits my inbox, and I look at it right away.

If some of the people you're communicating with would answer this question differently from you, then email might not work for all of you. I know that texting works best for some of the people I work with, while Twitter is best for others. Find out before getting cross about people not answering you.

• What do you like best? If you're the client, this is relevant. The phone is never my first choice for communication, but I use it with clients who prefer that. I've even had clients who liked to come and physically hang out with me at my desk, and I'll do that, too. I had a client once who wrote letters. If your writer or designer naturally goes with IM but you hate it, speak up. We have so many options nowadays that you can't expect anyone to guess your preference if you don't express it.

Other relevant posts:

• "Freelance Communication"
  
• "Giving Feedback That Gets Results"

Diary of a Website: Decisions

One of the most exciting points in the website building process for me is the moment when we see the first mockup of the design. Here, Tom Hapgood has taken the elegant logo Jay Jaro made, the content I wrote, the photos the client sent, and input from conversations with the client, and come up with a marvelously elegant take on ungulate farming.

Looking at pictures of windmills and goats and seeing in them a sophisticated color scheme of sage, white, and champagne shades requires artistic talent. Playing textures off against one another in this way takes skill.

But after inspiration comes decision making. So Tom sent over initial mockups to get input on the navigation.


You can see here two possible approaches to the navigation for this site: the classic approach above and the more subtle one below.


Much as I like the subtle one, much as Tom values the clean look of the plain white background in it, we just had to go with the clearer navigation in the first one. Tom assured me that he knew I'd say that.

Sometimes these initial decisions are completely internal -- me figuring out how much of what the client said can go on the page and how much has to move to the blog. Sometimes they're entirely up to the client -- the logo, in this case, was Myra's choice among three options, with her own touches. Sometimes they require collaboration and discussion.

Attention to detail at each point results in an excellent final product.

It's a Small World

We've been talking lately about local search results. Since we have a global clientele, do we care about and should we work on local search? More importantly, should we do that for our clients? Some have a brick and mortar business with largely local customers, but many sell to national or international audiences. For our own company, we can take a "why not?" attitude toward local search, but with our clients, we want to make sure they get the best ROI.

When is local SEO/ SEM going to give you the most bang for your buck? Consider these factors:

• Collateral benefits. I've written before about the SEO advantages of local search even for companies that don't rely on local custom. These advantages have been increased by Google Place Pages, new micropages based on the Google Local Business Center. You can't edit these pages yourself, but you can furnish info at the Local Business Center, from which Google will compile your Place Page.
• Local fans. Even if you don't rely on local customers, they may be the ones who'll make the effort to write about you at their blogs, post reviews for you, and otherwise spread the word, because they know you. Or, even if they don't know you, because you're home folks, so they want to support you. Why miss out on that by focusing on your citizen of the world identity to the exclusion of local search?
• Local identity. Do you want to be associated with your physical location? I have to admit that there are people who live in my area who worry about our very-rural stereotype and don't want to fess up to where they live. If you feel this way, you might want to avoid local search simply for that reason. If your skin care products company is in Pittsburgh but you want people to think you're in Paris, then you can't use local search.

On Hiring at oDesk

I told you that I do some work through oDesk. I have some wonderful long-term clients there, it's the easiest way for overseas customers to pay me, and back when I used to have slow spells, it was a good place to go and quickly find some cool assignment to keep me busy. Nowadays, I still work through oDesk when I'm invited to participate in something fun, and I certainly recommend it to other freelance tech workers.

I also hire people at oDesk sometimes, and I recommended that to people, too. I live in an area with very little unemployment, none at all among tech workers, and it's never easy to find local people for jobs. So you'd think that when, in a group of people moaning about the difficulty of finding good help, I mention oDesk, there'd be general rejoicing.

In fact, there can sometimes be trepidation.

Worries about quality control or the time involved in overseeing the work are usually at the top of the list. I understand that. My own hiring experience at oDesk, until recently, was limited to inviting people I knew (folks I'd worked with on various projects) to apply for a job which we'd already discussed.

But then I needed a video intro for a new website. Jay Jaro made me a terrific logo and we wanted it developed into a brief introduction which could be used on a series of videos. I asked around locally (okay, I begged people to fit it in) without success. My usual guy kindly explained to me that it wouldn't be worth opening the software for my little job.

I understand. But oDesk has hundreds of thousands of workers, and someone, I felt sure, would have the skills and the willingness to open that software and create an intro for me.

My concern was that I'd get hundreds of unqualified applicants I'd have to sift through while my own work languished. No such thing. I had 11 applicants, three of whom were impressively qualified. Their time estimates for the job ranged from a couple of hours to two weeks. Their hourly rates ranged from $3.00 an hour (and I guess if you're charging three bucks an hour you have to spend two weeks on a job to make it worthwhile) to $78.00 an hour -- still very reasonable. I interviewed one person, Chad Taber of MediaHappens, and he did the job for me in 40 minutes on the very day I hired him. It was not exactly what we had envisioned, but was in fact much better, because I'm rotten at envisioning graphic stuff. You can see it at the top of the page here.

From my experience as a buyer at oDesk, I have advice for those who are considering going that route. Since I'm a provider at oDesk as well, I've seen lots of hirings, so I think I've got enough experience to make my advice useful.

• Tell all the details of the job. People can't tell whether they're qualified or not if they can't tell what you need. Specify the software or language you want used if you know that, say how open you are to creativity on the part of the professional you plan to hire, link to examples of the kind of thing you want done. Don't be shy.
• Give specific criteria. We mentioned that we would only consider people who provided the two things we asked for: links to similar projects they'd done, and an estimate of the time it would require. I figure someone who doesn't follow directions when applying for a job is going to have trouble with directions on the job itself,and I also wanted to make sure I could communicate with the artist.
  
• If you insist on a particular nationality, announce that you plan to hire whoever gives you the lowest bid, caution people not to apply unless they're hardworking, or otherwise demonstrate that you are an unappealing buyer, then you deserve what you get.

Interestingly enough, Chad lives about four hours from me. I didn't know that when I hired him, of course -- there's always a point where you get around to sharing time zones and that's when it came up -- but I found it ironic that I hired a neighbor at the global workplace.

Diary of a Website: Waiting

Myra of GraysLland Acres is in one of the more difficult stages of her website's creation.

She's waiting.

She sent her information and photos in, the logo and the content have been approved and sent off to the designer, and now it's just suspense till the design concepts are ready for approval. Then, of course, there's more suspense while the site is built. After that, there's launch, always exciting, and further suspense waiting for the traffic and rankings to rise or settle or stabilize.

This isn't difficult for those of us who are working on it, because -- well, we're working on it, aren't we? There's no suspense for us.

For the client, it can be rough. One client said it's like becoming a father -- your wife is doing all the work, but the father is left to pace around and wait, so time stretches out. Shan says, "Fortunately clients have plenty of other things to do while we are doing stuff for them." For Myra, these things include goats, kids, and llamas, so we figure she's still having fun in spite of the suspense.

Doing Social Media Right

Momma Dean's is a soul food restaurant in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the town where I live. They make fried chicken like your grandma did, and you can have fried okra and gravy with it, too. Go in and sit down and someone will come and sit with you and find out which of the dishes they're making that day is your favorite, and whether you want banana pudding or peach cobbler with it.

They have no website, not because they don't think they need one but because they haven't -- with a few tables in a little building they rent from the University -- been able to scrape together the funds for one yet. They have big plans, though, not only to get online but to sell their barbecue sauce and eventually to franchise their food. They also plan to provide food for the homeless -- one meal given away for every meal they sell.

In order to get from here to there, Momma Dean's decided to start with a social media campaign. They have a secret weapon in Chance Chapman, their business manager, who has 1200 Facebook friends and is not afraid to use them.

Chance set up a Facebook page for Momma Dean's and started getting the word out. He told all his Facebook friends about Momma Dean's, set up events that essentially just announce when it's time to get your food for tailgating, and sent his updates automatically to Twitter, too.

That's where I learned about Momma Dean's. There's a joke saying that Twitter is where everyone announces what they're having for lunch. The kernel of truth in it is that a lot of us who work at computers all day do take a break and mosey over to Twitter when it gets close to lunch time. Momma Dean is over there every day telling us they have catfish frying or pie in the oven. I told them they were making me hungry and they responded instantly -- "thanks. Come on down. We can even box it up for you to take home if you'd like." It felt like a real invitation.

Chance only posts once or twice a day, but he answers everyone who interacts with Momma Dean's right away, conducting the entire social media campaign by phone. He feels that immediate response is the most important element. "It has to be, 'I'm talkin' to you,'" he assures me.

Momma Dean's now has 637 fans at Facebook. They've begun adding YouTube videos (shot with Chance's phone) as well. And business has picked up considerably.

What Do Your Want Your Visitors to Do?

We've talked before about the importance of the call to action. You need to let your visitor know -- as instantly as possible -- what you offer and how they can get it.

Sometimes it's not that simple.

This is a work-in-progress page for the hot iPhone app Kosher Cookbook. Let's acknowledge right away that this version of the page doesn't really have that clear call to action. It will. The primary action the visitor is invited to take at this page is simple: buy a $4.99 iPhone app.

This is the only kosher cookbook available for the iPhone, and I think we all know that iPhones are the place where our recipes belong nowadays. If you're a kosher cook, then as soon as you see the tasty pictures, you're going to push the button and download the app.

There's more to it than that.

Appsolute Media, developers of this particular electronic cookbook, plan to make more cookbooks in future. Their Cookshelf app is an elegant platform for the purpose, and they have big plans. So they want people not only to download this cookbook, but to come back in the future and see the new ones.

This website must therefore not just allow people to buy the item, but must also foster a sense of community and bring people back.

Sometimes, you need to look behind the immediate sale, toward your company's future plans. How does your website reflect your company's long-term strategy?

Responding to Objections at Your Website

The British comedy The IT Crowd has a running joke in which the IT guys have rigged up a recording to answer their phone: "IT...... Have you tried turning it off and one again? .... And you're sure it's plugged in? .... You're welcome."

Every business has conversations like this. Often, they're the objections people have when they're almost ready to buy your goods or services.

If you're talking face to face with a prospective client or customer, you can deal with those concerns directly. If they're at your website, you have a bit of a dilemma. You don't want to put negative ideas in people's heads if they haven't already thought of them. But you also don't want people to think of those things and leave because you didn't reassure them.

You can and should deal with predictable objections, and you can do it without raising red flags for your visitors.

• Make it positive. Sweetique makes chocolate-filled eggshells. We found that U.S. consumers worry about salmonella when they think of eggshells, so we focus at the website on the very hygienic European production facility.
• Make it practical. Appsolute Media's iPhone cookbook is immediately appealing to younger consumers, but we found that women in their 30s and over -- a major demographic for cookbooks -- worried about damaging their iPhones if they took them into the kitchen. The solution? Blog posts about cell phone stands for the kitchen, and photos and videos of people safely using iPhone cookbooks in the kitchen.
• Make it fun. GraysLland Acres llama farm knows that there is a perception that llamas are mean and that they spit. A blog post "Do LLamas Spit?" with funny stories on the subject deals with the objection in an entertaining and enlightening way.
  

A Cartoon Guide to the Web Design Process

We're working on a website right now which we expect to launch this month. Actually, we're working on more than one, but the owner of one of these sites has graciously allowed us to use hers as an example.

We'll go into more detail as we progress, but first I'd like to share with you a Cartoon Guide to the overall process of getting a web site online. If you've never done this before, you can get a good idea of how it works from this.


First, the client, Myra, realized that her business needed a web site. She tried out a few DIY possibilities, but in the end she contacted us to get her dreams to become a reality.



Project Manager Rosie discovered what Myra wanted and needed, did a bit of research, contacted a selection of possible crew members, and wrote up a proposal. The proposal went into details about how much the website would cost and how long it would take, and also listed the things Myra would need to provide for us before we could begin.



Copywriter Rebecca talked with Myra, did some research to make sure that the site will be easy for Myra's customers to find online, figured out the information architecture, and then wrote up the text for the website.



Meanwhile, Graphic Artist Jay created a logo. Jay designed three completely different looks, Myra chose one, and then Jay made a few changes to get the logo looking exactly the way Myra wanted it.



Web Designer Tom took the logo and the content once both were approved, along with a couple of technical requests from the webmaster, and he's building a website for Myra. She'll get plenty of chances to make sure it looks the way she wants, and Rebecca and Tom will work together to make sure the design and content are just right for search engines and for humans.



Webmaster Shan registered the domain name and will get the site up online once it's finished. He hosts the site, so Myra knows who to go to if she needs anything.



Once the site is live, Linkbuilder Josepha will develop a strategy to get the new site visible on the web, using a variety of white-hat methods to gain links. She'll also help Myra plan her social media involvement.

Rosie will make sure that everything is working right, and check back in with Myra to see that all her needs have been met and everything is going well. She'll also make sure that all the different companies and individuals are paid and properly credited for their work.

Your web site might have more or fewer people, or a different workflow, but this is basically how it's done.

Copyright Issues at Your Website

There are changes taking place in the realm of intellectual property. From the sheer ease of copying to the attitude shift among users who've grown up with seemingly unlimited amounts of information available to them entirely for free, current circumstances encourage sharing and viral spread of information, not to mention sheer piracy. It can be difficult for even the most honest among us to be completely certain of the source and provenance of things available on the web.

And yet, intellectual property may now represent a significant part of a company's value. The stakes are higher, and some industries are willing to go much further in pursuit of information pirates than they ever were in the past.

How can you protect yourself and avoid crossing the line? Ask yourself these questions about the intellectual property you're planning to use:

• Is it public or private? If the information is freely available to anyone whether you share it or not, it's public. For example, Santa's physical address is not widely known, but I found it on a public website, and so can you. There's nothing private about it (he lives in Finland, and he answers his mail, too). If you got the information from a document emailed to you -- or, worse yet, to someone else -- that's not public.
  
• Did you take it or leave it there? Sometimes clients ask how to get permission to link to a site. This is completely unnecessary. When you link to a site, you've taken nothing. When you save that site's images and upload them to your own site, you're stealing.
  
• Did you pay for it? If you pay for a stock photo, stock music clip, or other piece of intellectual property, then you can use it according to the terms under which you bought it. If you didn't read the terms, you're still responsible for following those rules. For example, most stock photos can only be live in one place at one time; you can't use them at five different websites.
  
• Do you plan to make money with it? Fair use is a very important concept. You can use information pretty freely for study or research, though the rules are not so clearly defined that they don't involve some subjectivity. However, you can assume that you can't sell someone else's work. You can't sell a list of links to other people's knitting patterns just because you compiled that list. You can't use someone else's musical composition on your website just because you went to the trouble to upload it. You can't profit from someone else's work in a way that takes potential income from them.

I had kind of an interesting case once. I reviewed a local restaurant on a blog I was paid to write. I was paid to do this by quite a large company, and when they decided to end their paid blogging program, they invited the bloggers to continue their blogs, but I didn't do so. The review of the restaurant therefore was removed from cyberspace.

I met it again a couple of months later as content for the homepage of the restaurant's new website.

Since this was work-for-hire, the words didn't belong to me. Since the website no longer existed, use of the words did the large company no harm.

Still, since I am a web content writer, the argument could be made that the restaurant's use of stuff I'd written deprived me of the payment I would have gotten if they had hired me to write their website instead of just doing a cut and paste. I'm not litigious, so I didn't even think of suing them, but I bet I could have won.

Crewing Up Fast

We crew up for a new project every few weeks here. Mostly it's a matter of emails or tweets of invitation. Sometimes we need somebody new, though, and then I can feel for the frustration of clients who try to put together their own teams.

If nothing else, the time involved in tracking down team members can be enormous -- more so if you don't really know where to look.

Determine what team members you need before you go looking. I do websites with anywhere from two to seven people, so there isn't a general checklist. List the tasks and then find the people to do the jobs.

Here's how to speed it up:

• First, think about what you can do in-house -- really. I'm not against in-house work, by any means. I've been the in-house person before. But I've also seen a lot of projects grind to a halt while the in-house people try to do jobs for which they really don't have the time or the skill. However, sometimes you can get a lot of your jobs done in-house. I do a lot of my own photography and video work when the highest quality isn't needed, and I have very good speakers and musicians on hand. You may have workers with talents you never realized they had. Just be realistic.
• Second, look at what can be bought as stock. You can buy a simple template, a good photograph, or a loop of background music. Sometimes you can even get these things for free. Sometimes, of course, buying these things doesn't solve you problem. If it takes you hours to sort through the choices, and then you don't know what to do with the file you've bought, you haven't saved anything over hiring a pro.
  
• Third, look for a professional. Once you've narrowed your list down and determined who you really need to hire, you'll need to find people to do the work. If having a local person is important to you, type "photographer, Yourtown" into your favorite search engine. If you're flexible about location, try oDesk. I recently found a terrific video guy there -- he happens to live about four hours from me, so it may be ironic that I found him at oDesk, the global marketplace. However, the process was simple and successful. I think the key to speedy success with either approach is to know what you want and communicate it clearly.

Once you've got a crew you're happy with, keep in touch so you can find them all again when you need them.

A few previous posts to check out:
"Does Your Website Need a Team?"
"Where Should You Get Photos for Your Website?"
Finding a Web Designer

Short and Snappy Web Content

Sometimes your web page is intended to be read. Your blog posts, your articles, your lesson plans, the novel you're posting one chapter at a time to share with your writing group -- you're writing these for people who are intentionally taking time to read the stuff you've written.

Your homepage? Maybe not. People reaching your website are often making a quick visit to find specific data, or to decide whether to look further at your site or to click straight back to the search engine results.

Often, site owners need to shorten the text on their homepage. What's the best way to do this?

• Don't be too fond of your words. This is really the first step. If you labor over your writing like a poet, you may find it very hard to cut things out. You may need professional help -- not a counselor, but a writer. We professionals are immune to the charms of your words, and can be ruthless.
  
• Remove words that don't add information. Go right through and delete all words like "literally" and "believe it or not" and "needless to say." Anything that doesn't actually tell your reader something can go. Likewise, all the words that say you're the best, the premier, the most important -- people take it with a grain of salt when you say those things about yourself anyway. You can probably remove all words like "unique," too. If you're unique, talented, and so on, readers will notice that for themselves.
• Remove things that don't contribute to your goal. For your homepage, the goal is to appeal to the search engines and entice the humans to stay. Any word that doesn't move you closer to that goal (and isn't required for a grammatical sentence) can be removed.
  
• Consider collapsing sentences. When you have sentences saying that your product is A, and that your product is B, and that your product does C, you can often just say that your product is an A, B C-doer. Look how much space you save!
• Divide and conquer. While it's essential that your homepage should tell visitors what you offer and how they can get it, you'll want them to move further into your site. As long as it's very clear where they can find more information, most people don't mind clicking to another page for further details. Many people, in fact, would rather click than scroll.

One of the side effects of shortening your content may very well be that you end up with stronger sentences and livelier text, as well as something that works better from the standpoint of design. Try it and see.