Build your content strategy roadmap
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The goals of this session were to understand what content strategy is and how to get started, to learn how to make content strategy part of the organization's communications, and to prepare content to be found and used anywhere, on any device. Organizations produce a lot of content and publishes it across multiple channels, but does it have a purpose? Does it help meet strategic goals, increase customer value, or help an audience achieve its goals? This session covered the steps involved in creating an effective content strategy, and how to incorporate content strategy tactics and processes into current work The workshop included hands-on exercises, providing participants with tools they could use right away at work.
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Build your content strategy roadmap
- 1. Build Your Content Strategy Roadmap Hilary Marsh J Boye Conference 2015 h"p://echa.europa.eu/addressing-‐chemicals-‐of-‐concern/substances-‐of-‐poten8al-‐concern/svhc-‐roadmap-‐to-‐2020-‐implementa8on
- 2. h"p://echa.europa.eu/addressing-‐chemicals-‐of-‐concern/substances-‐of-‐poten8al-‐concern/svhc-‐roadmap-‐to-‐2020-‐implementa8on Content Strategy Roadmap 1. Discovery 2. Content audit and assessment 3. Comparative content analysis * 4. Empathy-based audience personas * 5. Content creation and publishing guidelines 6. Roles, lifecycles, workflow, governance 7. Taxonomy 8. Content transformation and migration 9. Content marketing and promotions 10. Handoff, next steps * Sometimes considered optional
- 4. Content strategy challenges • Findability • Voice • Ownership • Policies • Practices
- 5. Worst practices • Language/jargon • Prioritized promotion • Content hoarding • Bad editorial processes • New content missing • Different content on different channels
- 6. © Don Graham, 1998, Flickr
- 9. • Who, what, when, where, why, and how of publishing content online • A strategic statement tying content to business goals • The people, processes, and power to execute that statement
- 10. Policies and guidelines + Audience understanding + Business knowledge =
- 11. 11
- 14. Format is less significant Web pages Blog posts Infographics Images PDFs Video Audio
- 16. Content strategy is… Event Strategy Product Strategy Class Strategy Program Strategy Research Strategy
- 19. Content is… My Event My Product My Class My Program My Research
- 20. 20
- 21. “Every pixel has an owner.” – Paul Ford, former web editor at Harper’s magazine
- 22. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair, 1935
- 25. Organization: Programs, offerings Audience Messages Audience Audience Audience New thinking
- 26. 26
- 27. 27 Content strategy is CHANGE MANAGEMENT
- 28. 28 User experience is CHANGE MANAGEMENT
- 29. 29 Digital is CHANGE MANAGEMENT
- 31. • 290-‐page PDF • Updated every year
- 33. • Where is the member handbook?
- 34. How do I do content strategy?
- 38. • h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/studiocurve/13080208/ • h"ps://www.flickr.com/photos/moohcowh/2596366618
- 40. Where you’re going • Goals & measures of success 1 4 2 5 3
- 41. How you’ll get there • Which channels will help you achieve success? 1 4 2 5 3
- 42. How long and how much • Deadline, budget, resources (staff, skills, priori8es) 1 4 2 5 3
- 43. Who’s going with you • Who is your audience? • What do they want? 1 4 2 5 3
- 44. What you’ll take • What content do you have? • What needs to be created? 1 4 2 53
- 47. The <Organiza8on>’s social intranet will: Collect and surface/curate cri8cal, relevant editorial content created by appropriate <organiza8on> corporate departments, divisions and employees. Enable and mo8vate employees to connect, interact and collaborate via social features. Foster a culture of innova8on.
- 48. • We will develop and maintain content that helps people prac8ce and enjoy the arts.
- 49. Exercise #1: Create a strategy statement
- 50. Create a strategy statement < O r g a n i z a t i o n > o f f e r s _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , _ _ _ _ _ _ _ c o n t e n t t h a t h e l p s t h e m _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ a n d _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ b y m a k i n g _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ f e e l _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , a n d _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , a n d c o n v i n c i n g t h e m t o _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ a n d _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . adjec8ve adjec8ve accomplish goal accomplish goal audience adjec8ve adjec8ve adjec8ve take desired ac8on Example: VillageReach offers educational but warm, human content that helps them increase donations and raise awareness by making institutional donors feel committed, capable, and needed, and convincing them to give annually and show public support. take desired ac8on
- 53. Step 1: Content inventory
- 57. Things to track N a m e o f c o n t e n t p i e c e U R L C o n t e n t t y p e P e r s o n r e s p o n s i b l e N o t e s
- 58. Also track A v e r a g e m o n t h l y v i s i t s L a s t r e v i e w d a t e C M S c o n t e n t t y p e Tr a n s l a t i o n s
- 59. crazy person
- 60. Outcomes • C o n t e n t m a t r i x • F i n d i n g s a n d r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s r e p o r t
- 62. Who? • C o m p e t i t o r s • P e e r s • S i m i l a r o f f e r i n g s • O t h e r i n d u s t r i e s • S o c i a l n e t w o r k s
- 63. What to look at • S e a r c h r e s u l t s • U s a b i l i t y • Vo c a b u l a r y • C o n t e n t • P r e s e n t a t i o n • A u d i e n c e - c e n t r i c i t y • Vo i c e a n d t o n e • Q u a l i t y
- 65. Outcomes Comparative audit findings report Formal report Presentation Scorecard spreadsheet SWOT analysis
- 67. h"p://www.tagheuer.com/int-‐en/company/ceo-‐speech Shared focus on the audience
- 68. h"p://www.tagheuer.com/int-‐en/company/ceo-‐speech Shared understanding of the audience
- 73. Effective content • Sounds like the organization • Has a goal • Uses the active voice • Helps the reader do a task • Is specific • Is focused on the reader, NOT on your organization
- 74. Scannable content • Uses subheads and bullets • Is not in PDF format • Uses fewer words but includes the terms readers are looking for
- 77. Content is Conversation • What do I hope to achieve from this content? • Who am I talking to? • What brings those people to my site or app? What are their top tasks? Top questions? Conversations they want to start? • Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, and focused on what you want site visitors to do.
- 78. True goal • NO - We want to tell people how great our services are. • YES - We want people to choose our services.
- 79. True goal • NO - We want to get lots of views of our page • YES - We want people to do something: Sign up for the event, download the white paper, subscribe to the publication
- 80. Message architecture • Articulate your brand identity and personality • Create a common understanding of who your organization is • Informs decisions about what content to publish, what formats, what channels
- 81. Exercise #2: Create a message architecture
- 82. As a group, review the deck of cards. Thinking about your group’s “adopted” organization…. 1. Sort the attributes into three piles: • Who we are today • Who we want to be in the future • Who we are not 2. Set aside the “who we are today” and “who we are not” piles 3. Group the remaining terms into synonyms. 4. Prioritize: choose the top 5 terms/groups.
- 84. Roles on a digital team • Content strategist • Project manager • Visual designer • User experience architect • Social media manager • Director
- 87. Where most orgs start 87
- 88. What often seems most logical 88
- 89. What some orgs are trying 89
- 90. Where most orgs land 90
- 92. • Why is taxonomy important • Options • How to extract your taxonomy • Starter intranet taxonomy • Using the content audit -- put the emphasis on the content owners • Buying a taxonomy • Use the open Calasi tool -- demo tool • Lessons learned • Synonyms • It IS system dependent
- 94. ≈
- 95. The Benefits of Tagging • Improves search results – Tags can be used to increase relevance of items in search results – Tags can be used to ‘facet’ search results • Can drive personalization and aggregation
- 96. Building your taxonomy • Have content owners tag their content • De-dupe, clean, standardize • Categorize
- 97. Buying a Taxonomy Tool (or Even a Whole Taxonomy!) • WAND • Concept Searching • AIIM Taxonomy Training and Cer8fica8on programs • Open Calais
- 98. Lessons Learned • There is a taxonomy maturity model • Taxonomy is platform dependent – SiteCore vs. SharePoint vs. Wordpress vs. Drupal • Synonyms are important • Your taxonomy needs to be reviewed regularly
- 100. Content Inventory
- 101. Content Audit & Assessment Audit spreadsheet: h"p://goo.gl/G1DNx6
- 102. Image: wikipedia Transforming Your Content
- 103. “In a sense, content models are perhaps the truest form of bottom-up information architecture: by determining what types of chunks are important and how to link them, we make the answers embedded in our content ‘rise to the surface.’” —Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
- 104. • Structure—how content items will assemble – e.g., news, author, location, price • Type—how is it being used? – e.g., press release for press room, author database for journal articles • Attributes—published & metadata – e.g., title, abstract, taxonomy tag http://alistapart.com/article/content-modelling-a-master-skill
- 109. Courtesy of Melissa Zinder, NBOA
- 110. www.bobangus.com
- 114. #winning
- 115. Strategic nagging • Pa8ent but persistent repe88on of a message
- 119. Resources • http://www.customerfocuscalculator.com • http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing- and-measurement-model/ • http://blog.siteimprove.com/web-governance-blog/ the-hierarchy-of-content-needs-a-new-model-for- creating-and-assessing-content Handouts we used • http://www.hilarymarsh.com/JBoye15
Editor's Notes
- Content is really where the rubber hits the road. If you think about it, there are really three aspects of every website: 1) What the organization needs to accomplish. That usually comes down to revenue through product or service sales, memberships or registrations, or awareness 2) What users come to the site for, and what they need from the organization 3) What’s technically possible While this looks pretty straightforward, it often isn’t. And where it gets really tricky is in the shaded areas between two circles: If the business and IT create something that they think rocks, but the site’s audience doesn’t get it or doesn’t care, it won’t attract enough people to succeed. If the site is built with too much of a focus on what the users need and what’s possible technically, then there’s a good possibility that the business won’t get what it needs, and if that happens, the site could get shut down. And finally, if the user needs and the business drivers are all in alignment but IT wasn’t involved enough, it could turn out to be very expensive to execute the vision. Content strategy has an essential face into all three of these circles, and it’s really where they all meet. Content strategy looks at what the organization is generating – its products, programs, services, events, etc., and makes sure that it’s written and delivered in a way that will resonate with the audience. Content strategists understand what users are looking for from the organization and try and get those gaps filled. And content strategists work with IT to make sure that the CMS and other systems used to deliver content work for both the internal users and for the end audience.
- How does content get to the site? How long should content stay live? How can we make sure that people create content so it can be found and used? How much content is there in each section and how often it gets added to? How can we bring together similar content from different parts of an organization? How good is the content that currently exists: How relevant is it to the audience, does it help the organization meet its goals? What’s missing? Who is posting the content, vs who’s creating it? Is the system working to help make publishing and finding content easier, or is it making things more difficult? How can we make sure people can get what they’re looking for on any device? How can we proactively share information with our audience most effectively through ever-increasing digital channels?
- We have a common, although usually unspoken, motto at many of our organizations. This is the title of a great little book about associations.
- Where to start? What’s important? Does the organization know what I want to do here? Why are the large items in the middle there?
- Quick run through…many people wonder “how do I do content strategy”
- then quickly ask “Where do I start?” That’s what we’re going to do for the rest of this session - get you started with content strategy. Everyone can do it. See the value … sell the value…
- When you go on a trip, you figure out where you’re going…
- how you’ll get there…
- when you’ll go… what your budget is…
- who will go with you…what you’ll take. The same things goes before you build a website … app … project…campaign. If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know where you’ll end up or when you’ve arrived…
- Think of this as a roadmap. you’ll define where you’re going…
- Your strategy statement is your compass…it will guide you on your journey… What does a strategy statement look like?…
- It might look like this…
- Or this…
- Now you are going to have a little practice creating a strategy statement…
- Each table should pick one association and use the mad lib handout to work out a possibly strategy statement. If it is your association, you are the client/business owner and the rest as questions to better understand who you are trying to reach and what they want to do. 10 min…Real life…days…weeks…GO!
- Your strategy statement is your compass…it will guide you on your journey… What does a strategy statement look like?…
- If you didn’t do it during Discovery, do an inventory now. Start with what you have…or with what you want to have. Examples…
- You can see that the form matters less than the content. Things you must track…
- You might also want to track… Make sure there are qualities. This is a living document…
- Getting all this information in one place will save your sanity…
- But don’t hoard this information…share… DO NOT SKIP…
- First, figure out your top 2-5 competitors…
- Then compare things objectively. Do a scan of their websites for… Sometimes you might be able to jump ahead or fill a niche …
- Then compare things objectively. Do a scan of their websites for… Sometimes you might be able to jump ahead or fill a niche …
- For this step you will end up with a comparative audit… This step is optional, but can be very enlightening…
- At NAR, we went through a process to create empathy personas. We enlisted the help of staff members to brainstorm about their challenges, fears, and motivations. These staff members had worked for NAR for many years and represented many programs and services. They’d been exposed to lots of different members, both the volunteer leaders who serve on the committees, and the general membership at large – which, as we all know, are completely different populations. This was my secret way of overcoming the objections to the fact that the web team was in charge of the website and of getting buy-in from my peers there. Rather than handing them a binder full of rules, we were all doing the work together.
- The consultant we worked with, Esteban Gonzalez, has a company called Brand Therapy that specializes in creating these kinds of personas. Esteban led us through the whole process. He had everyone check their individual experience at the door, which was so important We had to agree on the four most important audiences that the organization needed to serve online. The very last step of all the brainstorming sessions was to give each of our personas a name and a face. This was such an effective way to create a shared understanding of our audiences.
- When we were ready to reveal them to the larger community of staff members who published information on the site, we created life-size cutouts of them and actually had people introduce them. I kept those cutouts right outside my office, where they were always in view for me and my team, as well as anyone who came to talk with us.
- It’s not enough to simply be informative – the content needs to have a specific goal. For example, the goal of a particular page might be to get more people to attend an event. Therefore, what needs to be at the top of the page is not marketing-speak about how wonderful the event will be, but about the specific details – who, what, when, where, why, and how. The “why” should not be written in marketing speak, but should highlight the most important details about the event, leading the reader to make the “right” decision. Do you know what active voice is? In case you don’t remember back from elementary school, Active voice is subject verb object – The dog bit the man Passive voice, the opposite, is object, passive verb, subject – The man was bitten by the dog On professional websites, passive voice sounds extremely corporate, and is the old-fashioned way that organizations hid behind their decisions. It’s also confusing! Here’s an example that Jakob Nielson used in a 2007 article: "Social security taxes must be paid monthly" Who has to pay those taxes? You can’t really tell from this sentence. In contrast, "Employers must pay social security taxes monthly" is clear and easy to read. In terms of being specific, good content avoids generalities and focuses on answering a reader’s specific questions. It embeds the answers to the question right in the content itself. “Search for your next job in just 3 steps with our updated job finder.” That’s a great example of a sentence that started out being focused on the fact that the organization released a new job finder. Once they rewrote the sentence, many more people started using the job finder, because it was much clearer why they should.
- Online, people skim and don’t tend to read every word. Two reasons Mental – expectations and time Physical – a computer is a reflective screen so it’s more fatiguing to read There is a very important exception to this rule, which is the “destination,” very deep content that explores a topic in detail or is the download that the person was looking for. In that case, the person will read all the content on whatever device they choose. This type of content is often best presented both as an HTML page and a downloadable PDF – “train reading,” we call it sometimes.
- Online, people skim and don’t read. Two reasons Mental – expectations and time Physical – a computer is a reflective screen so it’s more fatiguing to read
- People scan pages for key phrases that jump out at them. This heat map shows that people look at navigation and links. So when you write online content, you can help them by formatting content to make this behavior easier.
- Effective online writing answers key questions and requires you to know who you’re talking to and what they want to know.
- Make sure you get to the true goal of your content in order to get the content to work hard enough for you. Sometimes that requires digging a little deeper, past the initial idea.
- Make sure you get to the true goal of your content in order to get the content to work hard enough for you. Sometimes that requires digging a little deeper, past the initial idea.
- If you write content following the principles outlined in this presentation, it will be findable. The only other things to keep in mind are to use the key topic names and specific phrases early in the content – in the headline or the first paragraph or two. Don’t overuse them, or the content will read as if a robot wrote it.
- Now you are going to have a little practice creating a strategy statement…
- Each table should pick one association and use the mad lib handout to work out a possibly strategy statement. If it is your association, you are the client/business owner and the rest as questions to better understand who you are trying to reach and what they want to do. 10 min…Real life…days…weeks…GO!
- lack of consistency, Inefficient Not really strategic at all
- In its own silo Slow to change Too much process Too much work to do, preventing the ability to be a strategic leader
- Random, uneven quality Perpertuates fiefdoms Encourages competition rather than collaboration Can end up duplicating resources Leads to a confusing user experience
- Central vision Shared and distributed skills Requires buy-in from the top Strategic and responsive May not be able to succeed in an organization that is highly silo-ized, politicized, and competitive
- Taxonomy categorizes and it AGGREGATES!
- You’re done, right? You’ve got a content strategy and you can go forth and conquer the world with content awesomeness. Ha! Once you have a content strategy, you’ve just started a journey …
- You’ll need to continue to educate and remind people about best practices and how it applies to them - how it ties into their goals. I call this…
- It will work best if you create a plan for ongoing education and follow-up. At ASCE…
- It will work best if you create a plan for ongoing education and follow-up. At ASCE…