Put people at the center of content strategy – The Common Theme of Confab 2013

Category: Content and Editorial Management, Content Strategy
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Posted June 14, 2013

This is cross-posted on the 4Site Studios blog

Eight days after Confab 2013, and I have finally come down from my conference high. The conference was insightful to say the least – it is by far the best industry conference I have ever attended. This past week, I have sifted through notes, read recommended articles and reports, replayed in my mind all the thought-provoking presenter one-liners, and had many a conversation about the value of things like content “chunking” versus “blobbing”…the usual things you do when you come back from a conference feeling equipped with the knowledge you need to change the world.

I had a moment, as I sat down to write this post, where I asked myself “why does any of this matter?” There seemed to be something missing in all my thoughts and ideas after Confab. It all seemed very…tactical. I felt like I was missing a larger theme that timed all of these topics together.

It came to me as I read an interview with Paul Adams of Facebook in Fast Company. “People!” The theme that tied all of the Confab sessions together was the focusing on the needs of people consuming content.

Michael Brenner of SAP defined content strategy best:

“Content strategy is about delivering the content your audience needs, in all places they go.”

Content strategy is about meeting the needs of people. We often get lost in conversations about content, asking questions like:

What CMS should we use?
How do we create a great editorial calendar?
What keywords will get us ranked highest in search?

None of that matters. Not unless you are making a connection with what is at the other end of your content. People.

Each presentation I attended at Confab made that point within the wealth of knowledge shared that, at the center of all the planning, and wireframing, and building, is the need of a person. All the strategizing, and designing, and production, is all done with the intention of building a relationship with a person by helping to meet their needs. Where I think Paul Adams’ views on social design come into play, as many of us know about content strategy, is that investing in content is a long-term strategy that will take many, light-touch interactions with people over time before a relationship is really established.

Let’s get a little bit more practical with this concept. Here are some tips I pulled from different sessions I attended at Confab that will help you develop a content strategy centered around building relationships with people:

Content Modelling by Rachel Lovinger

Content modelling is essentially the process by which we as define content types, their attributes (fields, assets, metadata), and the relationships between types of content. It is foundational to any content strategy.

People are now engaging with brands across multiple platforms, on many different devices, often times all at once. As an example, a person attending an your event is reading information about your organization on their mobile phone, while they are following people’s tweets about the event on their laptop or tablet. One interaction, three touch points.

To address the needs of our users wanting content across various platforms and channels, we need to model content for portability.

Some recommendations that came out of this session all content strategists should keep in mind:

Think of your content separate from presentation. The root of this concept is in the content chunking versus blobbing debate. Most content management systems are designed with a Title field and a Body field where the content editor designs their content. That is dangerous because editors shouldn’t have to, and often are not good at, content design. By focusing on content structure over presentation, we can more granularly model our content with all the fields that need to be presented, allowing content editors to focus on entering content that needs to be served without having to do formating.

Content should be adaptive, not responsive. A related concept is adaptive content. The general idea is that content can, and probably should, look differently depending on how and where it is served. That ultimately is a design issue, not a content issue. When modelling content, we need to think of content types as having granular attributes (i.e. if a press release has an intro and a body, then have separate fields for each). Editors should focus on creating content, and designers focus on how it is presented on various platforms. As content strategist, we need to ensure our content is structured in a way that allows an editor to easily publish a piece of content in it’s entirety, and designers can then present content chunks, or collections of content attributes, in different ways on different platforms.

Content models should be CMS agnostic. Technology should not inform your editorial strategy, your editorial strategy should define what content management system you use. Develop content models that map to the content needs of your audience and editors, then select the technology solution that will best support those.

Content Strategy for a Customer Journey by Kevin NIchols

Customer/user engagement happens across multiple channels and multiple platforms. Customers expect that they will have the same experience with a brand no matter where they interact with you – your website, via a mobile app, etc. Designing a consistent experience for a consumer regardless of channel or platform , referred to as omni-channel retailing, is driven by content and can be adopted by all industries.

The key to this strategy is personalization. Understanding who your user is, their needs, and where and how they meet those needs is critical to determining what content to serve along the user journey. If you know that Ann is a mother in Chicago that likes to cook casserole for her children, you can serve her a coupon on her mobile phone when she visits the recipe section of your mobile app or website.

There are many different ways to personalize your content strategy. You can build a recommendation engine into your website that serves a user content based on their defined interests. You can inform how you segment content on social media, email marketing, or direct mail based on your understanding of user personas. The approach you take should be specific to your organization, but remember the key is to focus on meeting the user need at every touchpoint in your user journey.

Well This IS Interesting by Melissa Rach

People need interests to live. We are “information foragers” – we seek information the same way we seek food. The more we learn, the more information we seek.

Content is about feeding people’s natural desire for information that is interesting to them. Our goal is to find the intersection between a person’s interest and our desire for them to take some type of action.

While interests are many things to us as humans, they are most importantly social. We build relationships through shared interests. The same thing goes for people building relationships with people as with people building relationships with brands. To establishing a relationship with a person, we need to produce content that aligns with both of our interests.

Our interests are enticed by emotion. Whether content is goal-, entertainment-, or action-oriented, we choose to engage with a brand based on how a piece of content makes us feel. Write copy that will evoke a desired emotion in your reader – joy, anger, intrigue. If you can evoke an emotional reaction from the reader, the greater the likelihood they will remember and be interested in your content in the future.

Some things to keep in mind when writing copy or designing content:

Make sure you know the topic you are talking about and can provide helpful information
Focus on meeting the needs of the content consumer – it is all about them
Produce content that fills the gaps between what the user needs and what you have to offer them
Encourage people to have a conversation with you

The Poetry of SEO by Mike King

Search engine optimization for years was a very prescriptive process circa 2000-2008. You optimized pages with metadata – meta titles, meta descriptions, and meta keywords – that helped search engines better understand what content was on a page. You made sure your pages were marked up in a way that allowed search engines to understand the structure of your page. Then you worked on building cross links between your website and more reputable website. Voila! High ranking website.

Since the proliferation of social media, the game has changed. Major search engines now take into account social interaction with content and content consumed by your social graph in determining what to display to you in search results. People are spending more time on social media websites and discovering more content in their newsfeed than ever before. While keywords are still critical to search placement, the new driver of content discovery is social media.

Keyword optimization within content and meta titles is still important, but not as important as writing copy for people. You should write content with an eye towards getting people to share it with their friends. Meta descriptions that appear in search results should connect with a reader, just like a tweet or an ad.

Social media can also be one of your best research tools because it shows you what people actually think and say about topics and brands. Use Facebook ad data and Google Adwords keyword tool to get demographic information about people who are searching for and talking about specific topics and use that data when building personas and your keyword strategy.

Did you attend Confab? What were some of the insights you gleamed from various sessions?

3 simple things your online ads need to do

Category: Consumer Experience, Digital Engagement
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Posted March 11, 2013

While doing research for part 2 of a blog series I am writing on emerging trends in digital, and I came across this BusinessWeek post on the pros and cons of banner ads. I was stumped when I tried to answer the first question posed by Derek Thompson: “…name the last two ads you viewed online”.

A couple of thoughts crossed my mind:

I clearly recall seeing ads from the Human Rights Campaign because it is a brand I am familiar with, and I actively try to pay attention to the way nonprofits are promoting their causes.
I did see an Adobe banner ad somewhere on the internet in the past hour, but I cannot remember what it was for.
When I take off my digital strategist hat and think about times when I use the web for personal reasons, I cannot think of a time in recent months when I have clicked on an online ad.

I typically find ads to be irrelevant. Apparently, I am not the only one. A little dated, but research from Crowd Science found that more than 50% of people interviewed are annoyed by irrelevant ads, and, regardless of relevance, 27% of people flat out ignore them.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not dismissing advertising. Heck, I work in advertising, so that would be just silly of me to do. I do, though, feel like most advertising lacks relevance, and is therefore useless.

The other day, while watching The Following on On Demand, I could not fast forward through commercials. Some ridiculous car commercial aired, I can’t even remember for what brand, and I had to ask myself whether people ever make a decision to purchase a product because a commercial made them chuckle. The commercial provided me little to no information about the product. It apparently didn’t even leave enough of an impression for me to remember the brand it was promoting.

When I think back to the commercials that did motivate me to make a purchase, they were commercials that, in some creative way, showed me how the product will add value to my life. Some products I feel do this well are:

Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Apple Macbook
Google Nexus 7
CapitalOne credit cards
Acura

Your online ads should always do the following:

Provide a clear opportunity that matches up to consumer intent
Demonstrate utility in meeting the needs of the consumer
Entertain enough that the experience is memorable

Anything less than that and your shouldn’t waste the media spend.

The Changing Digital Landscape pt.1 – All Content is Created Equal

Category: Content Strategy
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Posted February 11, 2013

This post was originally published on the 4Site Studios blog

Last week, I had a discussion with one of my fellow panelists from last month’s NetSquared DC event “What’s on the Horizon for 2013”. She said she wished I had more time to delve into the six points I made in my presentation, so I decided to turn them into a blog series.

My “predictions” for 2013 and beyond are driven by a few larger trends happening in marketing and business. The world is becoming a more connected place, with mobile driving internet accessibility. The Pew Internet and Family Project reports that 45% of adults in the US own smart phones, and 55% of adult cell phone owners access the internet via their mobile device. Layer on top of that the exponential growth in the number of consumers accessing the internet through connected devices, such as TV’s, game consoles, tablets, etc., and that people will soon access the internet in their cars, on their watch, and even in the shower. Gone are the days where you are restricted to accessing the internet via a desktop computer. The internet is everywhere. Enter the Web of Things.

Consumers don’t see the internet as something that is tied to a specific digital device. Recent studies show that most teens and young adults do not see the a difference between accessing the internet via their laptop and mobile phone. The internet is the internet, no matter where you access it. This concept is very disruptive to marketing.

To date, most marketers have taken a very channel-centric approach to strategy development. A week has not past when I haven’t skimmed an article telling me how my business will fail if I don’t have a social media or mobile strategy. But, if the internet is amorphous, why do brands need a channel- or platform-specific marketing strategy?

This thinking led to the first point of my presentation: All Content is Created Equal.

Content drives brand engagement. Whether a consumer reads a blog post on your website, your brand’s tweet retweeted by a friend, or a product review on Mashable…every digital touch point between a consumer and a brand is driven by a piece of content. That content can be consumed anywhere online and accessed via any number of pathways.

With content as the driver of brand engagement, channels no longer matter as much as they once did. Brands need to focus their efforts on developing a holistic content strategy. Whether you reach consumers on a mobile device or a social network, content is content. Your content strategy needs to be about effective delivery of your brand message across digital platforms to meet business goals.

Until recently, many brands have taken a “hub and spoke” approach to content strategy development, developing content for their website, such as blog posts, infographics, training materials, etc., and distributing that content through social media and other channels as links back to owned properties. This sometimes makes sense when you are looking at lead generation, or driving some action that can only be completed on a specific web page. But, consumers want to engage with brands where they are online. They won’t always go to your website. It is your job to figure out how you effectively deliver your brand message to a consumer on the platform they choose to engage your brand on.

If you are interested in exploring this concept more, I recommend reading The Altimeter Group report The Converged Media Imperative. Rebecca Lieb and Jeremiah Owyang introduced the concept of converged media, describing how brands need to utilize “two or more channels of paid, earned and owned media…in concert, enabling brands to reach customers exactly where, how, and when they want, regardless of channel, medium, or device, online or offline.”

I’ll explore this concept a little bit more in my next post, “Content is Paid Media.” Until then, let us know if you have any questions by leaving a comment below.

Emerging Trends in Digital for 2013 and Beyond

Category: Digital Business, Digital Engagement, Featured, Technology
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Posted January 16, 2013

Last night, I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel for the NetSquared DC Meetup with Colin Delany, Suzanne Turner, and Lawrence Swiader. The panel, titled “What’s on the Horizon for 2013”, covered broad strokes what the emerging trends are in digital marketing, design and technology that organizations, mainly nonprofits, should be paying attention to in the coming year.

I put together a short presentation to highlight some trends I think will be key in the evolution of the social sector as digital becomes a bigger part of the work nonprofits are doing to better communities.

Below are my slides from the event.

To sum up the trends I see happening:

All content is created equal

Traditionally, organizations have followed a “hub and spoke” model for their content strategy, creating a bunch of content on their website and using paid and earned media to drive traffic to that content. It is becoming increasingly harder to do that as people spend more and more of their time on social media platforms. It’s no longer about creating a funnel to drive people where you want them to be, you need to engage people where they are.

Organizations should approach content creation keeping in mind that the content they drive on external websites (i.e. social media platforms) is just as important as content created on their own domain. With that in mind, organizations should begin to design brand experiences that drive desired actions on the platforms where they are engaging people.

Content is now paid media

Content drives social media. Publishing good content generates engagement. Seems simple enough, right?

The one thing organizations do not have much control over is reach – getting their posts in front of their audience. With statistics coming out on the general reach of social media posts on Facebook and other social platforms, it is becoming increasingly apparent that social media lacks efficiency in getting key messages in front of your target audience, unlike email, SMS, and paid media.

Social platforms are offering brands the opportunity to increase their reach and engagement by paying to promote key pieces of content to their audience. This is creating an interesting paradigm where organizations need to approach content creation like media buyers, planning for real time activation of content through paid media as trends in engagement with your content emerge.

Designing for mobile is not enough

Often when we think about responsive design, we think about producing desktop websites that scale down gracefully to be viewed on a mobile phone. Two interesting stats appeared in the most recent Nielsen Social Media Report – the number of people accessing social media through tablets grew 400% from 2011 to 2012, and the number accessing it from connected TV’s grew 100%. If you have been following CES 2013, you are seeing that connected TV’s, tablets, and phablets are all the rave, and not just for early adopters. Many of these devices will be hitting stores this year.

From here on out it is no longer enough to design just for desktop and mobile phones. We need to take into consideration the multiple screens that our users will be accessing our content and products from and design digital experiences that allow them to interact with your brand in a way that is device appropriate.

Organizations will become more “Lean”

I have written about this concept in the past, stating that nonprofits should take a more iterative approach to technology development and marketing. Spending large amounts of money on upfront strategic planning and development is inefficient and often sets organizations up for failure because their strategy is based on assumptions. By applying “lean thinking” in developing digital campaigns and technology, organizations test the assumptions that are often made in strategic planning processes. Only the assumptions that are valid and return desired results are adopted.

I highly recommend reading Eric Ries book The Lean Startup, or contacting us, if you are interested in learning how to apply this methodology to your digital marketing campaigns and development projects.

More DIY nonprofits will emerge

There is this interesting trend emerging in the nonprofit sector of organizations building products. These aren’t apps for advocacy or fundraising per say, but digital solutions to various social issues organizations are working to solve. Nonprofits have been building products for a number of years, but I think this year and beyond is when you will really see this trend become more apparent.

Some examples I shared last night are:

PeaceTones – A nonprofit that is building an e-commerce platform to help artists in developing countries promote and sell their music online
Camellia Network – An organization that helps teens aging out of foster care raise money to fund their future, whether that be going to college, finding an apartment, etc.
Invisible People – This organization provides online toolkits to help homeless individuals communicate with the world about their situations as a way to give a voice and a face to an all too often overlooked segment of our population

The thing that I also love about this trend is community-building is at the core of many of these products. Organizations are, through organizing and digital products, creating peer networks of people who are supportive of a cause and getting them to create change together.

Building community will become a core organizational function

Regardless of sector, social media is forcing brands to rethink how they engage with their constituents and where that responsibility falls within their organization. Social media is often wedged into marketing or corporate communications teams, which creates this false perception that social media should be approached as just another mass communications platform.

While it can be effective at that, the real power in social media is building a constituency of people that share a common passion or interest as your organization, and interacting with them in a way that increases brand recognition and loyalty; persuades people to support your cause or product; and drives business metrics such as items sold or houses built in low income communities.

I think a big trend that will emerge in the coming year and beyond is the creation of cross-functional teams – traditional communications, digital marketing, social media, customer/constituent services, etc. – that are tasked with designing better customer/constituent experiences across various touch points. Some organizations have even gone to the extent of creating new roles, such as Chief Community Officer or Chief Experience Officer, to oversee the unification of community-building efforts across an entire organization.

What do you think are some emerging topics in digital that nonprofits and social change organizations should be paying attention to in the new year?

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