Content Strategy: Killing Time Between Redesigns

Content Strategy:Killing Time Between Redesigns
Dave Coustan
For WordCamp Atlanta
1/9/2010

What This Is About:
The State Of The Open Market For Content
What’s Happening At (Non-Media) Companies
How Content Strategy Helps
Tools, Techniques, And Examples

The State Of The Open Market For Content

Demand Media! Oh Noes!
“…[Demand Media] is paying bottom dollar to create “4,000 videos and articles” a day, based only on what’s hot on search engines. They push SEO juice to this content, which is made as quickly and cheaply as possible, and pray for traffic. It works like a charm, apparently.
These models create a race to the bottom situation, where anyone who spends time and effort on their content is pushed out of business.”
–Mike Arrington, TechCrunch

Are The Disruptors  At Being Disrupted?
“…the internet has always been filled with crap. So the challenge has always been how you find the cream. That’s where opportunities lie. That’s what Google saw.
The new question is whether Google can keep ahead of the content farms and continually find new and better ways to find better stuff. I’ll bet on Google over crap-creators.
But they better get cracking.”
–Jeff Jarvis,BuzzMachine

So What Is Really Happening?
Available tools and data can connect publishers with real interests of potential readers, reversing the “assignment pipe”
Search Algorithms are in flux, adapting to the constantly changing information landscape
The glut of robo-content is still a glut – needs human curators to make sense of it, filter it, and point to the best stuff. This is also a good role for brands.
Every individual question doesn’t have one “right” answer/source / still has to compete against content coming from everywhere
It’s not just content, but content strategy that’s king.
PS, I don’t think content farms will really stop anyone.

What’s Happening At (Non-Media) Companies

“Every company [is/should be/can be] a media company.”

For Reals…
More and more materials being brought online
Your online presence – and not just your Web site - is your primary customer touchpoint
Companies bypassing media/media dwindling anyway
Organizations are needing to drastically increase communications without increasing comms staff
Types of communication in demand aren’t in typical communicators’ wheelhouse (not just press, sales, and investor-facing materials)
Journalists and consumers aren’t silo-edfrom each other
Shift from an internally driven to a hybrid/externally driven publishing model

There’s An Agency Feeding Frenzy

How Can Content Strategy Help?
Helps develop not just content, but internal or hybrid partner processes for creating content
An agenda that supercedes but considers Marketing, CorpComm, PR, Customer Service, Media, etc. (editorial direction)
A way to tie listening/search/research/feedback practices more directly into their publishing/creation practices
Homes for all of the important things online
It’s built for collaboration/modular
It cares about visibility

Tools And Techniques For Content Strategyimageby lunchbreath on Flickr

Core Principles
Your enterprise should serve an audience(s) and be engaged in the world around it.
Material should be organized in ways that both offer an easy path for findability, and remain open to multiple points of access from elsewhere. Measure against both internal and external entry points.
Take this from the content farms – what you choose to create should be aware of and informed by what people are searching for, the language they are using to look for it, and what they’re finding when they get there.
Always create for humans, but be aware of systems and robots.
Editorial strategy is a mix of planning and opportunism.

Planning/Schematic
Who is each part of your site speaking to? ->
What various thing can the site offer that that audience would want? ->
In what way can you deliver that?

Planning/Schematic
Via Kristen Taylor Re:Knight Foundation

Planning/Schematic

Planning/Schematic
This also helps to establish content types, which help set user expectations.

Opportunistic Path
Audience knowns + Topical Hook/Moment Of Scarcity + Creative Solution (The Stuffo Model)

Audit
What’s really out there?
who are the experts and enthusiasts
where are the discussions taking place (and the traces)
what’s the culture around them like
are there gaps?
What you’d find if you didn’t know how to search very well
what real words do people use
what do they find when they get there
what might be an easy win
Internally
what material do you have to draw from? What unique information do you have access to?
what audiences do you already have that you need to serve? What are their expectations
who are *your* experts? it’s ok to separate the day to day “staff” from the SME

Audit Tools
Traditional SEO tools, repurposed
Google Insights for Search
Internal Search Logs
Social Media Research Tools, free and paid (Radian6, Techrigy, Sysomos, BlogPulse, etc.)
Conversations/Surveys/Interviews

Google Trends

Google Insights For Search

Editorial Process/Flow
Editorial Calendar
Regular research reports/tip sheets
Idea Generation and Vetting Process

Idea and Assignment Tracking

And Don’t Forget: Take Care Of Your Audience.
1. Find a subject you care about.2. Do not ramble, though.3. Keep it simple.4. Have the guts to cut.5. Sound like yourself.6. Say what you mean to say.7. Pity the readers.
-Kurt Vonnegut

Fin.Dave Coustanemail: Extraface@gmail.comweb: http://www.extraface.comtwitter: Extrafaceask me stuff: http://extraface.tumblr.com/ask1-570-4TOOFIS

http://blog.extraface.com	71
http://www.slideshare.net	3
http://feeds.feedburner.com	1

Content Strategy: Killing Time Between Redesigns

by Dave Coustan

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

3 Embeds 75

Statistics

Content Strategy: Killing Time Between Redesigns Presentation Transcript