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Crystal Paradis
Strategic Communications and Community Engagement
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Marketing

content managementCopywritingMarketing

Does Your Site’s Navigation Menu Tell Your Story? How Menu Copy Creates Clarity (or should, anyway)

by Crystal Paradis July 4, 2018
written by Crystal Paradis

If all of the page copy on your website disappeared, leaving only your menu navigation items, would people still get a good idea of what you do? How you name and structure your menu items (“nav” items, for those in the web biz) should tell your story.

Depending on what type of website you have, the primary goal may differ. Whatever the primary goal of your site is should be reflected in the taxonomy (or naming convention), order and heirarchy of your primary navigation and menu items.

The Menu Basics: From About to Contact

The most common menu items include such staples as About, Contact, Team/Who We Are, Resources, etc. — and for a company business page which is mostly what we used to refer to as a “brochure” site, these may still be the best menu items. If your site exists mostly for people to get to know you on their way to becoming a customer, client or fan, this may be enough.

Menu Taxonomy: How to Write Easily Navigated Menu Items

Be consistent.

Reading across your menu bar should make sense, and should not change tenses.

Going for simplicity? Try “Team,” “Services,” “About” and “Contact.”

Want to get a little more friendly and conversational about introducing yourself? Your team page could be called “Who We Are,” and your services page “What We Do.” Your About page can become “Why We Do It” or “How We Do It” but is probably best left as “About” unless your About page specifically outlines your “why” or “how” or is more about your history (“How We Started” or “Origin Story”).

Starting with verbs that a site visitor can take? If your team page is named “Meet Our Team,” then your services page should be called “Work With Us.”

Pro tip: while it may be tempting to get cute or creative in your page names, straightforward is the best way to write your menu items. Trust me, I love a great pun, but potentially confusing a visitor who came to your footwear site with “A-Boot!” will likely backfire when, instead of the boots they were looking for, they get “gotcha-ed” by your hilarious about page. There are plenty of opportunities to show off your personality in the site copy, if you so wish. The navigation menus are neither the time nor the place for such shenanigans!

Effective Ecommerce Menus

Ecommerce sites should make one thing really easy: shopping (commerce!). This doesn’t mean that one menu item should say “Shop” — rather, your primary nav menu on an ecommerce site should be the top 3-5 categories that people are searching for when visiting your site. Some retailers split these top items by gender or department, others by item type, genre or attribute (size/color, etc.). The way you decide to categorize your top menu categories will vary depending on the types of products you’re selling, and how your best customers typically shop.

The Best Blog Menus

If your site is primarily a blog, your most popular categories should make up the majority of your primary menu. If your blog is super populated (like, say, HuffPo), you’ll probably need a mega-menu or at least a robust drop-down menu, for the many subcategories in your blog topic hierarchy.

These are just a few top considerations for a menu that clearly communicates your core business services to your next potential client. Next time: taxonomy for your blog categories!

 

July 4, 2018
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Community Engagementcontent managementCopywritingMarketing

Why SEO is really community engagement optimization

by Crystal Paradis October 16, 2017
written by Crystal Paradis

SEO isn’t gross. Its reputation has suffered from years of being associated with hacky marketing pitches, but it is an invaluable skill set to draw upon when engaging any community online. SEO best practices these days simply mean writing, organizing and attributing content online that is easily indexed by search engines, so that it can be found by your target audience — the community you’re looking to engage as a community organizer.

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October 16, 2017
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content managementFeaturedMarketingValues-Centric Work

WordPress Content Management for Socially-Responsible Businesses

by Crystal Paradis October 8, 2017
written by Crystal Paradis

If you’re a business or nonprofit with a social mission, and you’re looking for some help managing your online presence, we just might be a perfect match.

You might need help with content management if…

  • If you have a website but people who visit it can never figure out how to find what they’re looking for
  • If *you* can never find what you need on your own website
  • If you know what you want your website to say, but don’t have time or skills to make the edits yourself
  • You want to figure out how to make it easier for website visitors to take an action (share a post, contact you, buy something, book a consultation)
  • You want social media to play nice with your website
  • You want to come up higher on the search engine / Google results pages (SEO Copywriting can help with that, too)

What is content management?

Content management is managing (editing, publishing, updating, rearranging, freshening up) your content (blog posts, web pages, photos, videos, infographics, memes, sidebars, menu items, forms, etc.) to help you reach more people more effectively online.

Content management is not a thing that non-techie folks are necessarily able to learn intuitively — and even if you are able to add or edit blog posts, you may not know enough about user experience (UX) or search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. That’s where a content manager — like me — comes in.

Okay, what’s WordPress content management?

“WordPress content management” simply means editing, updating and maintaining your website on the WordPress platform. Not sure if your website is on WordPress already? Well, since WordPress is still the most widely-used content management system (or CMS) out there, chances are good that your website is on it.

Why WordPress content management for socially-responsible businesses?

I care about helping teams that are working to create better communities.

Many socially-responsible businesses and organizations have service providing as a top priority, but their digital /online presence might be taking a back seat.

I’ve written before about how search engine optimization is community engagement optimization.  If people can’t find you online, they can’t advance your mission.

A robust communications strategy is really important. And, a fair amount of communications strategy can be demonstrated with a really clear website content strategy — and that includes everything from menu structure to clear and compelling calls-to-action.

Therefore, providing WordPress content management for socially-responsible businesses is critical to building better communities.

So, should we work together?

If you’ve ever worked with me before, you know about my commitment to working with socially-responsible, values-aligned organizations and businesses — aka values-centric work. If you’ve seen my Services page, you’ve seen the list of the types of organizations and businesses I will and won’t work with. Socially responsible is a category that encompasses many attributes that my favorite clients share.

So, if you’re part of a socially-responsible business or organization in need of some WordPress content management assistance, I’d love to talk. Since I work freelance, I can typically offer rates lower than agencies — and if all you need is content management (organization, re-organization or optimization of your existing site), you likely don’t need a pricey agency anyway.

Drop me a line, and I’d be happy to give you a free assessment, take a walk outside with you or grab a beverage and talk about your communications and marketing goals and whether I’d be a good fit to help you achieve them.

October 8, 2017
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MarketingTech & Productivity

How Your Slide Deck Can Make Event Marketing Easy

by Crystal Paradis January 31, 2016
written by Crystal Paradis

Got a speaking gig coming up and wondering why on earth it’s taking you so long to get your slide deck ready? Well, don’t worry, all that effort you’re putting in can totally pay off, and beyond just the event itself.

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January 31, 2016
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Marketing

“Marketing” is Not a Dirty Word

by Crystal Paradis September 7, 2015
written by Crystal Paradis

You know what word people hate? “Marketing.” As a descriptor, it’s often used pejoratively—as in, “This has a marketing feel to it.” And really great marketing? It’s not “marketing” anymore—suddenly it’s “creative genius” or “authentic” or “transparent.”

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September 7, 2015
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Marketing

A Beginner’s Guide to Podcasts

by Crystal Paradis August 13, 2014
written by Crystal Paradis
What the heck is a podcast — and should I be listening to them?

I freaking love podcasts.

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August 13, 2014
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MarketingProductivity

Optimizing Social Media + Other Marketing Advice

by Crystal Paradis June 11, 2014
written by Crystal Paradis

Thanks to all who came out for my “Optimizing Social Media” marketing presentation at AlphaLoft‘s Portsmouth Startup Meetup.

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June 11, 2014
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MarketingProductivity

A Pixelated Peek at a Marketer’s Evernote To-Do List

by Crystal Paradis April 25, 2014
written by Crystal Paradis

I felt so proud of checking off the last priority thing on my Evernote daily to-do list yesterday that I had to screencap it to preserve the productivity goodness for all time. While I was at it, I thought I’d share my Evernote to-do list setup and how I use it in my daily process as someone who works in marketing.

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April 25, 2014
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MarketingProductivity

How To Copy an Evernote Note Link in Less Than 1 Second—Quick Evernote Tip/Shortcut

by Crystal Paradis December 15, 2013
written by Crystal Paradis

With this simple shortcut, you can instantaneously copy an Evernote note link to your clipboard, ready to paste into an email, Facebook post, or tweet.

Ready?

⌘ + /


That’s it! While in the note you want to share—recipe, article, to-do list, collection of documents/attachments, photos, etc., simply hit “⌘ + /” and VOILA! “Note URL copied!” The note link will be copied to your keyboard, ready to “⌘ + Tab” to your previous window and “⌘ + V” paste into a message of your choice.
Pasted a few recent recommendation links into a note for a pal,
and with the stroke of two keys, ta-da: note URL copied!
Pretty much the fastest, most useful Evernote shortcut ever.
December 15, 2013
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MarketingProductivity

Better Than Bookmarks: Using EverClip to Save Web Pages & Articles in Evernote

by Crystal Paradis December 13, 2013
written by Crystal Paradis

Evernote Web Clipper saves content better than bookmarks.

Is your browser packed with bookmarks to read later? Do you use a service like Pocket (formerly Read it Later) or Bitly as a way to save links to visit later? Have you ever pinned on Pinterest or posted a link on Facebook as a reminder to yourSELF to read something later? It’s okay, we’ve all been there—but there’s a better way to save articles and websites of interest: Web Clipper for Evernote.

Evernote Web Clipper is available for all major browsers (and Internet Explorer (*zing!*)).

The Web Clipper is my new favorite Evernote application/extension. The control over how much of a web page it clips, the ability to direct it to a specific notebook or tag it right there while you’re saving the web page is invaluable. And of course, in Evernote, once it’s in, it’ll never take up future space so you can save it forever. You know, in case you suddenly want to tell someone about something you recently read. Whip out your phone and type in a keyword or tag and BOOM, derailed conversation thread saved!

Let’s answer a few questions…

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December 13, 2013
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About Crystal

As a writer and organizer with a background in digital marketing, event organizing and community engagement, I help values-aligned individuals and organizations improve their message, online presence and reach.

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