A Crash Course in Content Strategy

A workshop at the School of Visual Concepts

January 25, 2013

Your host: James Callan@scarequotes

(This workshop stands on the blog posts and books of giants.)

Introductions!Who are you?

What brings you here?

What’s a website with content that you like?(Bonus points if it’s not straight-up media.)

What do you like about it?

Why is content important?

“You are all in publishing!”

Jeffrey Zeldman, king of the web

http://www.zeldman.com/2011/03/15/web-design-is-publishing/

A content strategy gives you the structure to decide what to

publish, accounts for the resources you have,

and helps you plan for the future.

People don’t visit your site to see the amazing design.

People don’t visit your site for a great user experience.

They want your content.

From Signal vs. Noise: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3404-reminder-design-is-still-about-words

From Signal vs. Noise: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3404-reminder-design-is-still-about-words

“Like a gentleman in a finely crafted suit who wants to burp you the alphabet, even if your website looks nice, no one will stick around to hear what you have to say if you don’t craft something compelling.”

Jason Santa Maria@jasonsantamaria

http://jasonsantamaria.com/articles/the-elements-of-content-strategy/

“Apple has ... given us a solid example of how high-quality content contributes to a user’s experience, and how, when

you reduce the quality, it interferes with that experience.”

Jared Spool, @jmspool

“iOS6 Maps Is An Incredible Giftto UX and Content Professionals”

It’s also a lot of work, if you want to do it well.

Divide into teams of 2-3 people. We’re going to go analyze some web content.

When you’re in your teams, get a website from me.

Then we’ll go to the computer lab.

Pull up your site on a computer.Start looking through the content.

Click through as many pages as you can.

Gut check: Is it good?Is there enough? Too much?

Take notes.

Be ready to spend 5 minutes telling us:What content was useful and usable?

What content was missing?What’s the most ridiculous thing you found?

And we’re back downstairs. Keep your burger joint in mind as we

discuss more content tactics.

Step 1:Know what content you’re working with.

The content inventory: The cornerstone of any

successful content strategy!

How do you know if your content is good?

Inventory and audit.

Inventory: What content do we have?

Audit: How good is the content we have?

The content inventory

Yes. It really is a big, big spreadsheet

that documents every page—every piece of content—

on your website.

How do you do a content inventory? Click each link on your site.

Document what you find.

Or get a bot to do it for you.

Things often tracked in a content inventory:• Page ID/number• URL• Page Title• Parent • Page Description• Components• SEO Information (metadata, keywords)• Who inside the organization owns that content.

The inventory is quantitative. What’s on the site?

Followup: the content audit.That’s qualitative: How good is what you’ve got?

Is there ROT?Look for content that’s:

RedundantOutdated or

Trivial

You can tailor an audit to evaluate all kinds of qualities. Is content on brand?

Is it accessible?Do people understand it?

Is it meeting customer needs?Is it in a usable format?

(There are many possible measures.)

So your audit uncovers some problems.

Now what?

Remember the nutshell:1. What content do we have?2. What content do we need?3. Fill the gap: edit, create & curate.

Erin Kissane’s even shorter breakdown:

1. Evaluate.2. Design.3. Execute.

Step 2: Give yourself metrics for evaluating content.

Message Architecture

What are your brand’s key messages?

Are you delivering them? How?Does your audience believe

you?

Your message architecture is not a tagline, or a mission

statement. It’s communication goals.

Specific terminology.The backbone of your

messaging.

What content on the site–just content, not layout–can we keep,

as is?What needs to be edited?

What’s missing and needs to be created?

And what needs to be killed?

Let’s try an exercise. Let’s come up with a message architecture

for each of your burger joints.

When you know your messaging architecture,all of your content can be on brand.

Even the details!

One example of contrasts: Cook’s Illustrated vs. Allrecipes.com

“I hate the idea that cooking should be a celebration or a party. Cooking is about putting food on the table night after night,

and there isn’t anything glamorous about it. Cooking isn’t creative, and it isn’t easy.

It’s serious, and it’s hard to do well, just as everything worth doing is damn hard.”

Neither approach is the right approach.They work for their respective companies.

So we’ve done steps 1 and 2. We’re doing content strategy!

This would be a good time for lunch, if we haven’t done it already.

Back up a sec:What is content strategy?

First word: What is content?

“In the web industry, anything that conveys meaningful information to humans is called

‘content.’”

Erin Kissane@kissane

The Elements of Content Strategy

“Content is anything an organization or individual creates and shares

to tell their story.”

Ann Handley@marketingprofs

words

audio

images

comments

cartoons

illustrations

photos

podcasts Facebook posts

blog posts

navigation

tweets

video

interface copyslideshows

infographics

white papers

help articles

error messages

(It’s not just words.)

Word two: What is strategy?

It’s a plan for getting stuff done in order to achieve a goal.

Put ’em together: What is content strategy?

“Content strategy for the web is about bringing editorial skill and methods into

website planning. In order to create good content, you need a plan for how you’re

going to get it and keep it coming.”

Elizabeth McGuane@emcguane

http://mappedblog.com/2010/10/04/fear-loathing-and-content-strategy/

“Content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design.”

Rachel Lovinger@rlovinger

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/content-strategy-the

“Content is story. Content strategy is storytelling.”

Prateek SarkarDirector, Creative Services

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts

The benchmark definition:

“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication,

and governance of useful, usable content.”

Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web

Creation: Who’s providing your content?

Publication: How are you getting your content to users?

Governance: How do you keep content up-to-date?

When do you send content out to pasture?

Useful: How does this content benefit you?

How does it benefit your user?

Usable: Can people find, consume, and act on your

content?

Speaking of “usable”:Is content strategy part of

user experience (UX)?

You can’t create great UX around bad content.

“Content strategy helps organizations use content

to achieve their business goals.”

Melissa Rach@melissarach

“(God help a business if UX isn’t one of their business goals, but helping the user

isn’t an inherent part of content strategy).”

Melissa Rach@melissarach

One more thing to note: “Content strategy is not a single solution

or deliverable. It's a process and a mindset.”

Is content strategy part of marketing?

(Marketers have been very excitedto talk content strategy!)

“Everything you write should be crafted with the intention of selling, educating, or increasing customer

loyalty.”

“Important content like FAQs, Docs, Press Releases, Welcome messages, etc.

sometimes fall into some other bucket of ‘Content That Does No Marketing™.’

Bullshit. It’s all marketing when you’re doing it right.”

Des TraynorCOO, Intercom@destraynor

Step 3:Use your content strategy todrive your content marketing.

Content strategyvs.

content marketing.

Content strategy:The plan. The big picture.

Content marketing:The execution. Tactics.

Content marketing:Content that earns you interest

and wins you customers.

Pop quiz:Can you name some creative ways

companies sold bubblegumusing content marketing?

Hey kids! Comics!

Baseball cards!

Let’s look at a couple of real, recent examples of

content marketing informed by content strategy.

Another example: Burt’s Bees

Any ideas for using content marketing for your burger

joints?

Here’s what Comodo, a restaurant in NYC, did.

Again, having that architecture helps you

drive what you produce. It makes you more effective at collaboration with other departments, such as SEO.

Content strategy is closely allied with user experience.

It’s closely allied with marketing.

“Good links are important, but good experiences are essential. Need to build links? Start by building out good content.”

Jonathon Colman@jcolman

Content strategists may be involved in:

Project management. Data modeling.

Change management.Social media.

Editorial.Taxonomy.

Information architecture.SEO.

And other stuff.

Different content strategists

have different emphases.

Front-end content strategy What your audience sees and experiences. It includes:• User experience content strategy• Marketing and editorial content strategy

Back-end content strategy This is how to make the content work well. It includes:• "Intelligent" content • Content governance and operations

(That breakdown courtesy of Kathy Hanbury.)

@kathyhanbury

What makes good content?

“Good content” is in the eye of the beholder. Ultimately, your

users decide.

What are your goals?What is your content supposed

to achieve for you?

“There’s really only one central principle of good content: it should be appropriate for your business, for your users, and for its context. Appropriate in its method of delivery, in its style and structure, and above all in its substance.”

Erin Kissane@kissane

The Elements of Content Strategy

• Appropriate• Useful• User-centered• Clear• Consistent• Concise• Supported

Good content is:

Erin Kissane again. Seriously, read her book.

One thing to keep in mind:

Content strategy is a process. It’s a cycle. It never really ends.

Content strategy is a design discipline.You are contributing to the way

something functions at its very core.Content experts should be involved

from the beginning of a web design project.

“Content first!”

“Content is king!”

“Design from the content out!”

Step 4: Always Be Asking Questions

Talk to everyone involved with the content, preferably one-on-one, about what they need and want from the site’s content.

The goal is to get an idea of how content works within the

organization.

ASK QUESTIONS. (Go with the classics: who,

what, when, where, why, and how.)

Who’s supplying the content?Who is the target audience?

Who’s maintaining the content?

What content do we need?

When will we publish?

Where will we publish? (Our site, email, Facebook,

Twitter, etc.)

How will all of this get done?

And a big one, especially in discovery:

WHY? Why do we need a blog? Why do we need a Twitter

feed?Why aren’t we using a CMS?

Etc.

Step 5:What’s your style?

Editorial Style Guide

What’s our tone? Which dictionary do we

consult?Do we use the serial comma?

Editorial process

Who’s creating our content? How do we decide it’s good

enough?How do we evaluate its

effectiveness?

Editorial Calendar

How do we decide when to publish?

(Tweet twice a day? Update home page when new products launch? Respond to holidays? Respond to news events? How

quickly? Etc.)

Step 6: Figure out what your content looks like. Even on the inside.

Content Template(a.k.a. Page Table)

What needs to go on each kind of page? Includes both visible

and invisible content. Accompanies site map and wireframes. Communication

bridge between subject matter experts and writers.

Content Template(example #1)

http://intentionaldesign.ca/2011/02/22/writing-templates/

Content Template(example #2)

The Elements of Content Strategy

Content Template(example #2, continued)

The Elements of Content Strategy

And content strategy is not, ultimately, about learning a

particular tool. The tools help the process, but they’re not the

point of the process.

Also, not every project is a site-wide redesign. Content strategy

works on a project-by-project basis.

Governance! How content strategy plays out over time.

“If IA is the spatial side of information, I see content strategy as the temporal

side of the same coin.”

Louis Rosenfeld@louisrosenfeld

“When I look at where most websites fail, it’s in managing their content over time.”

Karen McGrane@karenmcgrane

Let’s look at one example of what governance can mean.

Who knows Sporcle.com? A bottomless supply of trivia

quizzes, mostly generated by users.

July 9, 2011:South Sudan splits off from

Sudan to become a separate country.

So?

So Sporcle had a lot of geography quizzes to update.

And they just did it again this month after the UN

recognized Palestine as a “non-member observer state” — meeting Sporcle’s working

definition of “country.”

Consultants and agencies: People want to hear from

you! Yay, buy-in! But you don’t get to be there for the long haul.

In-house: Buy in can be a major

challenge! But you know the brand and business goals, and you are

there for the long haul.

Content strategy is not a quick fix.

It’s a long process. One reason content is valuable is

because it’s messy, and difficult, and requires a lot of

resources.

To keep your content working:Track when content will need

to be archived or updated.Use the editorial calendar.

Use a rolling audit. Budget time to get that done.

What does a content strategy look like?

Whatever your approach and your background, learn about

the other areas of content strategy.

“You’ve set up a content management interface and workflow, that is designed

to make it as easy as possible for the content creator to manage and maintain

all of that content in one place.”

Karen McGrane@karenmcgrane

Where do content strategists come from?

From “Apes of Wrath,” a Warner Bros. short.

Content strategy is a big playground.People join in from different perspectives,

and tend to specialize.

Where can you find content strategists?

RESOURCES: BOOKS

RESOURCES: BLOGS

RESOURCES: PODCAST!

Come to a meetup with Content Strategy Seattle!

http://www.meetup.com/content-strategy-seattle

Join the Google Group, or LinkedIn discussion groups.

Follow smart people on Twitter.Content strategists are a friendly, helpful

group. (I think it’s a job requirement.)

I’m tired of yammering.I know you’ve got questions.

Shoot!

THANK YOU

Remember to fill out your evaluation.

james@scarequot.eshttp://scarequot.es

Twitter: @scarequotes

Don’t forget to write.