in-house content strategy - minnewebcon april 2013

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–meghan.seawell@gmail.com– linkedin.com/in/meghanseawell