News

A number of recent training events are helping people to take their writing on to the next level.

At Publishing Scotland we delivered a one day open advanced writing for the web training course which allowed people to practice and apply skills they’d learned on an earlier course. Delegates enjoyed the opportunity to spend time thinking about how they tackle different writing tasks for their own websites. One delegate even wanted to know if we’d considered running a week-long course. It may come yet!

Other advanced writing workshops have been delivered in house, allowing teams of writers to collaborate on specific content tasks.

For purely professional reasons, you understand, we are now part of the social networking explosion. Visit Cygnus Extra on Twitter and become a follower! That way you’ll get more regular news, people to follow and hopefully some pearls of wisdom.

The great discipline on Twitter of course is to write short, something we thoroughly believe in. Now we’ll have to walk the walk.

Look out Facebook and Bebo. We may be going there next!

Well it’s been a long time coming but it’s here at last – the new Cygnus Extra website. As always, our own website comes last on the list of things to do but we finally got round to it. Hope you like it and find it useful and interesting.

Over the next weeks and months we’ll be updating our blog with articles that we think you may find useful and informative. Do let us know what you think.

There are currently places available on this new course, being run by Publishing Scotland in Edinburgh on 18th June 2009.

The course is designed for those who have already completed a basic Writing for the Web training course with Publishing Scotland. It provides the opportunity to grapple with some of the more complex issues associated with writing for the web and to practise your skills during the workshop.

Find out more and book on the Publishing Scotland website.

Cygnus Extra has won the contract to provide regular content to www.irvinebay.co.uk, the website of Irvine Bay Regeneration company. Irvine Bay are already a client of Cygnus Extra ,who have been writing content for Bay Watch, since the newsletter was introduced in March 2008.

The website was relaunched in autumn of 2008, when Cygnus Extra contributed to the content. The new contract secure’s Hilary’s involvement in providing web content on a regular basis each month, ensuring that the website is as effective as possible. The project will also involve exploring the opportunities that social networking presents for marketing the regeneration of the Irvine Bay area.

Over 90 members of staff at Scottish Natural Heritage are taking part in a burst of writing activity to update their website. Hilary Phillips, in association with Publishing Scotland, provided a series of tailored training courses, to support the team of writers and help to get the editorial activity off the ground. The site, which will be launched in the next few months, provides an important route for members of the public to discover more about Scotland’s nature and landscapes.  It also acts as a vital information source to subject experts and other agencies. That’s a lot to ask of one website, so the training plays an import part in ensuring the success of the whole venture.

Clyde Waterfront has launched a new heritage website and heritage guide, promoting the story of the River Clyde, past and present, and encouraging tourists and local people to visit.

The launch of the new heritage material was supported by a major advertising campaign on Glasgow transport, encouraging people to visit the Clyde. Cygnus Extra, in association with Innovation Digital, provides web copywriting and editorial services for the guide and website.

New projects in Dumbarton and Bowling have been added to the Clyde Waterfront website. The area covered by the site now extends 20km along the Clyde from Glasgow Green to Dumbarton. Working with Innovation Digital, Cygnus Extra continues to provide a comprehensive copywriting service for the site, including research for new projects and the maintenance of well over 200 exisiting project pages.

Cygnus Extra has written an extended case study for the Improvement Service. The case study is one of a series of articles which share good practice in the area of planning development. The work involved carrying out a series of interviews with students  who had completed placements and their line managers. Read the case study on the Improvement Service website.

Communication skills are vital for every manager, so when Mentoring Direct was developing a series of Management training courses for Bear Scotland, it seemed to make good sense to include a one day workshop on key written and verbal communication skills for supervisors. Hilary Phillips of Cygnus Extra developed and delivered the course in conjunction with Jeremy Bull of Mentoring Direct.

Cygnus Extra has teamed up with Publishing Scotland to deliver web copywriting training courses in Edinburgh. Publishing Scotland is the trade association for the publishing industry in Scotland and runs a series of courses of relevance to publishers. The courses are open to both members and non members, so also attract delegates from other business areas and from the public sector. The positive feedback from the first group of Writing for the web delegates highlighted the practical nature of the course, with plenty of real life examples and activities to engage participants.

Cygnus Extra has been working with Irvine Bay Regeneration company to produce BayWatch, a newsletter which will be sent to every home in the Irvine Bay area. The brief for the newsletter copy was to make the content engaging and accessible. A new colourful brand has helped to set the tone for the publication which is designed to keep people up to date with the regeneration that is planned in the area.

When West Lothian Council undertook a major project to relaunch their website they came to Cygnus Extra to provide training for their content editors. Hilary Phillips worked closely with West Lothian Council to develop writing for the web training that would give employees from a wide range of service areas the right skills to maintain up-to-date, accurate information on their areas of the site.

Following training in the early autumn, westlothian.gov.uk was launched in late October. The site carries a Plain English crystal mark and one of the goals of the training was to ensure that all new content that is added to the site is easy to understand and written in appropriate language for the intended audience.

The Clyde Waterfront website has been awarded Standard of Excellence status in a major marketing competition. The website was developed by Innovation Digital, with copywriting for the site supplied by Cygnus Extra.

The Web Marketing Association awarded www.clydewaterfront.com the accolade in this year’s WebAward competition. The Clyde Waterfront website scored highly for its design, ease of use and content in the Non-Profit section of the awards, which are recognised as the premier showcase for website development in 95 industry categories.

Cygnus Extra have teamed up with Filfx to deliver a CDrom based training package about wayfinding. Cygnus are providing the instructional design element of the project, creating text that will be easy for countryside managers to use as they learn how to improve the signage and wayfinding provision for visitors to their sites. The project is for OPENspace, the research centre for inclusive access to outdoor environments, based at Edinburgh College of Art. OPENspace specialises in helping make the landscape accessible to everyone.