This document summarizes Clare Kennedy's presentation on delivering a content strategy for higher education institutions. It outlines the challenges faced by the University of the Arts London in consolidating content from seven separate websites onto a single new website. It describes the user research, content quality review process, and strategic solutions implemented, including improved training, governance, and a structured approach to content modeling. Tips are provided on content auditing, review, rewrite, and approval workflows as well as resources for content strategy best practices and online communities.

1. A Practical Guide to Delivering
Content Strategy in HE
Clare Kennedy
@CKLondon
Clare Kennedy
Digital Communication Officer
University of the Arts London
c.l.kennedy@arts.ac.uk

2. • A collegiate University with six distinct and
distinguished Colleges
• Courses in Arts, Design, Media and
Fashion
• 19,000 students from 114 countries and
around 4,000 staff
• Currently have seven separate websites
• Fantastic content – but often spread over
microsites and blogs

3. UAL Digital Life Programme
• New VLE – Aug 2013
• New intranet/portal – Aug 2013
• New website – seven websites moving
to one – Sept 2013
• New course finder – Sept 2013
• New CRM and online events system – Sept 2013

4. T44U, Dublin, November 2012

5. • Seven websites with messy navigation
• Internal politics and entrenched ethos
of content ownership
• Large, devolved network of contributors
• Varying levels of digital communication skill
• Lack of governance, editorial and brand guidance
• Lack of resource and time
UAL’s Content Challenges

6. Strategic Solutions
• User research and testing
• Improved training, guidance and governance
• Tighter editorial control and clearly defined workflow
• Co-ordination across all communication
channels and products
• Structured content to support search and multi-channel
publishing
• Content strategy that never loses sight of the
interplay between
design,
development and
communication

7. Putting Strategy Into Practice:
User Research and Testing
Image: Doorstep Survey, NHS Turns 60 Gallery,
talktalk.co.uk

8. Putting Strategy Into Practice:
User Research and Testing
Image: Doorstep Survey, NHS Turns 60 Gallery,
talktalk.co.uk
• Online website survey
• Online testing
• Telephone interviews
• In-depth focus groups

9. Putting Strategy Into Practice:
Content Quality Review

10. 1. Audit
Systematic and comprehensive audit looking at ownership, quality and traffic.
2. Gather
Existing content is uploaded by web editors into Gather Content using the IA
developed through user testing.
3. Review
Content is reviewed against editorial guidelines, web writing guidance
and brand positioning.
4. Rewrite
Where necessary, content is rewritten or new content commissioned.
5. Approve
Content is approved and signed off by content owners and web team.
Content Quality Review

11. Content Quality Review:
1. Content Audit

12. Content Quality Review:
1. Content Audit
What Didn’t Work
•Too blunt a tool for the complexity of HE web
content
•We were too general in our parameters – you
need to measure the success of every piece
of content against its specific goals

13. Content Quality Review:
1. Content Audit
What Did Work
•Really useful overview of scale and of
our wider content landscape
•Hard data on quality, audience and traffic
•Identified huge amounts of internal-facing content

14. Content Quality Review:
2. Gather Content
www.gathercontent.com

15. Content Quality Review:
2. Gather Content
www.gathercontent.com
• Great tool for managing both a content review
and a content migration process
• Encourages collaboration, allows multiple forms of
review and approval
• Encourages content owners to focus on the copy
• Allows you to structure content in preparation for
multi-channel publishing

16. Content Quality Review:
3. Review

17. Content Quality Review:
3. Review
Web Writing Checklists
These are intended to achieve a minimum standard of web writing,
accessibility and adherence to tone of voice, editorial and brand guidelines
UAL Brand Positioning Statement
This allows us to measure high-profile marketing and communication
content against UAL brand narrative and messaging
Editorial Style Guide
The comprehensive editorial Style Guide contains information on
UAL and College name standards, staff and department name standards,
house style for grammar and punctuation… and much more besides!

18. Content Quality Review:
4. Rewrite/Commission
Rewrite
Where content quality is very low we have asked for rewrites.
Content owners can use the Web Writing Checklists to ensure
that new content meets the goals of the University, College or team,
the specific requirements of the page and our editorial policy.
Commission
Due to the changes in Information Architecture arising from user
research there were gaps where new content was required.
The package of editorial resources is useful when commissioning
new content and briefing digital copywriters.

19. Content Quality Review:
5. Approval
We have introduced a two-step approval process which
will inform our governance and workflow processes post-launch:
1.Content owners check messaging, accuracy
and completeness of information
2. Web team check web writing, SEO, accessibility and
adherence to brand and editorial guidelines

20. Content strategy creates space for a
meaningful dialogue between
communication,
design and
development
RICHARD PROWSE, IWMW 12

21. Tips and tools on
content modelling and
content architecture
www.clevegibbon.com
Content Everywhere:
Strategy and Structure
of Future Ready Content
Rosenfeld Media
Sara Wachter-Boettcher Cleve Gibbon
Structured Content

22. Lose the big content bucket
Image: Giant seaside models, Rimini, telegraph.co.uk

23. Challenges of Responsive Design:
Structured Content
Background image: © Benjamin D. Esham, via Wikimedia
Commons

24. You are not alone….
You are part of a community of practice.

25. Content Strategy Community and Resources
Online – Keep up to date
Kristina Halvorson on the Brain Traffic blog
http://blog.braintraffic.com/
A List Apart Content Strategy
http://www.alistapart.com/topics/content/content-strategy/
Cleve Gibbon: www.clevegibbon.com
Joe Leech http://joeleech.net/
Search on YouTube for Stephen Dunn,
Head of Tech Strategy at The Guardian talking about their Open Platform.
Online – Seminal Articles
Rachel Lovinger, Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data’, 2007
Kristina Halvorson, The Discipline of Content Strategy
Gerry McGovern Is There Such a Thing as Content Strategy?

26. Content Strategy Community and Resources
Books
Kristina Halvorson Melissa Rach,
Content Strategy for the Web: Voices That Matter, 2nd edition, 2012
Erin Kissane, The Elements of Content Strategy, 2011
Karen McGrane, Content Strategy for Mobile, 2012
Sara Wachter-Boettcher,
Content Everywhere: Strategy and Structure for Future-Ready Content, 2012
Events
There are lots of CS events. The big ones are Confab and CS Forum.
But look for your local content strategy groups on Meetup
and if there isn’t one…START ONE!
Social
On Twitter you can look for #contentstrategy, #bathcontent and #cslondon13
and follow all the people I have mentioned above.

27. Keep in touch!
Image © Tim Sheppard, lastwordon.com
@CKLondon
c.l.kennedy@arts.ac.uk
www.arts.ac.uk