Web Strategy and Development Blog

3 tools to improve your writing

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How do you give your writing power and meaning?

With readability.

Your writing carries more impact if more people can understand it.

Using Microsoft Word’s spelling and grammar checker isn’t enough.

These online tools can improve the readability of your writing.

Hemingway App

Screen shot of HemingwayApp.com website
Hemingway App shows you words and sentences to fix for better writing.

This app was a hit at our recent digital training session. Count me as a fan, too.

I love Hemingway App’s simplicity. Visit the website, copy/paste your text and have your writing evaluated. Boom.

No downloads, sign-ups or registration. Only action. Perfect.

Hemingway App catches complicated sentences and words, adverbs and passive voice. You receive a readability grade (aim for the 5th-8th grade range). Gauge your progress as you go.

Hemingway App’s full desktop version ($19.99) goes more in-depth. You’ll have options like publishing, exporting and offline use.

But for most, the no-frills free version offers plenty.

Yoast SEO

Screenshot of Yoast SEO readability analysis.
Yoast SEO evaluates your content’s readability and SEO. Select the “Keyword” tab for SEO.

If you have a Missouri State blog, you use WordPress.com. This handy plug-in gives you the SEO benefits that Hemingway App does not.

Yoast SEO previews your content on a Google search result. It helps you strengthen a targeted keyword.

An analysis spots SEO issues to improve or address. Yoast SEO is a great way to improve your blog’s Google search rankings.

Yoast SEO improves readability as well. Use the “eye” icon to identify which specific areas are strong or need improvement.

You’ll find some readability measures that aren’t available in Hemingway App:

Like Hemingway App, Yoast SEO offers a premium version. We recommend trying the free version, first.

Story Toolz: Readability

Screen shot of Story Toolz: Readability results.
Check the structure and formatting of your writing with Story Toolz: Readability analysis.

Crunch your numbers, err, writing with this tool.

Copy and paste your content into Story Toolz’ text box. Select the “Check Readability” button and look through the results.

It rates your content in four areas: reading levels, sentence information, word usage and sentence beginnings.

Story Toolz: Readability isn’t as interactive as Hemingway App or Yoast SEO. But it’s helpful if you want to get into the specifics of your writing.

By the way, Hemingway App rated this blog post at a 6th grade reading level. That’s your sweet spot for readability.

Recap: Making Your Statement in a Digital World, Spring 2018

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Kevin Agee and Kai Raymer recently presented Making Your Statement in a Digital World. It was a comprehensive training session for Missouri State website, blog and social media managers.

Access the presentations

We presented the Feb. 23 training session in four parts.

Key takeaways

Brand storytelling

  • Having a brand is a great start. But you need more than that. You need stories to execute it.
  • The problem is most higher ed stories aren’t stories at all, such as …
    • “Your professors will really get to know you.”
    • “You’ll get hands-on experience.”
    • “This is where you’ll discover your calling.”
  • A great Missouri State story does three things:
    • Makes an emotional and rational connection.
    • Builds meaningful relationships.
    • Is authentic.
  • Lead with the most interesting message. Not the most important.
  • Your voice is unique. Say it that way.

Readability

  • For better readability, use concise text and a scannable layout. Keep your message short and give readers an easy way to find the information they want.
  • Newspapers aim for a 7th-grade reading level. So should you. Approximately 70 percent of people read at an intermediate (6th-8th grade) level.
  • Make sure your content looks good on mobile. Current and future students are researching your department/program on their phones.
  • Improve your content’s readability with tools like Hemingway App and Yoast SEO.
  • Better readability gives your message more impact. You’ll improve audience reach/growth, audience action and efficiency (save $$$).

Social media

  • Use Instagram as a window into your department or organization. Strong, high-quality visuals are a must. Tell your story through pictures and videos and allow users to derive meaning.
  • Twitter is best used for conversation, not promotion. Don’t be afraid to let go, have fun, and be transparent with your audience. Customer service happens here.
  • Don’t believe what you’ve heard: Facebook still reigns supreme. Share news, human interest stories and your successes. Deal with negativity in a transparent fashion.
  • Worry not about your number of followers. Want to increase your base? Be good. Deliver interesting content people will want to consume.
  • Aim for the heart with all of your platforms. Be the account that makes people feel like they’ve picked something special to them.

Accessibility

  • Accessibility helps people with disabilities or limited abilities better use the web.
  • There are legal, ethical and beneficial reasons to maintain an accessible website. Accessibility makes your website better.
  • Three staples of accessibility: alt text, headings and descriptive links.
    • Alt text is the text equivalent of a photo. Imagine you were describing the image to someone via text message or phone call.
    • Headings are vital for screen readers and give all visitors an easy outline of your website.
    • Descriptive links explain what the link offers. You shouldn’t have to read surrounding content for context. Don’t write “click here” for your links.
  • Use tools like WAVE and Web Press’ accessibility checker. They’ll find accessibility issues on your website.
  • Follow our ongoing Accessibility blog series for the latest tips and strategies.

Tips for applying the new blog theme to your site

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Blogs are a beautiful way to share timely and engaging stories about your organization. The new theme offers ways you can improve your posts, design your site and track stories.

  1. The blog’s features provide a creative way to tell a dynamic story which is easy to read.
  2. Plugins and widgets offer customization of your site and social sharing.
  3. Your team can access real time analytics to help improve your digital strategy.

With the new blog theme, you can enhance your posts and utilize additional features like plugins, syndication and design for improved quality.

Post features

All university blogs are using the Magazine Pro theme. It provides us with a lot of great features you can use to make your story more engaging.

Structuring the blog

The use of headings allows readers to easily scan related content to find relevant information. Use headings and sub-headings by clicking the format button at the top of the blog text.

image of dropdown from the format button at the top of the blog to the headings sub-menu
Using the format tool allows all your blog posts to maintain the same structure and flow.

Another feature Amanda Isaacs, new media specialist intern for the office of web and new media, uses in her posts is block quotes.

“Block quotes grabs the reader’s attention and it draws them in to read the story,” Isaacs said.

image of adding block quotes by clicking the double quotes in the menu bar at top of the blog
Highlighting interesting or persuasive content with the new blog theme helps readers digest the information.

The new theme also provides a variety of ways you can display and upload photos. Adding photography of the subject helps the audience connect with your story.

The blog theme allows for a titled mosaic such as the one above or you can also use slideshows, circle cuts and other formats to layout photos for your story.

Photography is extremely important to storytelling today.

Another improvement of this blog theme is the feature image. It sets at the top of your post, giving readers a reason to scroll down. It’s also used on social platforms as the main photo and shows up on your blog feed. You can access it on the right sidebar below the tags and categories field.

image of featured image upload with upload files highlighted
When uploading your feature image, the best practice is to use a 1920 x 1080 crop for your photos. Also, be sure to add alt-text for screen readers.

These are some of the structural pieces you’ll want to use to make your blogs more dynamic and easier for the audience to read.

Setup, plugins and syndication

Probably one of the most exciting aspects of the Magazine Pro theme is setting up your homepage and pulling in related content. To access the setup page, go to the left sidebar and select appearance -> widgets. This section allows you to add a calendar widget, subscription box, social feed and select which categories you want featured on the homepage.

 

Now that your blog is setup, let’s use some added features to enhance your writing.

The most with Yoast

Yoast is a plugin that appears at the bottom of your text box within a blog post. It offers help with readability, social sharing cards and more.

As you write, you can access your readability score on the right sidebar and in the bottom window of Yoast. By clicking on each eyeball, the plugin shows you what to improve.

image of Yoast plugin
The Yoast plugin shows what areas of the copy and structure need improvement.
image of highlighted text by Yoast plugin
The highlighted text shows what needs improvement when you select one of the eyeballs in the plugin.

Now that your post is well organized and easy to read, you’ll want people to see it on social media. Use the social sharing cards in Yoast to setup a headline, introductory text and image for all posts on Facebook and Twitter. This way, no matter who shares it, the post has the right message and photo.

image of yoast plugin for social cards
We encourage you to keep the headline the same, but change up your message in the description. You can use different photos for each platform.

The best part is you can toggle over to Twitter and do the same. Now you have a great blog post and strong social cards to encourage people to read the post.

Syndicate relevant content

The CyberSyn plugin allows you to pull in specific posts from other university blogs, like the news blog. This is really helpful for organizations with smaller staffs because it offers more content without much work.

Installation

  1. Upload ‘cybersyn’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

Apply the plugin

  1. Go to “CyberSyn (in the left sidebar) -> RSS/Atom Syndicator”.
  2. Find the “New Feed URL:” copy/paste your RSS feed URL there (e.g.: http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_latest.rss) and click “Syndicate”. You should see the feed settings menu.
  3. Select a “Feed title:” Headlines – News, for example.
  4. Set the necessary options.
    1. We recommend picking one category for it to feed into. Like university news feeds into the headline category.
    2. For the “attribute all posts to the following user” section, select university communications in this scenario. See image below.
    3. In the “Post thumbnail” section, select generate from media attachment thumbnail.
    4. The rest of the plugin options are up to your discretion. Feel free to play with this.
  5. Scroll down the page and click “Syndicate This Feed.” Now the feed is added to CyberSyn.
  6. Enable the check box on the left of its name and click “Pull selected feeds now.” And now you have new posts pulling into your blog.

For more help with developing your syndication, access the ‘Experts’ file on customizing blog feeds.

image of cybersyn plugin
Cybercyn allows you to customize posts and choose when it is displayed on your page.

Measure your success

First your organization needs to decide what analytics you’ll want to capture. We can measure just about everything when it comes to digital content, from what device was used to access the information, to which platform it was found. Here is how WordPress can help you measure the outcomes of your blog posts.

  • Using the Jetpack plugin in the top left sidebar, select the drop down “Site Stats.”
  • Here you’ll see several content areas with the overall reach of all the posts in the top bar graph.
  • In the “Top Posts & Pages” tab click on the smaller bar graph on the far right to view a breakdown of specific blog posts.
    • The summarize link in the top right corner offers a breakdown of top performing posts by week, month, quarter, year and all time.
  • You can also view where people got your blog from on the “Referres” tab on the left side.
image of site stats
Use these different views to help you setup your measurements.

The new blog theme provides a variety of ways you can display content, organize your story and keep track of performance.

Recap: Making Your Statement in a Digital World – Sept. 29, 2017

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We recently presented Making Your Statement in a Digital World, a comprehensive training session for Missouri State website, blog and social media managers.

Still have questions or need help?

We’re hosting two post-training open labs, to answer your questions and provide support. Please join us. No preregistration is required.

Key details

  • Dates: Friday, Oct. 27 and Friday, Nov. 10
  • Time: 2-4 p.m., both dates
  • Location: Meyer Library 106 Cheek Hall 100
  • About: Both sessions will be held in conjunction with the Web Help Desk open lab.

Access the presentations

The Sept. 29 training session was presented in four parts.

wideshot of people walking on campus

Key takeaways

Readability

  • Use concise text and a scannable layout to make your content more readable. Put the most important information at the top.
  • Always ask, “how does this look on mobile?” Current and future students are researching your department/program on their phones.
  • Write less, people will read more. People will read more of a 300-word article than they will a 600-word article.
  • No one wants to put extra effort into reading. Seventy percent of people read at an intermediate (middle school) level. Newspapers aim for a 7th grade reading level.
  • Headings, bulleted lists and visual elements. Use them.
  • The YoastSEO plugin for WordPress is a great tool for improving your writing.
  • Improving your content readability has many benefits, including audience reach and audience action.

Blogging

  • Does your blog tell a story? Who is speaking in your story and how are you conveying that meaning? It’s important to start in the action and develop some sort of conflict that is resolved.
  • Be sure you are defining your audience; alumni, faculty, staff, and/or students?
  • Utilize the formatting strategies from readability while adding photography and pull quotes.
  • Update your blog with engaging stories at least once a month, if not more.

Students taking photo with Boomer

Accessibility

  • Accessibility means people with disabilities can use and navigate your website.
  • There are federal guidelines for accessibility. MSU, which receives federal funding, falls under WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
  • Think of your website as a public space (i.e. a courthouse or city hall). Make accommodations for all.
  • Accessibility overlaps with readability and best practices for websites. Having an accessible website means your website is better overall.
  • Alt text, headings and descriptive links are crucial for accessibility. Our Accessibility blog series also covers these topics, and more.

Social media and visual platforms

  • Share human – don’t be afraid to act like a human and interact with your audience one-on-one.
  • Set up a Facebook business account where people can find your contact information. Be prepared to respond to their questions.
  • Think visual – when on location for an event share raw photos, but when promoting the event utilize photo services to help boost your presence.
  • Video is king across all platforms. Be sure to add captioning for accessibility and to increase views.
  • Measure your success based off the goals your team sets: more followers, increased engagement, more views, etc. Keep a log of your analytics so you can compare data from previous years.

Students in computer lab