Do your eyes ever glaze over online?
Have you often tied yourself up in verbiage?
Grappled with the jargon of a policy document?
Longed for the right word to truly make an impact?
Weighed yourself and your users down with dull detail?
Then this course is for you. It will teach you how to communicate more effectively with your online community. It will also enable you to write in a way that empowers you and your co-workers so that your organisation cuts through clearly and succeeds in its purpose.
'If you can talk, you can write' so you don't need to have any previous experience of writing. You'll get more from the course though if you're familiar with using the web and working in windows.
outcomes:By the end of the course you will have tasted the techniques to:
- be able to write punchy and persuasive web text
- develop techniques to structure your web writing wisely
- vary your writing style for different genres and formats
- simplify content without losing substance
- reversion policy documents undother data into effective web formats
- develop multimedia narrative features using image, audio and text
- edit text with arresting titles, striking subheads and short sentences
- understand your audience and tailor your writing accordingly
programme:- writing for the web - the fundamentals
- overview of what the experts have to say
- review of good digital writing based on your needs
- what's your story and how will you tell it?
- Building up the audience
- who are your users?
- what do they want?
- How can you interact with them?
- Regular updates
- structuring content on the web
- Heads, subheads, standfirsts and caption-writing
- Summaries - content that sticks
- Writing for different levels of interest
- Less is more - edit, edit, edit
- Be human and take pleasure as you tailor your prose
speaker:Maud Hand , Multimedia producer, trainer and writer
Multimedia producer, trainer and writer providing training in writing for the web.
Maud Hand is a multi-media producer, trainer and writer with over 17 years experience in production, project management and rich media content for national broadcasters. These include the BBC, Channel 4 and RTÉ as well as various independent operations in the UK and Ireland from where she currently runs her multimedia production and training consultancy. She manages The Play's The Thing, an online radio drama repository for Channel 4. She was the founding editor of the Northern Ireland hub of Channel 4's IDEASFACTORY, a flagship interactive talent initiative for the broadcast media industries. (Jan 2004 - Jan 2007). She managed and edited its re-launch to 4Talent Northern Ireland and produced a set of web films on The Belfast Masterclass Series 2006 in broadcast media which she designed and delivered for Channel 4 and Belfast City Council. She managed the workshop delivery of ORIGINATION:INSITE, an innovative cultural website project in partnership with national museums of England commissioned by Culture Online, DCMS. She has trained staff and contributed online features to the Association of Progressive Communications, Women Connect and GreenNet, based on personal stories of activists in the field. She also writes for fRoots magazine. She originates and produces documentaries for Channel 4 Radio and BBC Network Radio and has edited websites for BBC including World on Your Street. Maud has co-authored training manuals in radio production for The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland and is a visiting lecturer in radio practice, web journalism and broadcast media entrepreneurship at The University of Westminster, South Bank University, the University of Ulster and the National University of Ireland (Galway). She is a consultant course designer and trainer for the London College of Communication, University of the Arts. For TFPL her public access and tailor made 'writing for the web' courses have been very popular with the private and public sector alike. She has a Masters in Education from Trinity College, Dublin and in an earlier life, she worked as a teacher in the West of Ireland and London.
