1. Content Discovery
KEVI N P NICHOLS , DIRECTOR AND GLOBAL LEAD OF CONTENT STRATEGY @
SAPIENTNITRO
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 1

2. Today‘s Agenda
1. Introduction
2. What is Content
3. Define Content Strategy
4. Discovery Phase
5. Content Inventory
6. Content Audit
7. Content Audit Report
8. Questions and Feedback
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 2

3. 1. Introduction
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4. About Kevin
1. Heads up Content Strategy for
SapientNitro – Director and Global
Lead, Content Strategy,
SapientNitro
2. 18 Years in digital and interactive
3.
Has rolled-out content solutions for
dozens of fortune 100 companies
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5. About SapientNitro
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6. 2. What is content?
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7. What is Content?
Content always communicates but not all communication is
content.
Source: http://americanhistory.si.edu/cobol/COBOL002-800.jpg
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8. What is Content?
Content is the communication recorded on some type of physical asset.
Image Source: http://dese.mo.gov/moheritage/images/WeShallOvercome/WeShallOvercome87.jpg
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9. What is Content?
&
Content has a creator and a consumer.
1st Image Source: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/images/marden_seac_LR.jpg
2nd Image Source Image Source: http://www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/jb/modern/jb_modern_tvkid_1_m.jpg
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10. What is Content?
Content is recorded as a physical asset that communicates an idea
and can theoretically be seen, heard or viewed for future use.
Image Source: http://sirismm.si.edu/siahistory/imagedb/2002-10638.jpg
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 10

11. Bringing it home….
In the digital world, content is an experience created by
someone and recorded and stored electronically, either to be
shared or not shared with others.
Image Source: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/multimedia/images/2010/iotw/reeves.html
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12. Attributes of Content
It’s a brand AND business
asset with tangible and
measurable ROI.
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13. Attributes of Content
It’s the ‗life-force‘ of a brand
AND all content IS brand
content. Customer
Trust
with
Brand
Product Content
Or Service
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14. Attributes of Content
It’s an investment; without
content, brands don‘t make
money. Period.
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15. Attributes of Content
Content = Success
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16. 2. Content Strategy at
SapientNitro
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17. Content Strategy @ SapientNitro
Content Strategy Defined:
Getting the Right Content to
the Right User at the Right
Time.
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18. Content Strategy @ SapientNitro
Getting the Right Content to
the Right User at the Right
Time.
Content Experience Content Delivery Content Governance
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19. Content Strategy @ SapientNitro
Content Experience
Defines the overall experience for the end-user, such
as:
 What content is on a Website or a mobile site?
 What content is required to support a customer call
center?
 What content is on a product‘s package?
Answers the question:
 What content do we need to create a quality,
meaningful and relevant experience?
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 19

20. Content Strategy @ SapientNitro
Content Delivery
We‘ve pioneered a proven approach to a closed-loop content strategy that provides a flexible framework for achieving content success. Building from this
approach, which incorporates industry best practices, we have tailored a process to fit the unique needs, goals, and focus areas for any type of project involving
content..
• Audit content
• Conduct stakeholder interviews/surveys
• Analyze and validate content ecosystem (sites,
channels, social, partners)
• Deploy content and STEP 1: • Analyze competitors’ content experience
application changes ASSESS
• Use analytics to determine
areas of success and failure
• Plan periodic audits • Set objectives
• Adhere to editorial calendar • Define measurement plan
• Determine accountability
STEP 5: STEP 2: • Create content recommendations
MAINTAIN & • Define governance strategy
OPTIMIZE PLAN
DEFINE
GOVERNANCE MODEL
• Create assets and copy • Plan experience and content
• Input into CMS • Define new workflows
• Review and test • Prepare staffing recommendations
• Implement governance STEP 4: STEP 3: • Prepare metadata strategy
model and workflows CREATE DESIGN • Develop taxonomies
• Finalize editorial calendar • Develop editorial guidelines
• Design content model
• Develop content production/migration plan
• Draft editorial calendar
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 20

21. Content Strategy @ SapientNitro
Content Governance
Answers the following question:
 What are the operational processes and
mechanisms required to ensure continued success?
Defines a model to support, maintain and evolve the
content ecosystem.
Governs:
 Content experience, it‘s delivery and the tools,
processes, and systems to support it.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 21

22. CS @ SapientNitro
Discover/Define Design Implementation
Content Assessment Content Model Migration Plan
• Content Inventory • Content Entry
• Competitive Assessment Content Matrix • Resource Planning
• Content Audit
Content Inputs into IA Content Production Plan
Content Strategy POV – Future State
Recommendations (the ‗strategy‘ in Content Lifecycle Workflows Content Lifecycle and Tool roll-out
content strategy)
• Requirements Metadata & XML Definition
• Recommendations
• Conceptual content model Taxonomy
• Translation & Localization
• Metadata & Tagging Metrics Definition to Measure Success
• Maintenance
Schema-Component-Template Map
Governance Model
Editorial Calendar
Editorial Guide/Content Style Guide
• Voice & Tone Definition
• Usage Guidelines
• Authoring Guidelines
• Writing for SEO
Copy Deck Template
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23. 4. Discovery Phase
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24. Discovery Phase
Discover/Define Design Implementation
Content Assessment CMS Content Model Migration Plan
• Content Inventory • Content Entry
• Competitive Assessment Content Matrix • Resource Planning
• Content Audit
Content inputs into IA Content Production Plan
Content Strategy POV – Future State
Recommendations (the ‘strategy’ in CMS Workflows
content strategy)
• Requirements Taxonomy
• Recommendations
• Conceptual content model Schema-Component-Template Map
• Translation & Localization
• Metadata & Tagging Governance Model
• Maintenance • Editorial workflows
• Processes
• Staffing plan
• Business Org Structure
Editorial Calendar
Editorial Guide
• Voice & Tone Definition
• Usage Guidelines
• Authoring Guidelines
• Writing for SEO
Copy Deck Template
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25. Discovery Phase - Purpose
Understand the current-state content ecosystem to
frame the future-state ecosystem:
 For content experience;
 For content delivery; and,
 For content governance.
Recommend a high-level future-state model.
Goal: Gain enough understanding of content
eco-system to kick-off design phase.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 25

26. Discovery Phase – Role in Content Strategy
Arguably the MOST important phase in content
strategy work because it frames what is necessary to
define the future state solution.
Is the time and opportunity for you to get to know the
content ecosystem. Without this understanding your
solution will have holes / issues.
To cut corners in this phase is not only risky, it‘s
irresponsible.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 26

27. Discovery Phase – Deliverables
Current-state assessment of content ecosystem:
 Content Inventory – quantitative assessment of content and its properties.
 Content Audit – qualitative assessment of content ecosystem (should not
just include the content itself). Requires analysis of content AND how its
lifecycle, including the input from stakeholders (stakeholder interviews).
Audit Report with findings, gaps and issues analysis and future-state
recommendations:
 Audit Findings;
 Future-state recommendations (tie these to issues uncovered); and,
 High-level roadmap for future-state.
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28. Discovery Phase – Going into Discovery; Inputs
 Know the project parameters – why are you doing it? These should come
from a project brief or SOW.
 If you don‘t have a project brief and need to uncover this information,
review SOW and ensure alignment with project stakeholder / owner.
 If no SOW exists, ensure alignment on the project with key stakeholders at
a high-level: answer questions such as why we are doing this and what is
the high-level scope (just a website? Mobile? All digital properties, etc..)?
 Come up with a preliminary team that represents the various stakeholders
at play—include technology, marketing, communications, SEO, analytics,
business leads, etc..
 Know who controls the budget and the project‘s primary stakeholders,
understand each of their unique drivers to justify difficult or politically-
charged decisions against these drives.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 28

29. Discovery Phase – Going into Discovery; Inputs
 Request the following deliverables, although many maybe unavailable.
Authoring standards Creative or content briefs
Editorial schedules or calendars with campaigns, new
Authoring templates or copy decks product introductions, or any significant milestones
within the content production process
Branding guides Market rollout matrixes
CMS design documents, such as content models Marketing and business objectives
Metrics used to measure content or operational efficiency
CMS/DMS or asset management system documentation
of publishing or data management
Competitive analysis Publication plans
Content inventories and audits Publication processes and rules
Content lifecycle diagrams and/or processes with actors SEO strategy
Content matrixes Taxonomy and metadata standards or schemas
Content or copy style guides Technological standards or constraints
Content strategy point of view Users or audience segments and personas
Source: Taken from Kevin P Nichols’ forthcoming: Enterprise Content Strategy (ECS): The Practitioner‘s Guide.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 29

30. Discovery Phase – Outputs
 A snapshot of the volume, accuracy, relevance, quality, timeliness,
usability, and find-ability of content.
 Content lifecycle/production workflows of current-state.
 Issues, gaps, and redundancies with the content itself and content
lifecycle processes.
 Systems and integration points.
 Understanding of how competitors treat content and content
organization.
 Consumers or users who interact with the content.
 Business logic or rules for content intelligence.
 Content organization, including taxonomies and metadata schemas.
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31. 5. Content Inventory
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32. Discovery Phase – Content Inventory
Purpose
 Documents the volume of current state content ecosystem in terms of
type, volume and scope.
 Is critical to understand the content landscape.
 Is critical for any type of content migration.
 Requires manual AND system approach.
–
Goal
 Gain understanding of all the types of content represented in the current
state, including any relevant properties about that content.
 Define and identify any gaps, issues or pain-points associated with the
content (requires understanding competitive and/or best in class digital
sites).
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 32

33. Discovery Phase – Content Inventory – How to do it?
 Start with a template that captures the information you need—use Excel.
 Know why are you doing this work:
 Is it a new Website?
 A new mobile site?
 How many digital properties must you survey?
 Why are you doing this project?
 Define the level of detail required – which information must you capture?
 If you don‘t know, start with the first two levels of information. On a
Website, this would be first two levels in navigation.
 If a Web or mobile is being surveyed, use for a sitemap as starting point if
available.
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34. Discovery Phase – Content Inventory – How to do it?
 Have the Tech and BA teams validate which level of detail is required:
 Do we need to inventory just to the page-level?
 Do we need to capture content types?
 Do we need to capture information at the object-level (module-level)
 Do we need to capture assets?
 Do we need to capture metadata associated with the page?
Note: for new Websites, CMS implementations and large-scale sites, all of
the above should most likely be captured.
–
 Run a spider to determine which information is indexed (for web, mobile,
etc.):
 What the spider does not capture should ALSO be noted (non-indexed
content).
 Leverage the spider index to populate some fields in the template, but you
should review these pages manually.
 Ask for any existing inventories or audits, if in a CMS, have team generate
a report of all published site(s).
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 34

35. Discovery Phase – Content Inventory – How to do it?
 Content inventory fields in the Content Audit/Inventory Template (2012
Version) template found at:
http://www.kevinpnichols.com/enterprise_content_strategy/
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36. Discovery Phase – Content Inventory – How to do it?
 As you complete the work, circulate it with the stakeholders who create or
work with the content; have each indicate who owns which content and
any necessary inputs/outputs or systems or data pulls.
 Validate it with stakeholders and ensure you have received sign-off on the
following:
 All types of content within the line of business are captured;
 Each content type is prioritized;
 Any inputs or outputs per content type are adequately captured. That is, what
is required to create the content? What are the outputs? Use the
inputs/outputs fields in the inventory spreadsheet to note this detail;
 Any types of content that are missing or are known to be forthcoming (e.g., a
future campaign or a new product launch); and,
 Authors and sources for content.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 36

37. Group Exercise
 Website X is doing a new design of their mobile and Websites. The scope
is open but it includes the following:
 A new mobile and Website redesign – with content migration and new
content creation to support the design experience;
 A new CMS implementation;
 Synergy between the digital properties; and,
 Localized, and international content.
 Exercise:
 Break up into teams of 15 people.
 Use the Content Audit/Inventory Template (2012 Version) template found at:
http://www.kevinpnichols.com/enterprise_content_strategy/.
 Determine which fields are required and begin to fill out inventory.
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38. 6. Audit
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39. Discovery Phase – Audit
Purpose
 Captures the issues in the content-ecosystem.
 The ‗content audit‘ is one aspect and assesses the efficacy, richness,
relevance, accessibility, measurability and optimization of the content
experience.
 Also includes an audit of the end-to-end content lifecycle and any
organizational governance model(s).
Goal
 Gain an understanding of all strengths, weaknesses, gaps and issues with
the current-state content eco-system to frame the future state.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 39

40. Discovery Phase – Content Audit – How to do it?
 Draw from the project brief, brand guide and any information known
about the project to come up with a set of principles for evaluation. This
includes reviewing competitive models.
 Ensure that you know the criteria for evaluation (this content is rich
because of X…).
 Use the inventory and place additional columns in the spreadsheet to
capture any issues or qualitative information about the content.
 Survey existing comparable Websites or digital properties to see how
competitors treat content. Use this as part of the evaluation process to
determine where and how effective the content actually is.
 Heuristic analysis can also prove useful, if using it, use a scorecard to
score different criteria in evaluating the content.
 Use stakeholder interviews to fill-in missing pieces of information.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 40

41. Discovery Phase – Content Audit – How to do it?
 Content inventory fields in the Content Audit/Inventory Template (2012
Version) template found at:
http://www.kevinpnichols.com/enterprise_content_strategy/
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 41

42. Discovery Phase – Content Ecosystem Audit – How to do it?
 Conduct stakeholder interviews to ensure a complete picture of the content
ecosystem is understood.
 This effort should be ongoing throughout the Discovery phase.
 Ensure all stakeholders that represent or deal with content are within the
interviews, these could include:
All Product Line or business line content owners Localization expert
Asset Managers MarCom Manager
Brand Manager Marketing manager
CMS Team Manager metadata specialist
Content creators or authors Mobile specialist
Content management managers, Production (Video/Multimedia) Specialists
Content managers per business units, Regional content managers
Copywriters search engine optimization (SEO) experts,
CRM Managers taxonomists,
International regional managers, Web Publishing and CMS Managers
Legal (Content reviewers for Legal/compliance teams)
 Note, a present member of the technology team, such as a technical architect and
a business analyst should be in all key checkpoints and decision making
meetings.
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43. Discovery Phase – Content Ecosystem Audit – How to do it?
 Schedule two hours for each interview.
 Send out the protocol before the meeting and list out any
deliverables and/or examples you would like the interviewee
to bring.
 For CMS or systems folks, pre-empt the interviewee that you
may want to see the CMS or system.
 Set up Web-share for meetings if you are remote so that the
interviewee can show you file or CMS structures.
 Notify the participants if you plan to record them (as this is
the law).
 Ensure that the participants have access to Web share tools
prior to the event, if conducting interviews remotely.
 Ensure the interviewee is briefed on the nature of the project
prior to the interview.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 43

44. Discovery Phase – Content Ecosystem Audit – How to do it?
 Use Kevin P Nichols‘ stakeholder interview protocol as a starting point
found at: http://www.kevinpnichols.com/enterprise_content_strategy/
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 44

45. Group Exercise
 Break up into the same groups as you did for the previous exercise.
 Go to Kevin‘s website and download the stakeholder protocol interview
(you already have the audit from downloading the content inventory doc):
 http://www.kevinpnichols.com/enterprise_content_strategy/
 Take the inventory and begin to fill-out the audit fields.
 Review the protocol and determine which types of groups you might meet
with and what you might ask them.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 45

46. 7. Audit Report
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47. Discovery Phase – Audit Report
Purpose
 Roll-up all the findings from the current state assessment.
 Make recommendations for the design phase around content types and
features, content production and lifecycle, metadata and search,
accessibility compliance, taxonomy development, and content
governance.
 This document becomes the design roadmap for content strategy.
Goal
 Convey a picture of the current state, any issues and position the
opportunities for the future state in a series of recommendations.
© 2011 SapientNitro | a division of Sapient Corporation 47

48. Discovery Phase – Audit – How to do it?
 Construct a document that captures gaps, issues and pain-points
 Tie each issue to a future-state recommendation
 Example:
Issue:
Accessibility is compromised because images do not use ALT text, which is also an SEO
issue.
Recommendation:
1. Ensure all images have ALT text.
2. Ensure this content is worked into the copy decks for each area of content on the site.
3. Ensure SEO keywords are leveraged for all ALT text.
4. For any icon or button conveying an action to be taken by the user, use explicit language that conveys what the
user must do: ―Search X Site.‖
5. Make ALT text for images a requirement for page publishing (all images require ALT text).
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49. Discovery Phase – Audit Report Sample TOC
 Introduction—Scope of the audit, what it covers, and why it was completed, as well
as the process used to conduct it (e.g., inventoried content, audited it, identified
key issues, sought sign off, etc.)
 Content Quality—Brand integrity
 Content Quality—Relevance, timeliness, and accuracy
 Content Quality—Richness and effective messaging
 Content Structure—How content is labelled, categorized, taxonomy, etc.
 Content Prioritization —Content priorities per key pages (e.g., priorities on the
homepage, key landing pages, etc.)
 Metadata and SEO
 Accessibility Compliance
 Metrics and Analytics
 Content Production and Content Lifecycle Findings—These should document the
workflow processes and any issues, gaps, and requirements for the future-state
design
 Website Content Governance
Source: Taken from Kevin P Nichols’ forthcoming: Enterprise Content Strategy (ECS): The Practitioner‘s Guide.
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50. Group Exercise
 Talk through the issues we found on X Website and mobile site and what
future state opportunities we have identified.
 What did you learn from this exercise?
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51. 7. Feedback and Contact info
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52. Questions
 What did you want to learn that you still have questions about?
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53. Keep the conversation going.
 EMAIL: zKnichols@sapient.com
 Kevinpnichols.com (personal thought leadership) SapientNitro.com
(SapientNitro‘s Website).
 Twitter: @kpnichols
 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kevin-nichols/0/b50/160
SapientNitro: Content Strategy POV
 http://www.sapient.com/assets/ImageDownloader/1153/75807049_Content_Str
ategy.pdf
SapientNitro 2013 Insights (Trends and Analysis) POV
http://www.sapient.com/assets/ImageDownloader/1477/Insights2013Full.pdf
I have an article in here entitled: The Future of Content Experience and How to
Design for it.
Also, please feel free to leave a comment on my personal Website if the templates are
useful. Thank you!
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