I’m at a sxsw panel on content strategy put on by Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic. These are my notes.
I’m mostly here because ACLU of Washington definitely deals with issues of creating/curating/editing content. We have dealt with this so far by having weekly standing meetings where the techies enter the content into the website as the writers create it. This strategy does take up more of people’s time and “bandwidth” (i.e. they can’t multitask), but it has significantly decreased missed deadlines, and minimized the endless editing problem, as the writers are less likely to send in edits on something if it’s already up on the site, and they’re less likely to change their mind about how they wanted to phrase something if they just came up with the phrasing five minutes before it’s put up on the site. I’m curious what strategies Brain Traffic uses to skin this cat.
Turns out that “ftw” is “for the web,” not “for the win.”
Content online is like the piles of trash in WALL-E. Most of it is crap, but some of it is cool and interesting, and he collects that, and when he finds a friend, the first thing he wants to share with her is all the cool stuff he’s found. That’s what we all do through social media.
The twitter stream for this talk is freakishly worshipful:
@halvorson is a content goddess and an amazing presenter
Kristina Halvorson lights up my life!
I’ve written “I love you” on my eyelids Indianna Jones-style for @halvorson’s talk.
Srsly. I’m a little worried about these people. Maybe they’ve just been in panels so long that they’re suffering from Stockholm syndrome?
Now she’s bitching about how her clients don’t give her enough time to write content. That’s probably accurate for most copy writers.
Copy is unintuitively complex. It’s easy to gloss over 40 hours of work as “that ‘about us’ part of the site.”
Edward Tufte was a breakthrough because he used design to communicate information without text.
Early in the project management projects, information architects will identify what content they will need, and they think about content the same way they think about features. They look at building a great house with a lot of buttons, but we didn’t engage the people who will be using the site. Content is not a feature. We can’t just check off pages on a spreadsheet and call them done. It requires ongoing care and feeding.
Late, poor, and disorganized content is just a reality of the web. We’ve been taught to just accept that, but we can strategize to minimize these issues.
Make sure there is someone in the organization whose fault it is if the content sucks. Make sure that person is at every kickoff meeting.
Text is much more mutable than pictures or video. We need to focus on every word written on the site and make sure that there is a consistent strategy.
Strategy isn’t just “what is on the website?”, it’s “why are we creating it?” “how is it being created?” “how is it being consumed?” and “what happens next?”
Messaging isn’t a tagline, it’s the understanding that we want to impart on our users when they are done interacting with our content.
The Quicken site doesn’t convey that it will help you feel more in control of your money. It’s just shots of different editions of the software. It’s telling the customer that Quicken wants them to buy something, not that Quicken can actually help them.
The Mint.com site on the other hand has an example graph of expenditures, copy that talks about being in control, saving money, and getting out of debt.
Quicken focuses on Quicken. Mint.com focuses on the user. Content strategy helps you identify what your messaging strategy is, and content will flow from that.
Does your content achieve your business objectives and your user’s goals?
You can’t be reactionary about your content. You can’t put something up just because it’s new or just because what was there before is old. You need a larger strategy.
REI did a great job of creating new fresh content by outdoors experts. The topics are closely targeted to the questions that customers ask in the store.
Room and Board’s mission statement says that they work closely with the builders and users to make sure that the furniture is useful. Their website reflects that by creating content from the people who are interacting with builders.
You can’t just give the writer a wireframe and tell them to go to work. The writer needs to know about the audience and the overall intent, otherwise the writer will include everything that anyone might look for by clicking to that page.
You need to take down old content. The swiffer page on youtube is for a campaign that ended in 2008, a broken graphic, and a notice that the last time anyone from swiffer logged in was 9 months ago. It’s like being invited to a party and finding an abandoned house.
Content strategy forces you to take a cold hard look at what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Websites exist to house content. The reality of content is that it’s messy. It requires infrastructure to keep it clean and current.
Stuff you can do to fix this problem:
1. Audit. You have to know what content you have online. Where are you inviting people to interact with you? Make a spreadsheet that is the complete inventory of your content. What’s the low hanging fruit? What’s redundant, outdated or trivial?
2. Ask. If you are asked to write copy, ask why, and you will be invited into meetings earlier and earlier in the process so that you can understand why someone thought this was important.
3. Analyze. Take a high level view of your content ecosystem. What are your users actually doing? What are your competitors doing? What are trends in your field? Your content doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is affected by many things out of your control.
4. Alignment. The content strategist sits between several different departments and process phases. It is your responsibility to make sure everyone is in line with the larger goals.
5. Assume responsibility. You should begin to see happiness in all the stakeholders. You should see your metrics improving. You should see better SEO.
