The Guide to Gaming With Your Kids

The Guide to Gaming With Your Kids is designed to help grown-ups who are not gamers learn enough to get started and bond with their kids over videogames. The piece starts with the benefits of gaming, shares some common lingo, examines all of the major gaming platforms, offers guidance for online safety and then suggests a few hot games that are family friendly (these were my choices, not any sponsor’s). I received a lot of positive feedback on this article (which turned into a slideshow). I really hope it helps a lot of parents find common ground with their kids and, potentially, enjoy games for themselves.

Hilarious Gifts for Male Friends and Coworkers

Hilarious Gifts for Male Friends and Coworkers is basically just a gift guide, but one that is intended more to provide laughs than actual guidance on presents to buy. Some of the items are exorbitantly priced, a few are really gross and I’ve had reports that a couple items are already sold out indefinitely. But, again, that’s not the point. Just knowing that these things exist was enough for me (well, except for the plush Portal turret – we really did buy one of those to guard the Christmas tree!). I basically scoured the Internet for products that made me laugh, and then wrote up descriptions that I hoped would extend the laughs even further. The assignment actually morphed from one that was a general guide to funny gifts for guys to one targeted specifically at coworkers, so I had to make a few edits to make it work. One of my favorites, the toilet mug, had to be altered most. My original caption was written from the point of view of a spouse or live-in mate, not a fellow employee:

Sure, this thing is pretty disgusting, especially when it’s filled with his favorite dark brown beverage. And, if you’re his significant other, he’ll definitely bring it out when your parents are in town. If you’re really lucky, he’ll delegate it to the bathroom and let the dog drink water out of it. (That never gets old!)

You’re right, there’s no really upside to this present after the initial peals of amusement wear off. You’ll have no other recourse but to destroy it and blame the dishwasher. Again.

It’s worth noting that both of these are slideshows, and both have lengthy intros and captions. I wrote as long as I felt was needed to tell each story – or in the case of the gift guide, make it entertaining. I typically write much shorter copy (headlines and captions, mostly) in my everyday work, but I left the topics dictate length here and made it modular enough that the editors could easily cut elements without damaging the whole if they felt it didn’t fit the space. I was actually surprised at how little changed from my final drafts.

I’ve been on a motorcycle a grand total of once in my life. I was 7 years old and living with relatives, including three uncles who were all Harley men. For some reason, one of them decided I needed to feel the power for myself. (I might have asked, I honestly don’t remember.) The daredevil of the group slapped his extremely oversized helmet on my head, suggested I put on shoes, and lifted me onto his hog. We circled the neighborhood a few times, popped a wheelie and then returned home, where I”m I promptly passed out on the lawn. That was the beginning and the end of my motorcycle adventure.

Fortunately, I found two women who were much more qualified to share what the view is really like from a bike: Kathy Gill and Tessa D’Uccelli Blu. Both women had astounding, emotional stories to tell. When it came time to write, I encountered a problem I haven’t had in a fairly long time – I had a difficult time cutting down the material. I would have loved to included every detail, every side journey, every tale these ladies told me, but I just didn’t have the space. It’s a good problem to have as a writer. It is also a difficult one.

What you will read online is a snapshot of each woman’s journey. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Read the full article.

I write so much about technology, I had forgotten how much fun it is to do a feature article!

• GAIN – improved nutrition through food fortification
• The GAVI Alliance – immunization
• The Global Fund - prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis
• PEPFAR - HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care
• USAID – promote global health

Jacqui did all but the GAIN article, but we wrote in the same voice and edited each other’s work. We have more work for The Gates Foundation in the pipeline.

The key to good headline writing is to have a clear call to action in mind, the more immediate the better! Then think about what the customer wants to get out of the transaction. This generally requires both research (I often spoke to key players to gain insight) and customer empathy (really get inside a particular audience’s head).

You may write a dozen headlines that you toss out before you hit that winning concept. It’s also important to track clickthrough data (and, if you can, end actions) to see what performs well and analyze why. This feeds a cycle that can really improve your headline writing over time, particularly if you’re addressing multiple audience segments – as I was here. Over time, I really learned what each segment responded to and used that to shape my headlines.

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.

Here is the first profile, which went live last month:

Grantee Profile: Rotary International 

Dave and I are working on several more right now, due to be posted in May or June.