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Content Strategy & Tactics: Best Practices from a Portal
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Transcript of Content Strategy & Tactics: Best Practices from a Portal
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Content Strategy& Tactics:
Best Practices from a Portal
Don SenaManaging Editor, MSNOctober 2, 2007
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Portal Content Best Practices: Agenda
• The complexities of a portal
• Content planning
• Breaking News on a portal
• Embrace Your Engineers
• Data-informed editing
• The thin green line
• Q & A
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Portal Content Best Practices: Complexities of a Portal
Multiple content properties• From Autos to Yellow pages. Lots of channels = ‘ownership’ & balance issues
Multiple Services• From e-mail to messenger to calendar to chat, etc.
Myriad business models• Ad impression-based; $ per click/UU; Ad rev share; etc.
Content partnerships: big and small
Bottom line pressure: broad & specific• Revenue, marketing, advertorial, etc.
… All challenging the cohesiveness, relevance, usability, integrity of sites
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Portal Content Best Practices: Complexities of a Portal
QuestionWhat other complexities, challenges,
obstacles are out there?
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Portal Content Best Practices: Layers of planning
Proper HP content planning brings myriad benefits• Increased quality and relevance to users = increased engagement• Proper mix and distribution of content, partners, etc.• Allows you to deal with the revenue pressures• A solid plan allows better reaction to content we have to react to
Three levels of planning• Monthly Forward Planning
• Weekly Planning: Builds upon Monthly Plan, keeps HP timely and relevant
… But, we must know when to blow up the plan …
• Breaking News: The “can’t-miss-this-today” story, i.e. breaking news, sports, health, stock market, event coverage, etc.
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Portal Content Best Practices: Annual/Monthly Planning
Monthly planning …• Should account for at least 33% of all HP leads• Alleviates Topic Trainwreck• Increases engagement, CSat• Better sell-through of content
Could be very big: Election, Super Bowl, Oscars
Could be enterprise projects: Immigration or national security/civil liberties
Could be predictable: Tax season, Valentine’s Day,
Or …
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Portal Content Best Practices: Annual/Monthly Planning
Monthly planning …• Should account for at least 33% of all HP leads• Alleviates Topic Trainwreck• Increases engagement, CSat• Better sell-through of content
Could be very big: Election, Super Bowl, Oscars
Could be enterprise projects: Immigration or national security/civil liberties
Could be predictable: Tax season, Valentine’s Day,
Or …
When do people buy Xmas trees?
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Portal Content Best Practices: Weekly Planning, dayparts
To daypart or not to daypart …• In 24/7 publishing environment: How, when and why do you rotate content?
• How do you parse your main inventory?
• How do you slot all inventories?
• How many templates do you have?
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Portal Content Best Practices: News in the Portal
Creating culture and environment to handle news and ‘of the day’ programming
• Hiring decisions are vital
• With limited resources, establish roles and processes for covering breaking news before news hits
• Form close collaboration & virtual teams with partners & cross groups (content providers, tech teams, etc.) – they all come together
• Build and test actual execution scenarios & templates (photo sizes, actual wording, etc.)
• A mantra: Accuracy, Speed and Quality
• It is not just about this story
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Portal Content Best Practices: News in the Portal
Virginia Tech: Early morning coverage
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Portal Content Best Practices: News in the Portal
Blowout Templates used later in day
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Portal Content Best Practices: News in the Portal
Blowout Templates used later in day
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Portal Content Best Practices: News in the portal
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Portal Content Best Practices: Embrace the Engineer
The marriage of technology and editorial programming is what separates Web from other media forms and needs to be embraced more
• Create an environment where engineers/tech teams are interacting with editors, sharing ideas, showing what is possible
• Build a test site – a sandbox – to take new ideas live
• Make yourself and your team responsible for breaking this wall down
Examples• Hiding Olympics results on Yahoo!
• March Madness and the “printable bracket”
• Innovation emerged during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath
• MSN Extra
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Portal Content Best Practices: Working with Data
QuestionHow do you use data to inform editorial decision-making?
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Portal Content Best Practices: Working with Data
QuestionHow do you use data to inform editorial decision-making?
Hourly data
Monthly data for seasonality, spotting trends
Inform headline writing
Day/hourly affinities
Focus groups/surveys/polls
Segmentation (demographic and behavioral)
Does any of this replace the “editorial gut?” Of course not
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Portal Content Best Practices: The thin green line
Working with advertising, marketing and other monetization teams
User Interest“Optimized”User Interest
Business
UserInterest
Revenue
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Portal Content Best Practices: High Rev/Low UI content
• Two big types of revenue pressures: Hi Rev/Low UI or Advertorial
• Have a robust, accepted Editorial Policy & Guideline document
• Help establish carrots and sticks: Mendoza lines
• Attempt to establish UI levels for each channel/property per month (user interest spikes, ‘Super Bowl’ months, etc.). Then, have rev teams map the revenue
• This is not a ‘User Interest vs. Business interests’ discussion; it is a ‘short-term business vs. long-term business’ discussion …
… Protecting user interest/editorial is good business
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Portal Content Best Practices: Know your Competition
Questions
Name one thing your competition does better than you?
Name one thing you do better than your competition?
Is this important to know?
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Portal Content Best Practices: Best of the Best Practices
1. Take Risks
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Portal Content Best Practices: Best of the Best Practices
2. Remember the puppy on the paper1. Take Risks
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Portal Content Best Practices: Q&A
Q&Aand
Discussion