Microcopy, UX writing & Content strategy: Facebook
UX writers uses the voice and personality of the company to digitally guide users through various actions on their site.
But what does a UX Writer or a Content Strategist actually do in a product team?
Their job is to identify users problems by working closely with Designers, UX Researchers, Developers, Data Scientists, Product Managers and anyone else that cares about the product and tie the all process together.
Good UX writing can make product teams work better,
Brilliant UX writing can lead humanity towards world peace.
You probably think I am joking right?
Check it out —
On the next article I am going to break down UX writing and content strategy techniques that an innovative company like Facbook uses, and what all of us can learn from it.
Facebook became an Experience driven company
Today, more than ever, companies are competing for their user’s attention, and the only way we can stand out for our audience is to deliver a valuable experience to them.
In order to do that we need to radically focus on who our customers are. The more we understand our costumers the better we’ll be able to craft an experience which will impact them.
Being an Experience driven company Is about thinking about the user first and building the complete experience according to his needs.
That’s why more and more experience driven companies such as Facebook are hiring UX oriented people, some of whom are creative writers.
Those writing teams are the ones that are responsible for the creation of clear and consistent experiences based on data, usability testing, design thinking and creative writing.
I wrote down a few note from what I learned as UX designer from Facebook and on this article, this are the results —
Facebook Understands their audience
According to Margot Merrill, one of Facebook’s Content Strategist team leaders, We need to Try to understand what people’s needs are. What are their pain points? Who are these people & what do they want?”
Consider 4 questions when trying to understand your audience:
- What do they want?
- What do they need?
- What are their questions?
- What are their concerns?
Only then we could actually give your user a tailor-made experience.
Facebook defines it Voice and Tone
At Facebook, UX writers and content strategists are responsible for creating experiences that are clear, consistent and compassionate.
According to Merrill, knowing your company’s voice is what needs the most emphasis. People respond and will be moved by a clear voice.
Let’s take as an example one of the most famous spies in the world, James Bond.
Even though played by different actors in different decades, in different movies.
Whether it’s on an iceberg or in the desert, the James bond character’s main attributes would always be full of charisma, action-driven, charming, shaken but not stirred.
The same goes with the brand’s voice.
So, what is the best way of finding the brand’s voice?
It takes only 3 simple steps!
- Imagine your company is a person or a famous character
- Map a variety of touch points between the product and your users (error page, pricing page, confirmation email etc.)
- In each scenario think what the chosen person or character would say in that situation.
When helping to establish the voice and tone of Zest — the brilliant chrome extension which is all about high end content for marketers, we figured out the brand needs to have a sassy tone such as the one of Beyoncé.
This practice is a lot of fun and very concise.
Give your product a personality, and you better stay in character!
Facebook Uses The “Always” and the “Nevers” method
Facebook content strategy team are finding their brand’s voice by identifying their ‘Always’ and ‘Nevers’ according to Merrill.
What does that mean?
Just write down the next sentence and fill it up —
“Our company’s voice is always __________ and never __________.”
Merril in one of her talks gave the following examples —
- Our company’s voice is Always inclusive, and never know-it-all
- Our company’s voice is Always genuine, and never slick
- Our company’s voice is Always respectful, and never snarky
It’s gets really easy when you break it down like this.
Facebook Has a translation guide
Imagine for a second that you are traveling the world but don’t know all the languages of the places you travel to. Well, that is the position Facebook is in; and how do they maintain an aligned brand’s voice between all of the UX writing and content teams you may ask? Through a translation guide.
The translation guide voice defines 3 main attributes for Facebook’s brand voice and then elaborates on how the content strategies should work with each:
- Simple
- Stick to common words that people use in everyday speech.
- Be concise. Write short sentences that are easy to understand.
2. Straightforward
- Keep terms and messaging consistent across all channels, on and off Facebook.
- Don’t bury information or gloss over it.
- Don’t use language that’s vague or possibly misleading.
3. Human
- Translate like you’re talking to someone one-on-one. Read your content out loud if you’re not sure it sounds natural.
- Stay neutral. Avoid language that’s opinionated, cutesy, irreverent or otherwise over the top.
- Don’t sound like a robot. Even the smallest bits of interface content should be approachable
We can see a great use of the translation guide in Facebook in the Facebook lite product team.
It’s the Facebook app for low end phones and supports 55 languages in countries including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and the Philippines.
Facebook has branches all over the world, it is also expanding in markets that never had any engagement with the internet before.
The challenge of this mission, content-wise is that on top of writing great experiences, they have to localize those experiences while preserving their brand’s voice.
They solve this problem by having their translation guide for voice and tone —
What could possibly be a better way to align with your international content teams rather than writing a translation rule set for the product’s voice and tone?!
This guide is open sourced so people from all over the world could easily localize the Facebook narrative experience.
This is part of Facebook’s mission to connect people from emerging markets to the internet with internet.org
After that, any content produced by your company is obligated to follow those attributes with the user’s touch points.
This way, it’s basically like travelling the world and knowing the language of all the places you visit.Facebook Design a UX narrative
Facebook design a UX narrative
The content strategy team of Facebook not only needs to design a compelling story based on Facebook’s voice but also make sure that the rest of the product teams all over the world are aligned with it while teaching other team members to speak in the product’s voice
A good UX lead not only designs an elegant story but also develops a system for teaching other members of an organization to speak fluently in the product’s voice.
Facebook iterates it texts as well
So you’ve implemented your brand’s voice. How do you know if it’s effective? How can you show the value of your work?
No matter what we’re doing, designing, building an information space, writing, advertising, no matter what sort of work, we’re looking at actions and the results of those actions. What we measure by doing that, our data, that shows the progress we’re making.
Hopefully, we’re starting out at point A, we have a goal for point B, and what we measure helps chart our journey along to point B.
Facebook Use microcopy Wisely
While some might believe that Microcopy is a marketing practice of building words over an interface, the real essence of microcopy is much more holistic than that.
Microcopy that works is only the tip of the Iceberg of a well established content system, using voice and tone and based on data.
After all, you could never use words if you don’t have a voice.
Facebook has amazing microcopy which is all based on the practices I’ve mentioned before, check out some of the best examples I could find-
.
You can be experience driven company too!
In order to be an experience-driven brand, Facebook builds the brand’s voice, writes a translation guide, designs a UX narrative and integrates their data. It may seem daunting, but there is a reason that there are more then 2 billion people using Facebook these days.
When I went to the “Content Strategy Happy Hour” hosted by the Facebook content strategy team here in Tel Aviv, when talking with those awesome professionals I realized how these kind of people are helping the whole product team to be aligned to their missions on a regular basis and help them to achieve their goals.
In other words, the main takeaway from Facebook is that building a strong UX writing and content strategy team will not only make your product better but also have an impact on the world.
Contributed to this article with microcopy examples :
