Nicole Smith's presentation from DCMS Park City in August 2016

1. Lessons from the
Dell Brand
Newsroom
Nicole Smith
Digital Content Strategy

2. 2 of Y
Lenses through which we tell stories:
• Our customers are the heroes and architects of their success
• We champion our customers, enabling them to leverage Dell to meet their needs and
and advocate for their customers, in turn.
Lead with needs, follow with value
text
text
Dell
Our Customers
Their
Customers
Narrative
Max Potential: Transformation, Innovation
Esteem: Thought leadership, collaboration and
support to look better, be better
Belonging: Affinity, sense of community,
relationships nurtured
Safety: Vigilant, responsive
Survival: Stay in business

3. 3 of Y
Evocative + Informative + Persuasive = Movement
Resonanc
e
Alignment
Scalability
Findability
• Relevant to audience
interests, needs, journey
stage
• Editorial values, storytelling
techniques
• Informative: provides
clarity, background,
context, direction
• Evocative
• Priority given to the
intersection of audience
interest and brand POV
• The anticipated behavior is
measurable and a logical
precursor to the desired
outcome.
• Prompts the next steps that
support achieving goals
• Paid, owned, earned promotion
strategy to gain audience
• Google News search
• Third-party pick-ups
with Huffington Post,
Business Insider,
Venture Beat and
others
• Content created in packages that
could be broken apart into smaller,
reusable modules
• Content plans balanced across
Original, Curated content
• Transcreation process to repurpose
Global content at regional level

4. 4 of Y
What we inherited from traditional media
• Transparency
• Fact-checking, accountability
• Attribution, sourcing
Structure
• Editor, writer, creative teams
• Real-time Content calendaring
• Style, governance councils
Form factor
Ethics
• News, features
• Multimedia
• Street photography
Social listening programs to spot
content gaps, shift in conversationAudience-centricity

5. 5
Top 3 Lessons Learned
1
Stay Agile. Responsive content strategies require
data insights and actions based on those insights.
2
Brand as Publisher. Behaving like a traditional media
outlet doesn’t give you all the rights of traditional
media.
3
Customer Centricity. The customer is the hero in
their story. You are their champion, not their savior. If you’d like to chat more, let’s connect on social.
Twitter: @NicoleAtLarge