Questionnaire Project: Audience:

Instructions Use this protocol when conducting stakeholder interviews to uncover current state business processes, content scope, requirements and issues. Ascertain what kinds of content each user group or business unit handles, what the publication and production processes are, and any issues, gaps, or repetitive elements in their processes and content quality. Send protocol prior to each stakeholder meeting, and list any deliverables or examples the interviewee should send via email or bring to the meeting.

Production/Publishing Process

1. What aspects of content acquisition, production or delivery work well in your group? Where are there issues? What are your greatest pain points?

2. How do these kinds of content or processes help/hinder the company? 3. What are the larger issues you face when it comes to acquiring content, producing content or delivering

content? 4. Is the workflow process documented or handy? What are the high-level steps? Are there sub-

processes? (Attempt to secure owners, content creators, reviewers, approvers within each process and any inputs/outputs)

5. Can you help create the production process workflow for each additional content type – such as: marketing messaging content, product-related content, and customer support content? (Ask for issues and advantages for each process point)

6. Is there a content migration strategy in place? Can you detail the flow? Is there an archival process or parameters set for archiving content such by duration, relevancy, and immediacy?

Audience The design of the site was built to support your core audience (the decision maker), by providing an online experience about the credibility your brand.

1. Can you address your target audience’s needs, habits or any other information to provide a clearer understanding of messaging needs?

2. Do you perform any A/B testing and can you provide information on audience segmentation? 3. Who is your potential target audience – do you have more existing customers or are you trying to

acquire newer customers? What’s the focus now and in the longer term? Content Inventory

1. How much content do we currently have that can be leveraged for this project? 2. Do you have a list of all the different types of content you work with? Do you have any existing

inventories or audits that we could use to determine the scope of the content to consider? Is there a sitemap or any IA work that we could use to determine the content types and scope?

3. In terms of volume, how much content is there and how much is published during a set period?

List the owner of the content listed above and the person who is responsible for providing the content

Content Type Draft Owner Delivery Date

Questionnaire Project: Audience:

Provided?

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

f. Other Articles

g. Blog links

h.

i. Other (must clarify)

4. What are your goals(short and long term) regarding how much content is expected to live on this new site (especially threaded content to support that can support the researcher (more technically inclined individual)?

5. What is your publication timeline and who will create future content?

Timeline Videos Support Documents Content Publishing

a. Monthly?

b. Quarterly?

c. Annually?

Technology/CMS

1. Is there a CMS or other types of content publication/management systems? Open source? 2. Are there other document management systems that need to be considered? 3. What are the different channels that we should consider? These include multiple platforms such as Web,

mobile, tablet, customer databases, email newsletters, blogs, CRM, analytics engines. 4. What are the systems that impact content – catalogues, asset/document management tools? Any gaps

in the system? Pain points? 5. Is there a product database or hierarchy? Is it documented – a database schema perhaps? 6. Will users require the ability to create or simply upload/migrate existing content and tag it?

Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click Ad Placement, and Metadata

1. Canyou tell us about your SEO strategy and provide us with the list(s) of keywords to incorporate in the headers and body copy of the site?

2. Are you keeping a master matrix of ad placements, their respective keywords, the audiences to which

said keywords pertain, and how the landing page is expected to adapt to each click-through possibility?

3. Have you received any feedback – internal or external – regarding search finabaility and do you have info on the end-user feedback regarding accessing information?

4. Do you have SEO best practices in place? If so, please list them. What’s your current process? Are

analytics part of this component? Which tools / software do you use? Who is trained to use it – any content writers/editors/authors/departments?

Questionnaire Project: Audience:

5. Does any terminology need to be created from scratch or revised?

6. How do you categorize content types?

7. Are there requirements to index and maintain content you’re not using – or content which isn’t clicking well? If so, how is it indexed?

8. How does content get tagged in your company? Are users trained? Do they require training or do you

have an in-house SEO expert?

9. Do you have a list of terms used to categorize your data? Are there taxonomies or metadata structures within your company?

Editorial/Voice and Brand Strategy

1. Does your department apply a content style or branding guide to all content outputs? Do you have standards or appropriateness guidelines to share?

2. Do you personalize or up-sell content? Do you cross-sell or use CRM to target content to a certain segment or audience? What are your ‘flavors’ of content? Are there decisions you can clue us into about accessing content?

Localization

1. Do you localize content for visitors from multiple regions? How many different languages? What does this model look like in a process flow?

2. Do you begin with one language / content source and then translate it? 3. How do you ensure that content is messaged accurately and adequately per region – taking

slang/vernacular into account? 4. What are your pain points here?

Success Criteria (Governance)

1. What metrics will you use to define success for this project? 2. How do you plan to asses the number of people who are visiting and reacting to this site? 3. Will you use web analytics to assess trends and identify discrepancies? 4. Will you measure your SEO strategy to assess that the chosen set of keywords are driving traffic to the

site as expected? 5. Are there issues your business group experiences with the governance structure? 6. How does the governance model function and who is responsible for its development and enforcement? 7. Do you have governance standards or regulations you can share?