Content Strategy Academy Presentation Slides

Welcome!
November 9, 2017
8:30am – 12:30pm
#DigCS

“Dealing with content is messy. It’s
complicated, it’s painful, and it’s expensive.
And yet, the web is content. Content is the web.
It deserves our time and attention.
And that’s where content strategy comes in.”
- Kristina Halvorson,
Brain Traffic
The collaborative role of a content strategist

Bill Parcells, Head Coach of the NE Patriots (1993-1996)
Taking a time-intensive, hands-on approach

• Only involved at the end of
the process (coaching)
• Didn’t direct strategy at the
beginning (picking players)
• Bill felt like he was set-up to
fail, and was being held to an
unfair level of accountability
for the team’s success or
failure
• Frustrated, Parcells left the team
one week after taking the Patriots
to their 2nd-ever Super Bowl
Problem - more strategic involvement needed

Content strategy in the Farm-to-Table model

• Chef finds out what his customers value the most
• Chef invests the time to find the best ingredients in
alignment with customer preferences
• Menu determined jointly by the chef and farmer that fulfills
their strategic vision
Farm-to-Table strategies

From the Chefs: Farm-to-Table must-do’s

“The amount of labor that goes into
creating and maintaining this standard
of food long before a pan ever hits the
fire is a huge investment. You work
many times harder to–hopefully–create
food you are proud of.”
From the Chefs: Do Your Homework

“A farmer might ask a chef about what is
specifically needed in the restaurant and
then go ahead and plant it. A chef and the
farmer can even arrange to plan out
crops a year in advance...and decide
what makes the most sense for both
parties.”
From the Chefs: Plan Ahead

“Ingredients are constantly fluctuating,
not just seasonally, and it’s up to the chef
to learn what the limitations are as to
what’s available and how to put things
together in a way that is still appealing
with little notice.”
From the Chefs: Be Nimble

Did “Farm-to-Table Football” catch on?

In 2000, Little Bill gets power Big Bill wanted!

Belichick “Farm-to-Table”: Five (5!) Super Bowls

Farm-to-Table content strategy
• Make the upfront investment in time
• Collaborate with your colleagues
• Jointly develop a vision for deliverables and tell the story
together

What are the core tenets of
content strategy?
Mike Petroff

Understand, establish, and
enforce best practices for
producing, distributing, and
measuring content.
1

Produce and refine content
for web, email, and social
media products in alignment
with University priorities,
branding, and voice.
2

Develop strategies aimed at
audience growth and
engagement.
3

Collaborate with editorial,
creative, and media relations
teams to build, deploy, and
refine content that supports
the goals of the University.
4

Create a culture of
experimentation and testing,
piloting new content types,
platforms, tools, and other
resources.
5

Measure success using
analytics to understand
performance, inform
decision-making, and focus
on continuous improvement.
6

And now on to the show!
#DigCS
Thanks!

Content Strategy goals:
• Understand, establish, and enforce best practices for
producing, distributing, and measuring content for digital
products, including web, email, and social media
• Develop strategies aimed at audience growth and
engagement
• Produce and refine content for web, email, and
social media products in alignment with University
priorities, branding, and voice

• Collaborate with editorial, creative, public affairs, and
media relations teams to build, deploy, and refine
content that supports the goals of the University
• Create a culture of experimentation and testing,
piloting new content types, platforms, tools, and other
resources
• Measure success using analytics to understand
performance, inform decision-making, and focus on
continuous improvement

con•tent
:
(noun) information made available
by a website or other electronic
medium.

con•tent
:
(noun) information made available
by a website or other electronic
medium.
con•tent
:
(adjective) in a state of peaceful
happiness.

storytelling
ethos
pathos
logos

what to do with
that story
strategy is . . .

storytelling
etho
s
patho
s
logo
s

how to tell your story
(for impact…to somebody)
strategy is . . .

lots of jargon in
content strategy . . .

lots of jargon in
content strategy . . .
will make you
discontent

reach + engagement =
impact
jargon

reach + engagement =
impact
jargon
reverse engineered metrics-based
accountability paradigms are
critical for audience growth

“Build a better mousetrap, and the
world will beat a path to your door.”
Ralph Waldo
Emerson

“Build a better mousetrap, and the
world will beat a path to your door.”
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
“Pray, fine stategistias
of Harvardia, alloweth
me one diversion, a
metaphora
interpretia…”

•alumni
•prospective students
•current students
•donors
•prospective donors
•staff
•faculty
•media
•parents
•teachers
•dean

•Website
•Facebook
•Twitter
•Youtube
•Instagram
•Medium
•Email Lists
•Podcast
•External Blogs
•Media Pitching
•Content Partners

•Website
•Facebook
•Twitter
•Youtube
•Instagram
•Medium
•Email Lists
•Podcast
•External Blogs
•Media Pitching
•Content Partners
•alumni
•prospective student
•current students
•donors
•prospective donors
•staff
•faculty
•media
•parents
•teachers
•dean

•Instagram
•Prospective Student

•Instagram
•Faculty
•Podcast

•Instagram
•Faculty
•Podcast
•Twitter
•Alumni

Be the creator of your institution.
Be the realist of your institution.
Be the advocate of your institution.
Be the now of your institution.
Be the identity of your institution.
Be the unifier of your institution.
Be the mentor of your institution.

Be the creator of your institution.
Be the realist of your institution.
Be the advocate of your institution.
Be the now of your institution.
Be the identity of your institution.
Be the unifier of your institution.
Be the mentor of your institution.
Be the of your institution.

RETHINKING BOSTON.GOV
Creating a new digital face and effectively writing for the City of Boston’s website

WHO WE ARE
Digital team:
Developers
Designers
Product managers
Content & communications specialists
Digital storytellers…
Focused on working via
agile methodologies and in the
public eye

We build digital experiences designed around the
needs of our constituents. These tools will be
beautiful, welcoming, and highly useful.
WHAT WE DO

GUIDING PRINCIPLES
ACT AS A HELPFUL
HUMAN.
BE EQUAL PARTS WARM
AND OFFICIAL.
THE SYSTEM IS VAST.
HELP USERS NAVIGATE
IT.
BUILD AN ENERGIZING
ENVIRONMENT.
Empathize and be reasonable in the way
you communicate–simple, direct, never
condescending.
The tone balances professional with
friendly, official with open, authority with
approachability.
Inspire residents to engage. The site should
feel alive, vibrant, active, and fresh.
Organize the system through the user’s
perspective.

WHERE WE STARTED
1 million words — 10,000
URLs — 8,300 PDFs - many
microsites
and two content managers updating everything in
internet explorer :(

More than 30,000 pages of content that look great across all devices
and more than 100 people trained to update their content.
WHERE WE LANDED

JANUARY 2016
Launched Pilot.Boston.gov
SPRING 2016
User testing, iterations on pilot
CONTINUOUS
Listen, tinker, improve
See boston.gov/roadmap
AND HOW WE GOT THERE - TIMELINE OF WEBSITE REDESIGN
AUGUST 2015
Kick-off, began discovery
phase
JULY 2016
Launched Boston.gov

ISSUES WITH OLD SITE
NOT MOBILE
FRIENDLY
LOST IN THE CONTENT
IS THIS FROM THE
CITY?
Just pinch and zoom Wait, where do I go? So many microsites...
If you wanted to get
something done, you had to
visit the full desktop site.
We were shutting out those
who rely on their phones to
access the Internet.
The old website had tons of
information. The problem?
You needed to hunt and
search to find that
information, or just know
where to go.
The frustration of using
the old site forced some
departments to run to
alternatives. We didn’t
have a consistent digital
voice or brand.

INSIGHTS AND FEEDBACK: LOOKING IN (EMPLOYEES)
“There is no such thing as the
City of Boston. We’re a bunch
of individuals.”
“A lot of trust-breaking moments happen during hand-offs.
There is inherently direct opposition between departments’
expertise, and the residents’ needs that straddle departments.”

INSIGHTS AND FEEDBACK: LOOKING OUT (CITIZEN
STORIES)
“It’s exactly what you would
expect of a government
website — not very welcoming
and very dry.”
“Today, the city website feels like hunting through an
unorganized filing cabinet — all the information is there, but
it’s not usable or accessible. It puts a heavy burden on the
resident to find what they need, and takes a level of
sophistication, tech savviness.”

GUIDES
Guides answer the question, “How can the city help me with…”

CONTENT MIGRATION TIMELINE
JANUARY 2016
Boston.gov pilot launch. Began
meeting with departments and
rewriting content.
JULY 20, 2016
Launch of full
Boston.gov website.
Content moved from
post-secondary reading
level to 8th grade.
MAY - JUNE 2016
Wrap up rewriting
thousands of webpages; more
than 1 million words.
Gave drop dead dates for
departments.
CONTENT AUDIT -
FALL/WINTER 2015
Went through the pages for
more than 60 departments to
see what to keep and lose.

ACTIVITY
DEVELOP THE 27TH LETTER OF THE ALPHABET

ACTIVITY
DEVELOP THE 27TH LETTER OF THE
ALPHABET
boston.gov/brand

LAUNCHING A DIGITAL BRAND
The mark for the Boston.gov is
not just the letter B but a Bold
letter B. Underlined.
The new brand has been a huge
hit, both inside and outside of
City Hall.

CONSISTENT VOICE - ONE BRAND FOR ALL

WRITING FOR DIGITAL
Tips and tricks for using plain language and a more human, friendly tone.

People mostly skim and barely scroll
down a page.
Slate.com hired a data scientist to study
how people used their site. They found
50% of their users stopped reading
halfway down. Thirty-one percent never
even scrolled.
REALITIES OF READING ON THE WEB

Most people scan with a rough “F”
pattern when they read a webpage.
Starting from the top left corner, they
scan horizontally across the page and
quickly drop down the left side for
information.
The Nielson Norman Group did a study
on user behavior, and created this heat
map at the right:
The red shows the most viewed section of these websites, followed by yellow, and
then blue.
HOW DO WE INTERACT WITH THE WEB

PEOPLE STILL NEED
US
BE BRIEF GET TO THE POINT
We’re the City of Boston.
We have information that
residents can only find on
Boston.gov.
You’re the Harvard System;
people need you to.
Students, researchers,
faculty, alums, and much
more.
We still realistically only
have the attention of our
audience for a few seconds
on each page.
Big chunks of text just
copied and pasted onto a
page won’t always do the
trick.
There are ways we can
write that can draw people
in and get their attention.
By setting up our
information and writing in
a certain way, we can help
residents get the info they
need, and get on with their
day.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR US?

TIP 1: WRITE SHORT SENTENCES
Try to make the average sentence length of your content 15-20 words.
You should look to make one point - and maybe a second, related point - in each sentence.

In the 1960s, researchers
analyzed one million
words of published US
writing and found the
average sentence length to
be 19 words.
Here’s how that broke down:
● Government documents (25 words)
● Learned and scientific (24)
● Press reports (21)
● Humor (18)
● Fictional romance/love (14)
● Fictional science/detective (13)
Government documents, probably the only essential info on
the list, had the longest sentence length.
RESEARCH ON SENTENCE LENGTH

THE EASIEST WAY TO BREAK DOWN A
LONG SENTENCE? USE PERIODS.
Periods help readers digest your latest
point, and prepare for the next.
At the right, we split our big sentence into
three little ones.
“The Boston Public Health
Commission's Outreach Team
provides outreach to individuals.
They engage with approximately
400 people in the neighborhood. The
team also helps those once barred
from a shelter to regain admission
and get the support they need.”

TIP 2: USE BULLETED LISTS
Bulleted, vertical lists can help break up long pieces of complicated content.
Information is placed in easier to read chunks, and sentences that need to be
longer can become more readable.

Vertical lists work best when you have a serial list in a sentence. These
sentences have a bunch of items listed out, with commas in between.
BEFORE:
The Fire Prevention Division, in the
Boston Fire Department, directs fire
prevention activities. It handles the more
technical fire prevention problems,
maintains appropriate records, grants
permits, investigates the causes of fires,
and conducts public education programs.
AFTER:
The Fire Prevention Division:
- handles more technical fire prevention problems
- maintains appropriate records
- grants permits
- investigates the cause of fires, and
- conducts public education programs.
HOW TO CREATE A [GOOD] BULLETED LIST

GRAMMAR
COMPLETE
SENTENCES
DON’T OVERDO IT
You don’t need a
punctuation after each
line in your list.
If items in a list are
complete sentences,
treat them like that.
Not everything on a
page needs to be in a
bulleted list.
If you use a list where each item
isn’t a complete sentence, you
only need punctuation in the
second-to-last and last
sentence. For example:
Today, we bought:
- grapes
- donuts
- apples, and
- bananas.
For example:
Choosing the right tree isn’t that
complicated, but we have some
tips:
- Only pick freshly cut trees.
- Pick a tree stand that
allows you to add water.
- Make sure the stem of your
tree is cut diagonally.
Adding too many bullets to a
page can be just as bad as
having a big block of text.
If you overdo it, the bullets lose
their impact. Save them for the
important content on your
page.
NOTES ON BULLETED LISTS

TIP 3: USE ACTIVE VOICE
When we speak, we usually use the active voice. Using the active voice can
increase comprehension, and clearly state who is responsible for what.
In most active-voice sentences, the doer comes before the verb it governs.

Putting the person or thing doing the action in a sentence in front of
its verb will usually ensure that the verb is active.
ACTIVE VOICE:
The property owner pays the bill.
PASSIVE VOICE:
The bill should be paid by the property owner.
When you use the active voice, your writing is usually tighter, more personal, and you
introduce the action earlier in the sentence.
When you use the passive voice, you create the reverse of this. It’s used often in jargon and
legalese. There are times when you might need to use it, especially when the “doer” isn’t
clear, but try to avoid them if you can.
WHAT IS ACTIVE VOICE?

An easy way to tell if you are
using the active or passive voice
is to add “by zombies” after the
verb in the sentence.
If the sentence still makes sense
after adding “by zombies,” it’s in
the passive voice.
For example:
- Passive: The town was attacked
(by zombies). Still makes sense.
- Active: Zombies attacked (by
zombies) the town. Doesn’t make
sense.
There are trickier versions of the
passive voice, but this is an easy tip to
keep in mind.
ZOMBIES AND ACTIVE VOICE

TIP 4: WRITE AS YOU SPEAK
It’s common advice, but it still holds true. What you write should read like a
conversation with a friend.

PERSONAL
PRONOUNS
CONTRACTIONS
USE EVERYDAY
WORDS
It’s OK to use personal
pronouns, like “we”
and “you.”
One of the easiest
ways to write as you
talk is with
contractions.
Why use a five dollar
word when a five cent
word will work?
When you avoid personal
pronouns in your writing, you
often create clumsy sentences.
Don’t be afraid to say "we"
instead of “The City.” Instead of
"residents" or “applicants,”
consider saying "you."
People talk in contractions —
like can’t and don’t — and using
them helps people relate to
what you’re writing.
The important thing to
remember, though, is not to
overuse them. Only use them
when they sounds natural.
The average reading level in the
US is about 8th grade. Using
everyday words can help you
reach a wider audience.
If you must use a certain word
that may be more difficult for
someone to understand, that’s
OK. Just make sure to explain
what it means in your text.
CREATE MORE PERSONAL TONE

WHERE DO YOU GO FROM HERE?
City’s writing
guidelines
BOSTON.GOV/
WRITING
Web app that allows you
to get feedback on the
reading level of content.
HEMINGWAY EDITOR
OXFORD GUIDE TO
PLAIN ENGLISH
In-depth breakdown of
using plain English
WRITING FOR
GOV.UK
British government
writing guidelines

LESSONS LEARNED
Time: We wanted more! [so give yourselves as much time as you can] + Brand: It’s okay to let the
brand organically seep into your communications.
We had an aggressive schedule and deadline. In just seven months, we:
● built a content management system
● rewrote nearly one million words, and
● migrated all of the content to the new Boston.gov.
Build Schedule: Would have been helpful if we finished most of the content types before writing.
Build Confidence in Our Team/Each Other: Training, being available [and not disappearing], a new
brand
Knowing each other’s limitation: Knowing that departments are the content experts, but that a
‘digital team’ can add value and additional support.

CHALLENGES FOR US
TRAINING CITY STAFF STICKING TO THE BRAND
IT’S A BALANCING ACT KEEPING IT 8TH GRADE GETTING INVOLVED
We’ve made plain English
and language a focus on
the website, but some
department’s are still using
jargon and legalese.
Our public notices and
press releases all come out
at a post-graduate level.
Majority of departments
are using the City’s brand,
but there’s still a few
holdouts. We’re slowly
working to get everyone
under the same umbrella.
READING LEVEL
Drupal is fairly easy to pick
up.
But, if you don’t use it
everyday, or even every
week, it’s easy to forget.
We’ve trained more than
150 people, but only 20-30
consistently make updates.

An unexpectedly delightful, smart, and
human experience has the power to
transform people’s assumptions about
what government [or educational
institutions] is and their relationship to
it.
WHY IT MATTERS

Using your
Institution’s
voice on social
media

hello!
I am Jenny Li Fowler
manager, social media strategy at MIT

hello!
web editor and social media manager at HKS

hello!
web editor and social media manager at HKS
local tv reporter & anchor

hello!
daughter & mother
@thejennyli

Posting on social media for
yourself

Posting on social media for
Harvard

Voice
Your organization’s voice is its public
personality.

Tone
Your job is to find the right tone for that voice
on social media.

Tone
You don’t have to start from scratch.

Tone
Your audience will let you know you’re getting
it right.

Evidence based content
strategy

strategy
You have to be willing to ...
● Experiment

strategy
You have to be willing to ...
● Experiment
● If it didn’t work, don’t do it anymore (no one will
notice)

strategy
● You will learn the social habits of your audience

strategy
● You will learn what your audience favors

strategy
● You will learn what your audience favors
● You will learn your audience’s sense of humor

Strike social media gold
Social media event

Strike social media gold
Social media event
Public event

Need to sell your method
to your boss?

to your boss?
With an evidence based content strategy ...

to your boss?
● You’re making informed content decisions
based on what your audience likes

to your boss?
● Show them the engagement numbers / follower
growth

to your boss?
● Show them the engagement numbers / follower
growth
● Increased click through rates

Key Takeaways
● Your organization already has a voice, you’re not
creating a new one for social media.

Key Takeaways
● You want to find the right tone for your org’s social
media channels.

Key Takeaways
media channels.
(When in doubt, follow @Harvard’s lead)

Key Takeaways
media channels.
(When in doubt, follow @Harvard’s lead)
● Each engagement is a data point. Do more of what
your audience is engaging with — Evidence based
content strategy.

thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at
@thejennyli
iamjenny@mit.edu
?

Boston Globe Media
DOING MORE WITH LESS
OCTOBER, 2017

GROWING AUDIENCES
2,500,000+ Owned
Clickable Audience
Across the Boston Globe,
Boston.com and Twitter accounts,
we have over 2.5 million people in
our owned clickable audience.

THREE TYPES OF TOOLS WORKING TOGETHER
BOTS
 
COMMUNICATION
SMART 
PUBLISHING

LET THE BOTS FIND THE INTERESTING STUFF

LET THE BOTS FIND THE INTERESTING STUFF
The thing you would have
been looking for!

IFTTT
The stuﬀ you are

looking for
Where you want

it to go

USE THESE SAME
TOOLS TO PROMOTE
YOUR BEST CONTENT

ALERTING YOU TO HIGH PERFORMING POSTS
We can quickly
bring the best
posts across ALL
accounts to the
largest social
audiences.  
 
This nets us
millions of extra
impressions per
month!

ALERTING YOU TO HIGH PERFORMING POSTS
Being alerted to high
performance of a
particular post also
helps inform how we
build out daily email
newsletters, push
alerts, etc.

USE ALERTS TO
OPTIMIZE
DISCOVERY

USE AUTOMATION TO
OPTIMIZE AUDIENCE

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