content strategy workshop: tc camp 2016

Content Strategy WorkshopHow and Why Salesforce Changed Its Content Strategy

Gavin AustinTed [email protected]@salesforce.com@salesforcedocs

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Agenda

1. Who we are and who you are and why we should all care2. Why Salesforce moved to more interactive content3. What types of interactive content we’re creating4. How we changed our content strategy5. How we trained teams

Takeaway

If you’re not creating interactive content beyond traditional documentation, you risk losing your customers.

1. Who’s Who?

Who we are

Gavin Austin Ted Kuster

Who are you?

1. What do you hope to learn?2. Where do you work?3. Your challenge?

About your content

1. Which types of content do you create?2. Do you use structured content?3. Which tools do you use?4. What’s the scale?

What is content strategy?

1. “The analysis and planning to develop a repeatable system that governs the management of content throughout the entire content lifecycle.”

2. “Provides context, so that the organization’s vision can be implemented in an integrated way, to meet business goals and project objectives.”

Rahel Anne Bailie, The Language of Content Strategy

Salesforce’s content strategy

Prioritize interactive content over traditional forms of content to give customers the types of information that they want to succeed.

Your strategy?

In one or two sentences.

2. Why SalesforceAdded More Interactive Forms of Content

Does this kind of content look familiar?

What do customers need from content?

•“Simplify documentation… It has always been far too lengthy and time-consuming.”•“If I have to leave a page to do research, I am going away… Having it right in the same place increases productivity.”•“There are a lot of videos about what you can do, but they don’t always show how to do it.” •“All documentation focuses on how-to, but we usually start off needing to know when-to or why-to.”

Why do we write content?

Increase customer adoption.

Reduce customer cases.

3. What Salesforce Added for Interactivity

What types of content did we create?

1. Walkthroughs 2. Trailhead 3. Videos

What are walkthroughs?

What do our customers think?

What is Trailhead?

What are videos?

4. How SalesforceChanged Its Content Strategy

How did we change our content strategy?

Why did we make these changes?

(1) How has the new strategy improved our help?


When we write help, we build it according to a structure that provides one bit of info at a time, leading to ever-greater levels of detail.


When we write new content, we write it to a voice and tone standard that makes it easy to redeploy in any of our content types, including help.

5. How SalesforceTrained teams

How did we train large groups of people?

Do you practice “Scrum, but”?

No one practices Scrum by the book. We all say, “Scrum, but…” This worked t our advantage.

Do you practice “structure, but”?

Probably like you, we’re still working towards a shared view of what “structure” means.

If there was no “Scrum, but” or “Structure, but”?

1. What would your content strategy be?2. What do you need to get there?3. What’s in your way?4. Can you sidestep?

Takeaway

If you’re not creating interactive content beyond traditional documentation, you risk losing your customers.

Thank You!

Gavin Austinhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/gavinaustin

Ted Kusterhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/ted-kuster-1a58b2

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2554406/TC-Camp-2016-Evaluation




content strategy workshop: tc camp 2016

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