Linknote — — 170 words

Culture — Digital — Web

Good writing and analytics don’t mix

If you want to be a good writer then you can’t worry about the numbers. The stats, the dashboards, the faves, likes, hearts and yes, even the claps, they all lead to madness and, worst of all in my opinion, bad writing.

Recently I have been thinking a bit about what stats trackers I should be running on my blog, particularly in light of GDPR. I currently run three, and I wonder if I should cut this back.

Robin Rendle’s blog post has got me wondering further if it’s just a bad idea to worry about — or even be aware of — how many people are reading.

It’s always tempting to look at the stats. But I also know that the most-viewed posts are not the highest quality ones. So perhaps it’s better to focus on improving something other than the numbers.

See also: Escaping Twitter’s self-consciousness machine, on what happens when you remove all metrics from the Twitter interface.

Article — — 1,572 words

Content design — Digital — User experience

Work:

Adapted from a post originally published on the University of Edinburgh Website and Communications blog. We have recently completed a six month collaboration with University Human Resources Services (UHRS) which has delivered a fledgling digital strategy, developed new content management processes and skills within their team, and rationalised priority areas of their website. Human Resources […]

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Business — Digital — User experience

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Adapted from a post originally published on the University of Edinburgh Website and Communications blog. When working with University Human Resources Services (UHRS) to help them develop a digital strategy, we took a bespoke approach to best meet the needs of their team. In most cases, we would kick off a project like this with […]

Article — — 1,640 words

Digital — User experience — Web

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Adapted from a post originally published on the University of St Andrews Digital Communications team blog. The University of St Andrews prototype homepage aimed at external audiences has been unveiled this week. It is the outcome of over a year of work. It has been an eventful year for the digital communications team. One year […]

Article — — 3,731 words

Business — Digital — Web

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