Getting started with Content Strategy / Michele-Ann Jenkins

Editor's Notes

• #2: The table settings are perfect, décor impeccable, the guests are all invited – but where’s the meal?This is the scenario when you’ve harnessed the latest technology, crafted eye-catching visualdesign, and built great navigation but haven’t allocated the resources needed to craft consistent,useful content. Developing a content strategy can enable your organization to create better content, manage that content throughout its lifecycle, and allow you to reuse it appropriately across the channels. We’ll look at how to know where you are with a content audit and gap analysis and plan where you’re going with a practical, effective content strategy.
• #3: We’ll look at how to know where you are with a content audit and gap analysis and plan where you’re going with a practical, effective content strategy.
• #4: Everyone in their happy silosMakers/sellers, thinker, content creators, publishersYou made and sold things, you provided services and knowledge work, or created content
• #5: This lead to bottlenecks – content doesn’t get posted fast enough so either it didn’t get posted at all, or people started creating work arounds – microsites, emailing pdfs, etc, to get their content out there.
• #6: Can keep these things separate any more
• #8: How do we have our cake – get content quickly on the web, allow for a distributed editorial process, but create a uniform content experience for users?
• #9: Kristina is a super hero!Creation – Publication – and GovernanceEverything is ContentNotice she didn’t say “blog posts” or “on a website” I’ll be talking about the web content because that’s where I live – in the digital world, but there’s nothing here that can’t be adapted to real world content too.Web content today also includes videos and images, external files (like PDFs), contact forms, buttons (and other calls to action), maps, data tables, infographics, as well as the copy—titles, slogans, about pages, even error messages.Not just on your organizational website – content that goes out over social media and other channelsBut we also need to consider content that’s not on the web: print products, signs, other communications, even signage!
• #10: You’ll notice that there’s nothing here about technology – no CMS, XML, or even HTML5 “Technology can’t help you make good decisions; it can only help you implement them. ”An umbrella for things we’ve already been doingTech has, at best, dealt with two of these areas… and sometimes you’ll have marketing claim ownership of some aspects of the editorial processInstead of thinking of it as a black box assembly line where the words are one persons problem, the visual design another, the organization off somewhere on it’s own. We have a way to focus on content more holistically.
• #11: Rachel Lovingner mentioned the idea of “Harmonic Balance” in her article “
• #14: Aaron said “a strategy plants a flag for the future and and creates a shared sense of vision that makes it easier to get to that future”End up with a chicken-and-an-egg problem because you need to know about your content and goals in order to do an audit, and you need to audit in order to It’s not easy. It’s not a one time project. You can’t just foist it off on interns – it needs to be owned by SME involved at all levels.
• #15: Do people know about / use them?Do we use external agencies, or is everything in-house?
• #16: Lots of different terms – and new ones all the time.
• #17: Determine if content is supporting key user activitiesRemove or archive unneeded content & simplify user experienceIdentify patterns in content structureDetermine if content is supporting key user activitiesQuality what does it mean for you? t (tone, style, mobile-friendliness)
• #19: It’s not easy
• #21: Talk about outdated:Event information that should be archived vs ephemeral Define a clear, specific purpose for each piece of content; evaluate content against this purposeYou’ll be surprised what content might not actually serve a purpose. “About Us” – are you talking about yourself too much?Press releasesBibliographic records
• #23: Are you professional? Knowledgably? Empathetic? Don’t sound like a robotAlways consider:The content type/situationThe user's likely emotional stateThere’s that everything is content!
• #24: Tone“We lose trust when we…”
• #25: Voice guides for each content typeBlogKnowledge BaseNewsletter
• #27: Need to revisit it yearly… or make it part of the ongoing web process!
• #28: Strategy is where you want to go…Legacy document… consistency through changesChange ManagementOrganic, living, adaptingThinking long term – adaptive, not reactive
• #31: Pardon me for not using MLA style