The group at the Carewords workshop in Southern California had a great idea for my blog. 

Similar to the show "What Not To Wear,"  this semi-regular feature will dissect a word found on ANR Web sites and offer more customer-centered and Web-friendly choices.

The first word of the series:

Residents

Now this is a fine word if you are an apartment manager, or you're talking about the band The Residents. 

But if you're talking about the people you serve . . . it's impersonal.

Better choices:  people, families, Californians . . .

The people of Yolo County

The families of Solano County

Serving Tuolumne County

Providing healthy choices for Californians

Practical, science-based advice for growers in Fresno County

Bringing practical advice to gardeners in Marin County

Last Friday I spent the day with some Master Gardeners conducting a Carewords workshop.  In these workshops we spend a lot of time reviewing existing Web sites and making recommendations. 

As the day unfolded I was reminded again of the most useful Web editing tool available to everyone:  the return key on your keyboard.

Just a half hour spent "chunking up" your current Web content will make it easier to read online.

It's easy to forget that writing for the Web is different from writing for print. Remeber that people don't read online - they scan.

Keep your paragraphs short.  For online reading, a one-sentence paragraph is fine.

White space is good.

So spend a half hour simply dividing your paragraphs into smaller chunks and you'll have instantly improved readability.

Next Friday, June 12, I'll be presenting a workshop on "Making Carewords Work for You" at the Victoria Gardens Cultural Center in Rancho Cucamonga.  This workshop was designed for Master Gardener content developers and web editors, but as a few spaces still remain, I'll open those up to others in the Division.

Last April, we surveyed our clientele to determine their web needs and preferences. This Carewords research revealed how our clientele use UCCE Web sites, the information they want, and what words on the Web page resonate with them.

By attending this workshop you will learn:

• Carewords results for your geographic area
• Words that resonate with your key audience and cross-over audiences
• We’ll individually analyze your current web content and suggest changes that you can make to create content with impact using the Carewords results.

Because of the hands-on nature of this workshop, registration is limited.  Only 4 spaces remain open, so don't delay. Lunch will be provided. Credit card payments and departmental charges will be accepted. The cost of this workshop is $15.00 - which covers lunch.

Participants should bring a laptop computer with wireless internet capability so we can roll up our sleeves and get to work!

Unfortunately, travel support for the workshop is not available.

This is an encore presentation of the December 2008 workshop held in Davis.

And hats off to our host - Jackie Brooks - with the Master Gardener program in San Bernadino County!

A couple of articles of note I thought I'd pass along:

First, Gerry McGovern has an interesting post this week about the relevancy of page views.  While I don't think any of our folks are engaged in this kind of metric abuse, it's a useful caution about reading too much into Web traffic statistics.

And there's an interesting article in today's New York Times about the hottest new job among the Twitterati (their word):  social media specialists also known as professional Twitterers (My word.  Is that a word?) to attract and engage younger customers.  Perhaps what's more interesting that this article is in the Style section, rather than the Business or Technology section.