Chapter 9: PeopleLaura CipollaVeronica Painter3/23/14Social Media

What processes, tools, and human resources are required for content initiatives to launch successfully and maintain ongoing quality?

How are key decisions about content and content strategy made? How are changes initiated and communicated?

★ Defining ownership and roles★ Designing content processes★ Documenting your processes★ Making it all happen

Whose job is it?

Each person MUST know what their role is.

Business Units - Cross team

collaboration.

- If creating a new business unit for content strategy cannot happen, designate a person or several people to have content strategy as part of their job.

INDIVIDUALS: RESPONSIBILITY

Web editor-in-chief: Helps establish and enforce all web content policies, standards, and guidelines.Web manager or editor: Plan and oversee the publication of content. Content creator: Responsible for producing accurate, compelling text that clearly conveys messages to the target audience and supports your content strategy objectives. Sourcing manager or curator: similar to web editors, but also responsible for aggregating or curating content.

Individuals Cont’d

Search engine optimization (SEO) specialist: Analyzes website’s business objectives, content, and intended audiences in order to win prominent listings in results pages of web search engines.  Subject matter expert (SME): Marketing and branding, product development and operations, can be the business owners of the content or someone with insights on how to get content right. Reviewer and/or approver: Includes: subject matter experts, product or service managers, legal counsel, etc.

Outsource or Hire?

Outsourcing:Best if you: - Want to focus on core competencies rather than content- Limited $

Requires:- Collaborative spirit- Short-term investing

You get: - Content Expertise- Fresh, objective perspective- Cost savings

In-House Best if you: - If you are passionate about and have time to devote to

content- Have $ , time, understanding and approval to hire at

least one employee- Ongoing need for content support

Requires: - Alignment- Empowerment- Definition of roles- $

You get:- Full time content care- Content expertise- Deep organizational/product knowledge

Committees and Councils Form councils or committees

Goal: ensure your content or content strategy stays aligned with business goals and user needs.

Internal Advisory Council- Asked to weigh in on content activities and decisions. - Keeps people informed- Participates in meetings w/ content team- Discuss problems

Audience Advisory Committee - Feedback- Differ in size- Incentives - Representative of different groups- Length of time in group pre-determined - Trained on goals of organization

Designing Workflow and Governance Processes

The content development process is complex Four areas of focus:- Create/source new content - Maintain existing content- Evaluate content effectiveness- Govern strategies, plans, policies, and procedures

CREATING AND SOURCINGCONTENT

- Original content creation- Curated or aggregated content- Content migration

Editorial Calendars- Spreadsheet w/ future ideas and schedules

current content for publishing.- Steps to create calendar- Less is more- Focus on top priorities- Things to include (date, channel, content

element, etc.)

Maintaining Content • Accuracy, consistency, timeliness and audience

relevance.• Tools to carry out maintaining content:- Content inventory- Content maintenance- Content maintenance log

Evaluating Content - Consistently checking on your content, this helps

you see how your content performs over time as business and user needs change.

- Helps you understand how content activities change due to events (holidays and product launches).

Measuring Methods

- Qualitative assessments- Analytics- User research and usability- External expert review- Internal expert review- Competitive comparison- Operational evaluation

Goal of evaluation: reduce uncertainty

Tasks for Evaluating Content

- Define what content will be evaluated- Define criteria by which the content will be evaluated- Recruit reviewers- Design evaluation- Conduct evaluation- Record results- Analyze data- Create report- Communicate results

Tools: measurement scorecard – spreadsheet or similar tool that helps stakeholders understand the results of your measurement findings.

Governing ContentCreate, Maintain & Update

- Core strategy- Authority and ownership policies- Processes and procedures- Plans and priorities- Content policies- Guidelines

Tasks for governing content

Tools: style guide – guideline that ensures that content is consistent, used by anyone who creates, reviews, edits, or publishes content.

Examples: voice and tone guidelines, product trademark usage.

Documenting Your Processes

- Determine a starting point- Figure out a logical place for the process to end- Identify all players from beginning to end of the

process - Sketch the tasks- Identify interaction patterns among players and task- Allocate timeframe for tasks- Identify notification pattern: who needs to know

what- Identify approval patterns - Determine all the “what ifs”- Once all roles are identified, tasks are sketched, and

notification and approval patterns are identified, examine your workflow to see if it can be simplified

NOW….

Tell and motivate!Make people feel included (keep them informed & involved)Communicate the benefitsGive it time