Luckily there is a huge range of free, online tools to help make it easier to share information and collaborate online. Here’s a good list of some useful services

File transfer and collaboration

Wetransfer.com is a simple file transfer site that lets you very easily send large files across the internet. You upload the file, type the email address you want to send it to, your email address and a message and click Transfer. Files are available to the recipient for two weeks. You can also get your own Wetransfer URL, through which files are available for four weeks. www.wetransfer.com/

YouSendIt is another file transfer site for large files. It also offers synched cloud-based storage (2GB for free, more if you pay). It also has a sign online feature, so you can sign documents using a keyboard, mouse or mobile touch screen. www.yousendit.com/

Dropbox is a file-sharing and synching site, which offers 2GB storage for free, and paid subscriptions up to 100GB. Dropbox also keeps a one-month history of your work as part of its free subscription. www.dropbox.com

Google docs are web-based documents that are stored on the cloud and can be shared with other users. Google docs can be subscribed to as part of Google Apps, which includes Gmail accounts, Google Calendar, and Google Sites. Sites lets you create a secure website with controlled access where you can store and share documents. docs.google.com

Web conference tools

There are numerous tools specifically designed for web-based business meetings. These tools allow you to share your screen, so your participants can see on their screen what you see on yours. You can share spreadsheets and other documents, images and video, and demonstrate software programmes.

For lists of web-conferencing services, see web conferencing tools and more web conferencing tools.

Online whiteboards

Online whiteboards are real-time collaborative tools where all users can write and, in many cases, draw on their own screen and it is immediately visible and usable to other users on their screens.  Check  out Dabbleboard www.dabbleboard.com/ and Scribblar www.scribblar.com/

Every day Paper.li monitors your feeds and from them builds a newspaper-like page of clearly laid out articles with headlines, photos and links, and sends you the latest edition. (You can also manually add any web content you like to a newspaper.)

If you like the content you receive, simply push a button and send it to your social media followers; or if you are confident your feeds will always provide relevant information, you can set the paper to automatically send itself out every day. People can also subscribe to your newspaper.

There are hundreds of thousands of papers around the world.

The paper.li site has a community area with tips and hints on how to use the service.

Details, details

I have been experimenting with the service with two papers I set up:

• NZ Film Daily
• Kiwi Music Alert

The content for each paper is created from automatic RSS feeds from Google Alerts I set up. (Google Alerts is a super useful and easy-to-use tool to very easily monitor the internet for any information you want). Paper.li then reads the RSS feeds and turns them into my two newspapers.

It’s all done without any ongoing input from me and is generally very accurate in creating newspapers relevant to the topics — NZ film and music — I set up.   

You may also have noticed that Google searches have local searches showing up more often.

So what does this all mean if you want to communicate via your website with local people?

The first step is to have locality-based information in your page copy, links and titles.

Use the names of your city and even your suburb on your pages, add your address and Google maps; and discuss local and community events in your blog posts and titles, says United States web marketer John Jantsch.

Read more from Jantsch about how to do local SEO.

This story about Auckland cafe Cigana using an online app to entice people in to buy coffee is an interesting read. 

Linking to local business can also help, as can signing up on local directories. New Zealand ones include: Finda (www.finda.co.nz), Gopher (www.gopher.co.nz), NZPages (www.nzpages.co.nz), and NZ directory (www.nzdirectory.co.nz).

There are NZ tools to help you be visible locally. NZ Post, for example, has www.localist.co.nz which provides information and reviews on local businesses and allows individuals and businesses to post information about their communities.

There are tools to help people to communicate online with each other about their experiences with  local businesses. Yellow earlier this year launched a local search site, Yellow Local (www.yellowlocal.co.nz), where users can write reviews and share local news and events on a suburb by suburb level. It currently seems to be open only for the Auckland region.

The aim of www.technical-writer.co.nz is just to give our technical writing services their own identity. They’re a very important part of what we do but very different from our PR activities.

If you’re in Wellington (or anywhere in New Zealand, for that matter), check out our new website, or even visit our original technical writing web page.

Case studies are typically a written article about work you have done for your clients — the input you provided and the results your work got in providing your clients with benefits they did not have before.

Case studies are great to help:

• highlight your skills and your ability to deliver successful solutions to your clients.
• build your credibility by showing the organisations who have hired you or bought your products.
• build strong relations with the case study clients by giving them free publicity and promoting their work.

What we do when we write case studies

We communicate and highlight three things:

• your credibility

We show who you have worked with and what they gained from that experience.

• your capability

We show the challenges you overcame and the solutions you implemented to achieve that.

• the benefits gained from using your products or services

We highlight the outcomes delivered by your work and what your clients achieved that was not previously possible for them.

Case study copywriting skills

It’s all about:

• asking the right questions to get the information we need
• breaking-down complex information into easy-to-understand concepts
• writing in simple and easy-to-understand language
• using narrative techniques to turn business experiences into powerful stories
• using images and a sharp, clean layout to enhance the text.

I’ve just come across this great tool to measure and rank the readability of your web content: The Readability Test tool.

I found it in this very useful article on best practice tips for improving web content.  I recommend this article as a good start to anyone wondering how to tidy up their website.

And how did this site rank?! The tool said it should be easily understood by 15 to 16 year olds. Not quite our target market! … but we think we need to get it down even lower to around the 12-13 years age  group. We want it to be quickly and very easily understood by very busy people.

Here’s a page of links to tons of high-quality papers and essays about how users read on the Web and how authors should write their web pages.

Some high-level information about web writing is here.

But chief reporters and news editors can be a fickle and gruff bunch especially with stories they see as ‘just a free ad’ or PR for your business.

So how do you get past the gatekeepers with ‘news’ stories that are essentially PR or advertising?

There is one method that works time and time again in New Zealand media … and that is to run a survey or ‘newsy’ competition where the public get involved, and then to run the results as new, must-have information.

Condoms and computers

Condom maker Durex is a master at this. The company regularly surveys their customers about attitudes to sex and then publishes the findings, and the media can’t get enough of it.

Likewise, a recent search for New Zealand’s oldest TV set was a thinly disguised promotion for the rollout of digital television.

Last week the New Zealand Herald ran a piece about a search to find Auckland’s worst office. Read a few lines in and you see it’s a Dell-sponsored competition.

It’s a puff piece that shouldn’t have gotten past the front door of the newspaper except for its prospect of a juicy follow-up exposing the best of the worst offices and its more subtly played focus on improving the economy in difficult times. It aims to showcase how “a second-rate information technology set-up can cause big delays for businesses and can harm productivity”.

This week they’ve also secured the promotion’s success by partnering with the newspaper to run the competition, and the Herald has an online promotion for the Dell promotion under the top-of-page banner ‘Business Editor’s Picks’.

One could argue with the ethics of an editor’s news banner highlighting an advertising feature but from Dell’s point-of-view the transformation from advertising fluff to real news story is now complete!

Stories on a plate

One reason perhaps this manufactured news works is that it hands media the story on a plate.

Newsrooms have become so streamlined that resources can be thin on the ground, and these surveys and competitions provide everything pre-packaged — well-written, clearly communicated and ready to be broadcast or published.

Dell is playing the game cleverly.

They have got the announcement of their competition in to the newspaper, based around a news issue that concerns many people these days — a business activity that can harm the economy (with the added titillation of seeing people failing badly and being prepared to stand up and admit it!).

They’ll be able to highlight a few funny examples during the competition and then the grand winner will be announced in a fanfare as  Dell products are handed over to that backward office — and as Dell positions itself as helping business and so wanting to help the national economy. And that’s not a bad aim at all.

How publicity becomes news

So clever publicity to sell product is aligned with the national interest … and this becomes news. Or in the case of Durex, it’s a bit more simple. Sex sells, for sure, but dress people’s bedroom habits up in the guise of research … and it becomes news.

Every organisation has stories that can be similarly packaged and marketed. It just takes some imagination, sound planning, integration with the overall aims of your organisation and people who understand how the media works.

If you’ve ever wondered what PR people do to earn their money, the Dell and Durex stories above are good examples of this type of PR activity.

Let’s recap.

• Backing Black, the Telecom-backed, All Blacks supporters network, launched a campaign whereby fans could pledge support by promising to abstain from sex for the duration for the Rugby World Cup.
• In return they would get a pledge band (rubber ring) to signify their commitment.

 
While justification for World Cup abstinence wasn’t forthcoming, one can only assume participants were supposed to be developing empathy for the All Blacks in a World Cup love lockdown.

However, surely that was based on a false premise. There’s never been any suggestion the national team would be called on to abstain. (And was the unfortunate connection that rubber rings have with farmers docking their sheep ever considered?!)

It’s more likely that they’ll be asked to lay off the alcohol, but with the World Cup being sponsored by Heineken, a temperance campaign would be a definite no-no.

It seems that even before the public weighed in with their universal distain for abstinence the rot was setting in.

Telecom had originally wanted a senior All Black or Coach Graham Henry to front things. They reportedly all had better things to do, and possibly knew to take part may well be endorsement suicide. It was left to ex-All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick to take one for the team.

A video showing a very wooden Fitzy driving about in a fist-shaped golf cart was the final nail in the coffin for the campaign.

The New Zealand public and the world media attacked.

Telecom pulled Abstain for the Game and has been back-peddling ever since, saying the tongue-in-cheek campaign was misunderstood and blaming the seeming failure on media for leaks. It also admitted surveys showed staff were split 50/50 over the campaign.

So is there a lesson?

While rugby is a religion in New Zealand, are faith-based abstinence programmes with promise keeper rings best left to fundamentalist Christians? Are Kiwis to prudish to mix sex and rugby? No. The real lessons are much simpler:

• A campaign should have a clearly defined focus
• Listen to your staff
• If people are quickly distancing themselves, be nimble enough to accurately judge the mood
• If you have to make a tactical withdrawal, take it on the chin.

New research suggests that the less is more adage may not necessarily apply and letting your followers into a few secrets may be the way to get better buy-in or uptake. A study out of San Diego’s University of California suggests that spoilers and hidden hints in storylines don’t detract from the audience experience.

Researchers gave study groups two versions of three types of stories – ironic-twist, mystery and literary — by authors such as John Updike, Roald Dahl and Agatha Christie. One version contained spoilers, the other didn’t.

Readers of all three story types preferred spoiled versions of the stories to the unspoiled originals.

“I was quite surprised by the results,” researcher Nicholas Christenfeld told news agency Reuters.

“Like most people, I don’t turn to the end of a book to see who dies or what happens.”

Christenfeld suggests that while plotlines are important the study subjects were drawn to the work more by the writing than they were the plot.

After all, he says people often reread books or view movies more than once, even though they know the ending.

Consumers like control

The study might have implications for marketers and PR campaigns.

Cryptic campaigns may be clever, but ultimately consumers want to know where things are headed and they want the information presented in a usable fashion.

Movie trailers are a good example; they’re notorious for all but giving the game away. Far from being put off, audiences are spurred on by the sneak-peeks.

Movie catchphrases often creep into daily usage following repeated viewing of a trailer, rather than from a one-off sitting in the cinema.

Peter Jackson isn’t losing the plot

Directors such as Peter Jackson drip feed tidbits and spoilers to build up hype and create a sense that he and the audience are part of the same community.

Have a look at his Facepage page where, despite The Hobbit not being due for release for more than a year, Sir Peter has already put up three videos describing his work on that film and showing plenty of the sets and a fair of bit action. Full images of all 13 dwarves have also been released to media around the world.

However, not all is out in the open. He gives the audience a taste of what they want, but holds enough back so they’re still hungry for the final product.