In-House Content Strategy - MinneWebCon April 2013

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In-House Content Strategy MinneWebCon • April 15, 2013 Meghan Seawell @m3ggiesue

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 of In-House Content Strategy - MinneWebCon April 2013

Page 1: In-House Content Strategy - MinneWebCon April 2013

In-House Content Strategy

MinneWebCon • April 15, 2013

Meghan Seawell@m3ggiesue

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Content strategy is…

• Using your content to meet your business objectives

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Common problems

• Silos• Governance• Consistency• Workflow• ROT• Unknown content landscape

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It’s not your fault.

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Why you?

• Organizational knowledge

• Investment (you care)• Influence• Time

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What you can do

• Assess problems• Set goals• Create tools (make it easy)

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What are the problems?

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Tools to ID pain points

• Interviews• Surveys• Customer support• Informal asking• Analytics• Audits

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“Tell me more about that.”

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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?

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Content audits

• Complete look at site

• Good for making a case to do more work

• Investment of resources

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Sample audit criteria

• Quantitative:– URL– Views– Images– Size– Page name– Section/owner–Word count

• Qualitative:– Branding– Relevancy– Audience– Findability– Readability–Messaging

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What are your goals?

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Business objectives

• What are your business objectives?

• Which of those can your web content support?

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Audiences

• Who are they?• What unique goals

do they each have?• Which are most

important?

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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?

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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?

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Sample core strategy

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How do I fix it?

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Messaging guide

• Core strategy• Top/key messages your

content needs to echo• Ingrain language• Voice/tone notes

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Style guide

• Answer any questions that might be useful– Grammar– Nomenclature/language– Content types– Audiences– Voice/tone

• Steal!

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Content calendars

• What happens annually?

• Broad themes, granular topics

• Quarterly/monthly/weekly

• Include multiple communications channels

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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

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Workflows

• Diagram it• How information gets

posted• Life of a piece of

content – Start well before it

gets online

• Current vs. ideal

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Communicate

• Talk to contributors regularly–Meetings– Emails– Informal chats

• Pulse checks– Undiagnosed problems

• Continual reminders

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Make something up

• Imagine a future in which everything works– How does it look?–What’s the gap?– How can you bridge

it?

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Resources

• Links, slides, and sample tools: meghanseawell.com/minnewebcon-2013

• Contact me–[email protected]– linkedin.com/in/meghanseawell