Content strategy helps companies address the growing demand for online content by developing processes for creating and organizing content. It considers the needs of multiple departments and audiences. Content strategy uses tools like audits, editorial calendars, and idea tracking to plan content while also remaining opportunistic. The goal is to serve audiences by understanding what they search for and creating relevant material through both planning and responsiveness to current events. Content farms produce large volumes of low-quality content, but quality will prevail if companies focus on their audiences and create helpful, authentic materials.

1. Content Strategy:Killing Time Between Redesigns Dave Coustan For WordCamp Atlanta 1/9/2010

4. What’s Happening At (Non-Media) Companies

5. How Content Strategy Helps

7. Demand Media! Oh Noes! “…[Demand Media] is paying bottom dollar to create “4,000 videos and articles” a day, based only on what’s hot on search engines. They push SEO juice to this content, which is made as quickly and cheaply as possible, and pray for traffic. It works like a charm, apparently. These models create a race to the bottom situation, where anyone who spends time and effort on their content is pushed out of business.” –Mike Arrington, TechCrunch

8. Are The Disruptors  At Being Disrupted? “…the internet has always been filled with crap. So the challenge has always been how you find the cream. That’s where opportunities lie. That’s what Google saw. The new question is whether Google can keep ahead of the content farms and continually find new and better ways to find better stuff. I’ll bet on Google over crap-creators. But they better get cracking.” –Jeff Jarvis,BuzzMachine

10. Search Algorithms are in flux, adapting to the constantly changing information landscape

11. The glut of robo-content is still a glut – needs human curators to make sense of it, filter it, and point to the best stuff. This is also a good role for brands.

12. Every individual question doesn’t have one “right” answer/source / still has to compete against content coming from everywhere

13. It’s not just content, but content strategy that’s king.

15. “Every company [is/should be/can be] a media company.”

16. For Reals… More and more materials being brought online Your online presence – and not just your Web site - is your primary customer touchpoint Companies bypassing media/media dwindling anyway Organizations are needing to drastically increase communications without increasing comms staff Types of communication in demand aren’t in typical communicators’ wheelhouse (not just press, sales, and investor-facing materials) Journalists and consumers aren’t silo-edfrom each other Shift from an internally driven to a hybrid/externally driven publishing model

17. There’s An Agency Feeding Frenzy

18. How Can Content Strategy Help? Helps develop not just content, but internal or hybrid partner processes for creating content An agenda that supercedes but considers Marketing, CorpComm, PR, Customer Service, Media, etc. (editorial direction) A way to tie listening/search/research/feedback practices more directly into their publishing/creation practices Homes for all of the important things online It’s built for collaboration/modular It cares about visibility

19. Tools And Techniques For Content Strategyimageby lunchbreath on Flickr

20. Core Principles Your enterprise should serve an audience(s) and be engaged in the world around it. Material should be organized in ways that both offer an easy path for findability, and remain open to multiple points of access from elsewhere. Measure against both internal and external entry points. Take this from the content farms – what you choose to create should be aware of and informed by what people are searching for, the language they are using to look for it, and what they’re finding when they get there. Always create for humans, but be aware of systems and robots. Editorial strategy is a mix of planning and opportunism.

21. Planning/Schematic Who is each part of your site speaking to? -> What various thing can the site offer that that audience would want? -> In what way can you deliver that?

22. Planning/Schematic Who is each part of your site speaking to? -> What various thing can the site offer that that audience would want? -> In what way can you deliver that? Via Kristen Taylor Re:Knight Foundation

23. Planning/Schematic Who is each part of your site speaking to? -> What various thing can the site offer that that audience would want? -> In what way can you deliver that?

24. Planning/Schematic This also helps to establish content types, which help set user expectations.

25. Opportunistic Path Audience knowns + Topical Hook/Moment Of Scarcity + Creative Solution (The Stuffo Model)

27. Audit What’s really out there? who are the experts and enthusiasts where are the discussions taking place (and the traces) what’s the culture around them like are there gaps? What you’d find if you didn’t know how to search very well what real words do people use what do they find when they get there what might be an easy win Internally what material do you have to draw from? What unique information do you have access to? what audiences do you already have that you need to serve? What are their expectations who are *your* experts? it’s ok to separate the day to day “staff” from the SME

28. Audit Tools Traditional SEO tools, repurposed Google Insights for Search Internal Search Logs Social Media Research Tools, free and paid (Radian6, Techrigy, Sysomos, BlogPulse, etc.) Conversations/Surveys/Interviews

29. Google Trends

30. Google Insights For Search

31. Editorial Process/Flow Editorial Calendar Regular research reports/tip sheets Idea Generation and Vetting Process

32. Idea and Assignment Tracking

33. And Don’t Forget: Take Care Of Your Audience. 1. Find a subject you care about.2. Do not ramble, though.3. Keep it simple.4. Have the guts to cut.5. Sound like yourself.6. Say what you mean to say.7. Pity the readers. -Kurt Vonnegut

34. Fin.Dave Coustanemail: Extraface@gmail.comweb: http://www.extraface.comtwitter: Extrafaceask me stuff: http://extraface.tumblr.com/ask1-570-4TOOFIS