Three tips for improving your writing and becoming a well-rounded web ambassador
Becoming a well-rounded writer is part of your responsibility as a web ambassador for the University’s website. Our website is a tool for communication and communicating effectively should be the main goal for each page on our website. That begins with writing well.
Here are a few elements to get started:
Be intentional when planning, outlining, and drafting content.
Great outcomes start with great plans. Encourage yourself to get into the habit of planning and outlining before drafting your content. Being intentional about the steps that you take before writing will ensure that the flow, voice, tone, and organization of your content will be seamless.
Resources for the planning, outlining, and drafting process can be found in a number of places including in the Writing Assistance resources provided by The Writing Lab. One of these resources, the Purdue University's Online Writing Lab, has many articles including one on How to Create an Outline.
Diversify people and topics
Diversify the people and topics you highlight within your department to represent the whole body of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Our digital media and content should reflect and represent the diversity of our University’s community on and off campus.
It is common for students, faculty, and staff of color to endure erasure and lack of support at higher education institutions. To combat this at our University, the Office for Campus Diversity provides us with a Strategic Plan for Inclusive Excellence, under which one of the five initiatives is to “Create and sustain an institutional environment that celebrates diversity and cultivates inclusion through intercultural engagement.”
As web ambassadors, we can support this effort – and support our students – by representing diversity in our web content. We can do this in a number of ways:
- Be mindful of the images we use on our websites
- Represent the diversity of our community through our student, alumni, and faculty spotlights
- Highlight and promote efforts support diversity within our campus community
It is important for us to actively bridge the gap and continue to build relationships with all our students and faculty from all social classes.
What is one thing that fishers love? A good hook!
As a web ambassador, you want to immediately engage your audience in your digital web content. According to Grammarly, people will not read your content if it does not hold their interest.
Make sure your hook is always in the first few sentences of your story to set the tone for your content.
Coming up with a good hook can be hard sometimes. A good rule of thumb is to be authentic and make your main point
The power of storytelling enhances your digital content. We encourage ambassadors to use realistic storytelling as a tool to guide you while building the content on your website that will cater to and relate to your audience.
