in-house content strategy - minnewebcon april 2013
DESCRIPTION
Your organization's content needs help, and it's your job to fix it. But where do you begin? Change from within can be daunting. It may seem like the problems are too big for one person, or one team, to fix. Luckily, you can start to make a meaningful impact with just a few small changes. This session will offer tips and tools for creating a content strategy from within your organization. You'll get a handful of easy-to-implement, start-today tactics, as well as insight into effecting meaningful longterm change.TRANSCRIPT
In-House Content Strategy
MinneWebCon • April 15, 2013
Meghan Seawell@m3ggiesue
Content strategy is…
• Using your content to meet your business objectives
Common problems
• Silos• Governance• Consistency• Workflow• ROT• Unknown content landscape
It’s not your fault.
Why you?
• Organizational knowledge
• Investment (you care)• Influence• Time
What you can do
• Assess problems• Set goals• Create tools (make it easy)
What are the problems?
Tools to ID pain points
• Interviews• Surveys• Customer support• Informal asking• Analytics• Audits
“Tell me more about that.”
Analytics
• Look for oddities, outliers• Where do people drop off?• Is “unimportant” content getting a
lot of views?• Are people entering where you think
they are/should be?
Content audits
• Complete look at site
• Good for making a case to do more work
• Investment of resources
Sample audit criteria
• Quantitative:– URL– Views– Images– Size– Page name– Section/owner–Word count
• Qualitative:– Branding– Relevancy– Audience– Findability– Readability–Messaging
What are your goals?
Business objectives
• What are your business objectives?
• Which of those can your web content support?
Audiences
• Who are they?• What unique goals
do they each have?• Which are most
important?
Brand voice
• What words could describe your voice?
• If your organization was a person, what kind of person would it be?– (Ideally.)
• What different tones do you use?
Core strategy statement
• What does your content need to achieve?
• What does it need to be?
• What will you need to do to support it?
Sample core strategy
How do I fix it?
Messaging guide
• Core strategy• Top/key messages your
content needs to echo• Ingrain language• Voice/tone notes
Style guide
• Answer any questions that might be useful– Grammar– Nomenclature/language– Content types– Audiences– Voice/tone
• Steal!
Content calendars
• What happens annually?
• Broad themes, granular topics
• Quarterly/monthly/weekly
• Include multiple communications channels
Content brief
• Make a case:–What is this trying to
accomplish?–Who is it for?–What is its lifespan?– Does it fit with core
strategy?
• Tool to say no
Workflows
• Diagram it• How information gets
posted• Life of a piece of
content – Start well before it
gets online
• Current vs. ideal
Communicate
• Talk to contributors regularly–Meetings– Emails– Informal chats
• Pulse checks– Undiagnosed problems
• Continual reminders
Make something up
• Imagine a future in which everything works– How does it look?–What’s the gap?– How can you bridge
it?
Resources
• Links, slides, and sample tools: meghanseawell.com/minnewebcon-2013
• Contact me–[email protected]– linkedin.com/in/meghanseawell