The idea is a hammer to the head.   Of course, why hadn't I thought of that, especially since I long ago wrote that the Web is closer to direct mail than to display advertising.   The writer, Steve Jackson, pretested Web copy for eight months in the same way he used to pretest direct mail.  He claims he achieved similar conversion rates to direct mail.  Further, he says if one tests a Web site and its design systematically, one can predict what the response rate to the site will be. 

He makes the following points that any PR practitioner writing for the Web should know. 

• The right headlines can improve the click-through of a page by up to 35%.

• Scan-proofing the text greatly improves the chances of click-through in your pages. By writing for a reader who scans rather than reads and making the key words appear in bold, we found a similar increase in response to the page. There was, again, a more-than 30% improvement as a result of scan-proofing the text.

• Active voice (and referring to the reader with “you” and “your”) dramatically improves the rate of readership and conversion. As many as four times as many people respond to text that says exactly the same thing but is written in a different way.

While these are obvious suggestions, Jackson says he can provide quantitative proof of their effectiveness.  It's hard to beat that.

Read the entire article.  It's worth your while, especially if you write for the Web.

Volokh found a United Nations report that attempts to forecast the earth's population in the year 2300.  He was bemused by it and asked if, even with perfect information for the time, whether people in 1700 could forecast the earth's population in 2000.  The answer is obvious.  The people of 1700 had no idea of the technological progress in nearly every aspect of  human living that has occurred over the last 300 years.  Hence, they could not predict with any degree of accuracy what the world population would be.  He ends by noting that the United Nations is engaged in what "seems like an odd sort of hubris."

I wouldn't bring this up except as a PR person who has worked in technology for more than 20 years, I have been given to making predictions.  Fortunately, I have restricted most of my predictions to five years out.  Even then, my success has been mixed.  I can say the major outlines of most predictions have come true, but that wasn't such great foresight.  It was equivalent to watching storm clouds move in and predicting rain by morning. 

But the point here is that as PR people we are often called upon to help clients make predictions for the coming year, for example -- a favorite exercise that happens about now.  We should advise clients to avoid predictions or to give them with great caution.  We really don't know what the future will bring, even if the outlines are clear. Details may shift wildly.  In most ways, predictions are phony and faulty, especially when we are held to what we said. That is partly why companies are backing away from giving guidance to analysts.  They don't want to be burned at an investor's stake should they miss a quarterly estimate by a penny a share.

Prediction is "an odd sort of hubris."  And yes, I am guilty of it.
 

12/10

The story was an Associated Press dispatch reporting on the health of the music industry.  It was headlined, "Industry to improve as digital music, portability take hold."    Howzat?  Weren't these the technologies that only a few weeks ago were going to kill the music industry?

Sure enough, the report from the Music 2.0 Conference in Universal City, CA, was almost jaunty.  Music sales would take off in 2004 as music downloading rises.  Huh?  Wasn't it music downloading that all this summer was the subject of lawsuits against 13-year-old girls?

The story proceeds to relate that the music industry is now happy with the Internet because after two years of trying, the industry has developed downloading services that seem to work well.  Wait?  Wasn't it Steve Jobs of Apple who launched iTunes and proved the concept?

So the story goes in a complete revision of recent history, as far as the music business is concerned.  I've never seen such a PR turnabout in all my years. 

The problem with this new love of the Internet being professed by music companies with their own downloading services is they expect fans to believe them.  I'm not sure fans are in such a forgiving mood. 

Anyway, someone should write a song about this sudden change in history.  Call it "1984."

12/09

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/advancedsearch.html

That's apparently 15 million articles from Sept. 1851 through Dec. 1995.  More recent clips are on the regular search page.  The Times allows one to search and to buy a pdf version of an article with photos that accompanied it or charts and graphs.  The cost is $2.95 per article.

I don't know about you, but I'm excited.  It is now possible to get into the history of a company or of an issue and not be stopped by an artificial limit in the past because computer tapes did not exist before then.  I can think of clients in our office who could benefit from this kind of in-depth research now.  It is also a great way to settle arguments over what happened way back when. 

Granted that a newspaper is a first draft of history and as a result, it is often wrong, but on the other hand, a first draft often carries details that haven't survived and that can add dimension to a story. 

Do yourself a favor. Check out the site and run a few searches.  It should be worth your while.
 

12/08

There is much made of a lack of civility in today's political discourse.  Excesses are almost as bad as when Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians squared off during Washington's administration.  Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry even resorted to a four-letter word apparently to describe the Bush administration.   There are many self-professed "Bush-haters" who take satisfaction in detesting the man.  And there are efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to gerrymander Congressional districts to shut the other party out.

In at least one state, California, hostility is so great between Democrats and Republicans that a leading Republican threatened to unseat any other Republican who worked with a Democrat in the State Assembly. 

The problem with incivility is that governance becomes impossible.  There is rarely a case in which one party or the other so dominates a legislative body that one party can pass laws without help from the other.   When there is no cooperation, legislation ceases.  This might be good given the cynicism American voters have about political process and politicians. On the other hand, there are challenges that need legislative solutions, and we are not getting laws in a "Mexican standoff."

The role of PR in times of incivility is to insist on facts and cooperation, to find a body of evidence on which some might cooperate and then to persuade the recalcitrant to drop objections and work together.   This is the leadership role of Presidents and governors.  When parties will not stop  fighting, Presidents and governors go directly to constituents to make a case.  When successful, politicians cooperate or go home after the next election.  Something like this might have to happen in the US to get things restarted. 

It is the finest use of PR in the service of leadership.  Great presidents do it.  Not so great presidents, like Jimmy Carter, create a travesty.  I can't wait to see how the stalemate will break in the US, but I fear I will wait a long time.