Nowadays, most people use tools that take care of all that pesky HTML for them. Only problem is that, despite a decade plus of evolution, these WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors still don’t do a very good job. Working as I do with a number of organizations, it surprises me sometimes how little HTML some of the people who work daily on the Web know – and it shows in the lack of control they have when creating even simple layouts. When I look at the underlying code, it’s often a sloppy mess that reveals a telltale trail of many failed attempts to add a simple line break or modify a font.

If you want good results, you still need to know the code. Here are some tips to gain greater control over your Web-based content:

1. Never paste directly from word processing documents into a WYSIWYG editor. Your resulting code will be a nightmare that’s nearly impossible to read and modify. I believe many folks’ fear of HTML stems from having once looked at this type of intensive machine-built code! Instead, paste first into a plain text editor such as Notepad to clear the formatting (while you’re at it, search and replace any curly quotes, non-straight apostrophes, long dashes and compressed ellipses with their standard equivalents). Finally, cut and paste the raw text into your page editor and then add any formatting you need either using the WYSIWYG tools or, if you’re brave, directly with an HTML editor.
2. Review your code. Most WYSIWYG tools add unnecesary HTML. They may introduce incorrect font tags, add non-breaking spaces ( ) that can affect layout and create unhelpful ALT text (used to describe the content of an image). Learn your way around and fix any errors before they are published.
3. Learn some easy HTML. You don’t need to master stylesheets and scripting to build in HTML. Start with the basics: STRONG (bold), EM (italics), FONT (to control font selection, size and color), BR (line break), P (paragraph), A (anchor, which is how you make links) and IMG (for adding images). You’ll work your way up to master coder in no time. Note that this will NOT make you a professional developer; HTML is a simple markup language and NOT the same as writing software. But it’s a start, and can be a valuable job skill. More skills = more opportunities.
4. Use WYSIWYG strategically. Fancy HTML editors often provide good tools for complex tasks, such as table creation. You can build your table layout using a WYSIWYG editor and then switch to HTML to fine tune it, as needed.
5. Re-use, re-use, re-use. Once you have a piece of code that works, recycle elements of it. Save your favorite code snippets someplace handy (I use OneNote, but Notepad is fine too). And if you’re creating pages or HTML e-mails that are part of the same campaign and really need to be consistent, you should re-use the code (changing out images, links and copy where needed) rather than rebuild it from scratch. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a muddled mess that delivers a sloppy customer experience.

This led me down the path of webmastering for awhile before I settled in at Microsoft, where I paired my love of creating content with developing technology-based solutions. There I actually wrote and helped launch the first HTML newsletter on Microsoft.com and quickly became the go-to person for e-newsletters.

Since then, I’ve become passionate about community, and newsletters are still a great tool for this. Your e-mail content shouldn’t just be a blast out to customers with a call to action (though this is important too). The best e-mail newsletters draw members in and make them feel part of the community of people who interact with your site or product.

When I was at HealthTalk, one of my first tasks was to overhaul electronic communications. Up until then, newsletters had been sporadic and focused just on getting members to sign up for webcasts. Alas, many of the networks became dormant for months at a time, so my job was to develop a format that engaged members regardless of how often they had new programs available to them.

My solution, ultimately, was to begin drawing these members in with questions and topics and then sharing back their answers, as you can see in this example from the Rheumatoid Arthritis network :

HealthTalk newsletter

These stories really grabbed readers and made them want to be a part of the network, even during periods when there wasn’t much other new content for them. I also lobbied the producers and business development folks I worked with to develop new sources of content, and eventually convinced the company’s founder to pilot a blog despite a fair amount of internal resistance. The blog was so successful that shortly after I left, they launched phase 2 of my proposal and added member advocate blogs to each of the active networks.

For the Big Fish Games Atlantis gaming community, my focus was a little different. There already existed a real-time chat engine in all of the online games, and I managed a team of remote moderators who interacted daily with players to facilitate fun and resolve problems. I replaced the ad-only “newsletter” with a longer, content-heavy publication and launched the 5 Questions column to profile a different Big Fish Games employee each month. The goal was to open a window into how the people at the company were actively working to improve the community and provide hints and, where possible, announcements of upcoming games and features.

This just happens to be the one where I was the subject:

Big Fish Games online community newsletter

In a future post I’ll tackle headline copywriting, a task I performed daily for several years and have some helpful insights to share.