Content Strategy: What's In It For You? at CS NYC

Content strategy:what’s in it for you?
Margot Bloomstein
Content Strategy New York City
February 11, 2010
#CSNYC

Now, let’s talkabout you!

©Skillset.org

Deliver
on time
Please our clients (and ourselves)
Stay in budget
Give users what they need
©Skillset.org

Deliver on time
Rally everyone around a vision
Please our clients (and ourselves)
Stay in budget
Minimize revisions
Give users what they need
Build a cohesive experience
©Skillset.org

Planning for the creation, aggregation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable, and appropriate content in an experience.
What is content strategy?

What is content strategy?
Anticipating and taking care of the core of most projects that you know—you know—would just bog things down like normal, and you know you’ll benefit from it anyhow.

Yes, you want this.

Empathizing with designers
How do you visualize abstract concepts without concrete terms?

Make us look hip!

Make us look hip!
We need to looktraditional…not conservative.

More. Like. Apple.
Make us look hip!
We need to looktraditional…not conservative.

More. Like. Apple.

More like Apple’s “message architecture”
Confident but approachable; an accessible market leader
Simple
Minimal detail with streamlined, unfussy ID
Inviting, friendly, supportive but not fawning

Question:
Answer:
Start with a message architecture of prioritized brand attributes.

Brand-oriented
content strategy can save time and the design budget

Brand-oriented
Prioritize key messages
Rally around understood, commonly defined terms

Brand-oriented
Use real copy for more unified concepts
Get it right in fewer rounds of revision

Budget?
Fewer rounds of creative revision more than pay for content strategy-driven concepting—especially if your client communicates in words, not images.

FACT!
Words (and Word) are cheaper than Photoshop comps

Content strategy
helps designers offer their clients predictability.

Predictability for them
Plan for photo shoots
Anticipate content types
Research case studies
Gather testimonials
Write to exact specs for keywords & character counts

Predictability for you
Plan for specific content types and exact character counts
Anticipate user-generated content length and structure
Create more interesting templates

Empathizing with IAs & PMs
How do you plan for the future if you don’t know what you currently have— or what you need?

What do we have?
©http://www.flickr.com/photos/ojaipatrick/142901730/

Is it still good?

Do we even need it?

How will we get more?

Do folks even like it?

Empathizing with IAs & PMs
How do you budget by page count if you don’t know how many pages you need in order to express key points or complete key interactions?

Thorough strategy
demands a quantitative and qualitative content audit

Thorough strategy
demands a quantitative and qualitative content audit
Conduct a head count
Check for parity in length and consistency in structure

Is the content relevant, current, & accurate?

Content strategy
informs a more thorough, comprehensive sitemap and wireframes and more brand-appropriate nomenclature and calls to action.

Content strategy
drives a more useful gap analysis against the new message architecture.
(what do we need, anyhow?)

Content strategy
drives opportunity: identify new content types and help your client prepare for them, research case studies, gather testimonials, interview customers, etc.

Budget?
Sell your client on not wasting their money.
They invested in a new look because they needed to say something new, right?

But wait!
They alreadyhavewriters in the marketing department!

Writing is only one tactical part of content strategy.
It doesn’t raise the big strategic questions.
Internal resources also don’t offer a neutral, outside perspective.

Empathizing with SEO folks
How do you write meta and ad copy when the copy for fulfillment and landing pages keeps changing?

And where should the user experience begin?

Content strategy
can help SEO specialists deliver higher conversions.

Content strategy
Map ad copy to evolving communication goals in the message architecture

Content strategy
Translate page titles and descriptions for tone, not just keywords, to fulfill brand promise

Empathizing with SM strategists
How do you get your client to stop talking about themselves and genuinely engage?
And what’s an editorial calendar anyway?

Most organizations are determined to talk about themselves instead of interacting with audiences or creating two-way content.
—Jeff Cutler

Content strategy
can help social media strategists prioritize the tenets of a message architecture to ensure consistency, even in tweets.

Content strategy
Informs editorial style guidelines to support writers with a consistent voice and professional multi-channel presence.

Content strategy
can help you develop an editorial calendar with workflow to plan, create, and expire content.

Why do this?

Bribery? Baked goods?

Why should they care?
More air-tight solutions
Save time, budget, and energy on iteration
More comprehensive, cohesive user experiences
Higher conversions

Why do this?
Get to “yes” more quickly
Happier communication, happier clients,happier teams, and happier users!

Additional resources
Twitter: #contentstrategy
SXSW Content Strategy workshop track
LinkedIn Content Strategy group (600+)
ContentStrategy.com  Google Group
Content Strategy knol

Margot Bloomstein
Twitter: @mbloomstein
mbloomstein@yahoo.com
Feedback  SpeakerRate
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Content Strategy: What's In It For You? at CS NYC

by Margot Bloomstein on Feb 12, 2010

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