Content strategy for the social web
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Slides from my presentation at CS Forum 2011 in London, 6 September 2011.
![Or: Editorial people ROCK / the future is bright / [but…]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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Content strategy for the social web
- 1. CONTENT STRATEGY FOR THE SOCIAL WEB Charlie Peverett @cpev iCrossing UK by theseanster93 on Flickr
- 2. Or: Editorial people ROCK / the future is bright / [but…]
- 3. The story so far
- 4. The story so far SEO
- 5. The story so far UX designers SEO
- 6. The story so far UX designers SEO Editors
- 7. The story so far UX designers SEO Editors Ordinary decent citizens
- 8. The story so far UX designers SEO Web 2 point Tot0 Editors Ordinary decent citizens
- 9. The story so far UX designers SEO I just want to go home Web 2 point Tot0 Editors Ordinary decent citizens
- 10. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray!
- 11. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray!
- 12. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray!
- 13. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray!
- 14. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray!
- 15. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray!
- 16. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray! Job done.
- 17. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray! Job done. Satsuma for everyone.
- 18. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray! Job done. Satsuma for everyone.
- 19. An editorial approach brings: Audience focus Trust Quality Control Hurray! Job done. Satsuma for everyone. Yes?
- 20. No. Because these attributes are important but insufficient and it’s editorial people who need to get their heads around that by understanding the true nature of attention on the web.
- 21. No. Because these attributes are important but insufficient and it’s editorial people who need to get their heads around that by understanding the true nature of attention on the web.
- 22. No. Because these attributes are important but insufficient and it’s editorial people who need to get their heads around that by understanding the true nature of attention on the web.
- 23. No. Because these attributes are important but insufficient and it’s editorial people who need to get their heads around that by understanding the true nature of attention on the web.
- 24. No. Because these attributes are important but insufficient and it’s editorial people who need to get their heads around that by understanding the true nature of attention on the web.
- 25. “This ain’t no Field of Dreams” - savvy iCrossing client, 2010 Image by theseanster93 on Flickr
- 26. Power Law Distribution One of the ‘fundamental laws everyone ignores’ - Mark Higginson, iCrossing
- 27. Power Law Distribution “…power law distributions tend to arise in social systems where many people express their preferences among many options” - Clay Shirky
- 28. “Though there are more new bloggers and more new readers every day, most of the new readers are adding to the traffic of the top few blogs, while most new blogs are getting below average traffic, a gap that will grow as the weblog world does. “It's not impossible to launch a good new blog and become widely read, but it's harder than it was last year, and it will be harder still next year.” - Clay Shirky http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
- 29. “Though there are more new bloggers and more new readers every day, most of the new readers are adding to the traffic of the top few blogs, while most new blogs are getting below average traffic, a gap that will grow as the weblog world does. “It's not impossible to launch a good new blog and become widely read, but it's harder than it was last year, and it will be harder still next year.” - Clay Shirky (2003!) http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html
- 30. What does this mean for content strategy? It means we have to locate where attention flows, use that knowledge to help us focus our activities – on our own spaces, in social media and on third-party sites – recruit the necessary skillsto deliver the content accordingly and measure the right things.
- 31. 1. Locate relevant attention by Manitoba Historical Maps on Flickr
- 32. 5
- 33. 5 Find the most relevant sites with the most engaged audiences
- 34. 5 Find the most relevant sites with the most engaged audiences
- 35. Content profiling 35
- 36. Content profiling A quantitative (binary!) way to quickly assess content types and sources on relevant sites 36
- 37. Content profiling A quantitative (binary!) way to quickly assess content types and sources on relevant sites Helps to identify ‘must-have’ content by topic - and possible gaps in provision 37
- 38. Maps and Routes 38
- 39. Maps and Routes Provided by 3rd party (e.g. Google Maps) 39
- 42. Content destinations [widest offering of content types] 42
- 43. Few sites offer competitions 43
- 44. Few sites offer competitions [opportunity?] 44
- 45. 2. Focus activity where you can compete by See-mingLee 李思明 SML
- 46. Socially Designed Content Services outreach adaptation et. al. EXAMPLE niche ‘feeder’ site ‘social space’ link benefit optimised page for search highly important site main website post to page / profile direct fans to content post to channel / post on site page embeds assets other relevant sites ‘media centre’ data-collection and segmentation conversion funnel sales / sign-ups, etc.
- 47. Socially Designed Content Services outreach adaptation et. al. EARNED / PAID MEDIA niche ‘feeder’ site ‘social space’ link benefit optimised page for search EARNED / PAID MEDIA OWNED MEDIA highly important site main client site post to page / profile direct fans to content post to channel / post on site page embeds assets other relevant sites client ‘media centre’ data-collection and segmentation conversion funnel sales / sign-ups, etc.
- 48. For example, getting attention for iCrossing’s views on contentstrategy:
- 49. [shameless plug]
- 50. [shameless plug] [shameless plug]
- 51. Guest blog post by iCrossingebook author outreach adaptation blog link benefit optimised page for search main website post to page / profile other relevant sites iCrossing.co.uk Qualified traffic referred to iCrossingebook landing page sign-ups
- 52. 3. Recruit the right skills by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³
- 53. SKILLS FOCUS Socially Designed Content Services outreach adaptation et. al. COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT niche ‘feeder’ site ‘social space’ link benefit optimised page for search OUTREACH / ONLINE PR WEB EDITING highly important site main client site post to page / profile direct fans to content post to channel / post on site page embeds assets other relevant sites client ‘media centre’ data-collection and segmentation conversion funnel sales / sign-ups, etc.
- 54. In essence, we need:
- 56. Pedants
- 57. Pedants [editorial types, and creative content producers]
- 58. [and]
- 59. by Flickr user M31
- 60. Partygoers by Flickr user M31
- 61. Partygoers [this is my idea of how PR people spend their time] by Flickr user M31
- 62. [and finally we MUST]
- 63. 4. Measure the right stuff by Flickr user Laineys Repertoire
- 64. In summary: 1. Locate the attention 2. Focus where wecan compete 3. Recruit the right skills 4. Measure the right stuff
- 65. Thanks! Charlie Peverett @cpev Content Strategist iCrossing UK
- 66. Image credits Baseball image by Flickr user theseanster93, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike2.0 Generic Licence http://www.flickr.com/photos/theseanster93/1152356149/ Satsuma image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License by the Soil-Net Library at Cranfield University http://www.soil-net.com/album/Plants/Fruit_Veg/slides/FruitVeg%20Satsuma.html Map image by Flickr user Manitoba Historical Maps, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence http://www.flickr.com/photos/manitobamaps/2089812938/ Birdhouse image by Flickr user See-ming Lee 李思明 SML licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic licence http://www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/2149309015/in/photostream/ Arthus C Clarke quote image by Flickr user TheAlienessGiselaGiardino²³ licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic licence http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/518613153/in/photostream/ Street party at night image by Flickr user M31 under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence http://www.flickr.com/photos/morphomir/2407451929/ Ruler image by Flickr user Laineys Repertoire licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence http://www.flickr.com/photos/76283671@N00/184612846/ Cliché swear box and LoremIpsum t-shirt images by @cpev http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpev
Editor's Notes
- No one reads the notes, right? Oh, so *you* do. Ok. Let's get this straight. I'm not going to be talking today about how to do cool stuff in social media with content. I'm sorry. I've called this session Content Strategy for the Social Web to emphasise that the web is social and that this fundamental quality has an impact on how we publish and promote content that is yet to be widely appreciated.
- Arriving at an SEO agency in 2007
- Found out stuff about how Google + search marketing worked
- Shocking
- Shocking
- Shocking
- But social media (aka Web 2 point Toto) has pulled back the curtain on this and lots of other behind-the-scenes practices
- And we’re not in Kansas anymore.
- Bringing an editorial approach to content brings teh awesome stuff image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License by the Soil-Net Library at Cranfield University http://www.soil-net.com/album/Plants/Fruit_Veg/slides/FruitVeg%20Satsuma.html
- Eddie Izzard expression denoting spirit of generosity brought about my having multitude of wonderful things (satsuma segments / content successes) to share around.
- image licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 License by the Soil-Net Library at Cranfield University http://www.soil-net.com/album/Plants/Fruit_Veg/slides/FruitVeg%20Satsuma.html
- Worst. Clipart. Ever. The ‘banned satsuma’
- [insert CC link]Two inevitable truths / pressures:Attention is already extremely unevenly distributed on the web People increasingly consume content on their own terms (devices, browsers, social streams), meaning a loss of control for the content producerMy colleague Mark Higginson, who is director of social media for iCrossing UK, has been helping us in the content team - predominantly a bunch of editors and journalists - to understand what this means for the way that we approach content projects. He's drawn our attention, time and again, whether we thank him for it or not, to the analytics. They reveal, time and again, what he calls the 'fundamental laws everyone ignores'. One law in particular pervades.
- Shirky: “power law distributions tend to arise in social systems where many people express their preferences among many options”
- Shirky: “power law distributions tend to arise in social systems where many people express their preferences among many options”
- What does this mean for content strategy?It means that, when considering the role of editorial or conversational content, the strategist must take into account the relative opportunities afforded by on and off-site content. There are plenty of reasons you may want to have a blog on your own site. For internal communications; as a way of improving social media literacy within your organisation; for easily publishing announcements and updates; to support a specific project But if the primary goal is to win attention on any significant scale, think carefully before proposing a content destination on your own site - one which seeks to build significant levels of traffic and attract increasing numbers of repeat visitors.
- One of the most useful inputs for us as a content team has been the tiered lists of websites in relevant subject areas, collated and ranked by our colleagues in the social media team. They create longlists of sites that are relevant for particular topics and assess them for how authoritative they are and how engaged their users are. These are then filtered, so we can start to see which sites command the most attention. This gives us all kinds of useful information – from simple URLs and contacts details, to clues as to how attention has shaped up online around particular topic areas. [Flickr credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/manitobamaps/2089812938/]
- The results can be visualised in a number of ways, that help us to prioritise the sites we will assess for content and possible opportunities to engage with them
- Assessing sites (whether direct commercial competitors or those that compete for relevant, topic-related attention) can be time consuming. Content profiling is quantitative. At its most basic, it’s binary! It gives us a quick idea of what content types are used by the places where most attention is focused, and also whether these sites use content from elsewhere (e.g. sponsored, syndicated, aggregated, curated).
- By using conditional formatting in Excel to highlight yes and no, we can easily see where in a list of sites content types and sources are often used, and where they are less frequent.
- In this example, we can see that maps are very important (the websites being profiled relate to walking and outdoors).
- By also checking whether these sites use 3rd parties to supply their on-site maps we can see that Google Maps is a very important content partner in this topic area.
- Here we can see that collections of images are also quite popularly published.
- Looking along the horizontal axis reveals sites that are set up as ‘content destinations’ providing a wide array of content types and sources. Big media sites, large established blogs and commercial portals often display this profile.
- Locating gaps can be interesting, and always begs the question – is the content not offered because users don’t want it, because it’s been missed as an opportunity, or because it’s too difficult / expensive for most sites to produce?
- Once we know what the competition for attention looks like, we can start to make smart decisions about whether we attempt to compete for that attention on our own properties or attempt to win attention where it already exists (it’s usually a mixture of both). http://www.flickr.com/photos/seeminglee/2149309015/in/photostream/
- Here’s an example of how we might breakdown the various platforms, activities and the relationships between them.
- And here’s a very simple example of how a couple of pieces of content, on on-site, one off, helped earn iCrossing some attention for Content Strategy earlier this year.
- ‘How to plan a content strategy’ebook cover
- Psst. You can get a PDF copy of the ebook by emailing results@icrossing.co.uk ...
- Mashable is one of those sites at the head of the power law. That’s where the attention for social media marketing is focused. And that’s where iCrossing needs to be to stand the greatest chance of winning attention in that network. And Mashable is ***hungry***So it makes sense for us, and them, to provide relevant, expert content that relates back to our ebook. You can see the blog post here: http://mashable.com/2011/04/01/branded-content/Look at all the tweets and LinkedIn shares – that’s more than iCrossing’s blog, sensational as it is, is liely to attract in months of publishing fresh content.Numbers referred back to iCrossing’sebook landing page were a fraction of the numbers reading the blog post on Mashable, but including significant leads for our marketing team to follow up, having captured users’ email addresses as part of the process of requesting the ebook.
- We’ve already established that editorial skillsare essential, but can’t do the job alone. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/518613153/in/photostream/
- To simplify, the suite of skills tend in these familiar roles tend to be located in these areas of the web ‘ecosystem’
- Pedants = shorthand for those obsessed with detail, accuracy and execution of content.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/morphomir/2407451929/
- Partygoers = networkers, relationship-builders – the kind of people who can make a call and negotiate a content partnership for the editorial folks’ mighty efforts. http://www.flickr.com/photos/morphomir/2407451929/
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/morphomir/2407451929/
- Google Analytics may be a red herring. If the attention for your content is on 3rd party sites, that won’t show up in your dashboard. Qualified referal traffic to your owned spaces (quality rather than volume), signups (e.g. email addresses collected on or off-site) and other measures of reach may be the most important measurements. Ensure your content creators are not beholden to the wrong targets (e.g. building traffic to content published on your site, if you’re in no position to compete for the attention on those terms). You will only make your content creators miserable.
- This is my stupid T-shirt. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpev/6123443244/in/photostream
- I want to marry Flickr and everyone on it.