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Introduction to Content Strategy
- 1. An Introduction to Content Strategy Melinda Miller @melindamiller Daniel Newman @CreativeNewman Cate Kompare @CateKompare
- 2. Brought to you by UX Book Club CU
- 6. A LIST APART • DEC. 16, 2008 “Until we commit to treating content as a critical asset worthy of strategic planning and meaningful investment, we’ll continue to churn out worthless content in reaction to unmeasured requests. … Our customers still won’t find what they’re looking for. And we’ll keep failing to publish useful, usable content that people actually care about.” –Kristina Halvorson
- 7. 92% of respondents have content strategy problems
- 13. Content
- 14. Content+Strategy
- 16. Courtesy of carriejeberhardt via Flickr
- 17. Who: Your Starting Line-
- 18. Where are you right now?
- 23. How good is it?
- 24. Find out what else you
- 30. Voice & Tone
- 33. How will you maintain it?
- 35. Time crunch
- 36. Courtesy of Scoobay via Flickr Who can do all of this?
- 39. Thank You
Editor's Notes
- Co-author of Content Strategy for the Web Coming here April 29! Keynote speaker of University of Illinois Web Conference First read in spring 2012 when 2nd edition came out. Inspiring book because it helps you take action … We recommend to everyone. We both have heard Kristina speak, and we can only hope to be half as entertaining an informative today as Kristina usually is. http://contentstrategy.com
- Warning: We are not full-time content strategists …
- A little history … 1998, big UX agencies such as Razorfish and Sapient Nitro begin hiring content strategists, in the subsequent 10 years UX professionals really begin the public conversation. Although content strategy wasn’t new term or even in a new concept in the late 2000’s, that’s when a few people began championing the Content Strategy as a concept that the web desperately needed. Rachel Lovinger 2007: “As website functionality has increased and web users have become savvier, sites have had to meet the demand for sophisticated interaction and more content to support it. But simply more content won’t do; it has to be accurate and relevant. It has to be meaningful.”
- And in late 2008, just prior to publishing the 1st edition of her book, Kristina Halvorson wrote … 2009 Kristina Halvorson and Karen McGrane convened a content strategy discussion at the annual Information Architecture Summit. And in 2011, Kristina’s firm Brain Traffic launched ConFab, the conference for Content Strategy, which has now become a series of 4 annual events, with U.S. and European main conferences, and specialized conferences for non-profits, and (notably for this audience), Higher Ed. That one’s Nov. 12-14th in Atlanta. http://alistapart.com/article/thedisciplineofcontentstrategy
- And clearly, we’re all still struggling with many of these same problems. U of I Webmaster survey results -Low stakeholder and author buy in -volume, not enough time/staff (60% team of <10), outdated -disorganized, lacking cohesion -35% no governance
- Great things are happening! -tools are already being used
- -different fields -can skill share (person with network of content experts), teach others -evangelize
- Content is hard Content can … make us feel overwhelmed and scared and helpless.
- Sometimes we feel like the proverbial black sheep … we’re different, we’re the only ones worried about the content.
- Content becomes political. And we get tired of fighting about it.
- What is content? text, images, video, audio, data, user comments, online conversations
- What is content strategy? Beyond just creation of content. Halvorson book: “Guides your plans for the creation, delivery, and governance of your content.”
- Framework explained by Halvorson and co-author Rach in their book. It’s excellent. Go read it. … We're going to discuss some the tools and techniques we've used and hopefully whet your appetite for finding out more.
- How does content strategy fit in IA, UX? As Louis Rosenfeld has said, "If [information architecture] is the spatial side of information, I see content strategy as the temporal side of the same coin." “IA is rarely responsible for editorial, workflow, or governance components of content planning and development. For UX teams, these are the areas that, when overlooked, tend to blow up project timelines and compromise content quality.” -Kristina Halvorson Don’t design and develop without content - No lorem ipsum! Copy is the interface. SEO benefits - SEO is not UX, but we need to think about these things, and it’s impossible if we don’t have a voice at the table. http://uxmag.com/articles/content-strategy-and-ux-a-modern-love-story http://contentini.com/content-strategy-ia-ux-or-seo-whats-my-problem/
- Identify the people in power (who makes what decisions), define the rules (content creation guidelines), and determine when new rules are required by measuring content effectiveness and deciding what needs to change. Do you know who is going to (re)write all the content for the new site? Does someone have overall responsibility for content quality during the project and beyond launch? Do you know (roughly) how many hours per week will be dedicated to maintaining content on the new site? Does the current site have dedicated (subject expert) content owners?
- Dan Who are your users? What do you know about your current users? What don’t you know. Engage in user research. What are your goals? Review strategic materials, conduct a SWOT analysis. Competitive analysis Where do you want to be?
- It’s a spreadsheet. MUST BE DONE Shows what you have and where it is https://www.diigo.com/user/melindamiller/%22content%20inventory%22?type=all&snapshot=no&sort=updated
- Link ID: — numbering system as we move through the site. Link Name: Title URL: clickable Document type: Topics, Keywords, analytics, rank, audience Make it up as you go. Try to nail down what you’re capturing in 1st 100 pages. IF NAVIGATION IS BAD ... this is going to be hard but even more important
- Is reference throughout the project
- Effective tracking sheds light on: •where your users come from (searching within the site or via search engines), •how and how often they share your content with others, •how your content is being digested (time spent), •what causes people to leave (bounce rates), •what the most popular topics are and how to optimize your content to meet these demands (keyword and phrase tracking), and •movement between related materials. http://alistapart.com/article/content-strategist-as-digital-curator
- Audit your inventory --> Qualitative Identifying ROT — redundant, outdated, trivial content. Can do in spreadsheet. Figure out what you want to keep or improve on and what you want to get rid of. Let content go — your website is not your library or your archive. If it’s not serving your users, get rid of it. http://meetcontent.com/blog/rot-the-low-hanging-fruit-of-content-analysis/
- Once you know what you have, start focusing out what you don’t have.
- Stakeholder workshop --> brainstorming --> Don’t ask what content do you want? Discuss goals Identify users & characteristics Identify what tasks organization needs users to do Discuss what information the users need to be informed, entertained, or persuaded Discuss Connections to other content on site
- Involving “Users” Old bureaucratic institution centered site. Completely transformed …
- Hearing from parent group enlightened our team and client —> new focus was friendly, caring, helpful. Stakeholders observed and got to hear first hand what "users" said.
- Affinity diagramming process -- loose version Focus question Put ideas on sticky notes (orange) Group them (combining like items) and label the groups -- yellow Actual process is more formal is a way to deal with discord and get away from edge cases. Also: Interviews, surveys, usability tests, analyzing contact points with users such questions that come into a general email address or interviewing the person who sits at your front desk
- Messages are not copy but will influence content you create Define primary and secondary messages. Hierarchy. They become the story arc for your entire site.
- So much of content strategy is not just what’s being said, but how it’s being said and how it’s being contextualized. More so than design styles, content is your brand’s personality. Authenticity? WHO is speaking?
- Wolfram site example
- Wolfram site example
- You’ve got a crew together. Now you need to keep them on track. Will you have a (digital) content style guide? Editorial calendar Guidelines, content models, templates Controlled vocabularies/classifications Process for constant reinforcement
- PAGE TABLES Companion to a wireframe. It’s a document. Reflect my ideas for content as I’m thinking about the structure. Can be collaborative. Handoff to copy writer. Objective of page, source material, subject matter experts, maintenance frequency, outstanding questions --> content priorities. Experiment with format. http://alistapart.com/article/content-templates-to-the-rescue
- Most people seriously misjudge how much time is needed to plan, create, and maintain content. Should seem overwhelming to you Start planning for your content at the start of a project and never stop. Pixo examples --- it doesn’t become real until you start working on content ... even if you have a good wireframe with a good approval process there are going to be gotchas.
- So who can do content strategy? Anyone! While it’s awesome to have a “Content Strategist”, it’s not needed. It takes a team, especially for big, hairy, content heavy sites. Involve people.
- What’s next? We’d like to plant a seed that Champaign-Urbana needs its own Content Strategy Group. Our guts say there is plenty of interest here. 3 years ago there wasn’t a UX group and now we have 140+ members. We can’t do the organizing but we’re willing to lend some advice and know some of our members would be interested. http://content-strategy.meetup.com/
- No offense, but, if Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has a content strategy group … so should Champaign-Urbana. Tons of great resources out there --- google group, linked in group, conferences, blogs http://www.jonathoncolman.org/2013/02/04/content-strategy-resources/
- UX Book Club will be discussing this book again Monday, April 7 at 6:30 p.m. at Quality. http://www.meetup.com/UXBookClubCU/events/155674802/