Even Steve Rosenbaum thinks so — so much he wrote about it for Fast Company. Read it on Huff Post.

About this time last year, 18 content strategists converged at the IA Summit to talk about all things content - so it was amazing to see that in only one year, a content strategy conference would sell out.

Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic tracked this momentum in her keynote via search traffic using content strategy terms and a light-hearted comparison of content strategy work to the waste clean-up work of Pixar’s Wall-E. Rahel Anne Bailie of Intentional Design also keynoted, speaking to the importance of the content lifecycle and its four quadrants. According to Bailie, the first phase is the analytical phase and without this, the following three tactical phase would be like wandering without a map.

Some other amazing speakers came out for the event as well:

• Jeff MacIntyre of Predicate LLC who spoke on the importance of editorial strategies as well as hosted a panel on the growing practice of content strategy in Europe.
  
• Rachel Lovinger (Razorfish) showed her stuff on semantic content
• Colleen Jones of Content Science spoke on the importance of content analysis
  
• Jonathan Kahn of Together London said it right when he boldly stated that UXers get distracted with features and functionality
  
• Claire O’Brien of CDA (London) proclaimed that metrics moved ahead of content and now it’s time to put 2 and 2 together
  
• Sylvie Dumaul of Duke Razorfish spoke on the state of content strategy in Europe
• Sara Cancilla of Facebook showed how even user-generated content needs a good content strategy
  
• Ken Yau spoke of the largest content strategy elephant in the room: localisation/internationalisation of content. It became very clear over the course of the event that this is a growing need that content strategy needs to find a solution for.

Full presentations can be found on Slideshare under Content Strategy Forum 2010. And if you want to indulge in the long story of content strategy refugees in Paris due to the volcano, check out #csforum10 on Twitter.

This presentation was given at the Content Strategy Forum 2010 sponsored and organized by STC France. This (sold out!) event was a mass convergence of 200 content strategist and content-minded people from over 18 countries.

Presentation Synopsis:

In the 1990’s, the term “shovelware” was a way of describing how print businesses ported their content to the internet without any re-editing, reformatting or real thinking about which content type would be the best medium for their message. Today, our industry has devised standards around “webifying” content so it is useful and meaningful for the screen environment.

Now that content has a home beyond the desktop, mobile content is in danger of becoming the next form of “shovelware.” With mobile, we aren’t thinking strategically — and the biggest risk for this is subsequently assuming insanely short timelines without carving out a dedicated discovery phase time to engage in mobile-specific user and device research to create effective mobile content strategies.

This presentation puts more definition around mobile content and show you how to communicate the need for a mobile content strategy— To add a practical spin on the theoretical, I share new research findings on mobile content and provide some insight on how to achieve a higher return on your mobile content investments. More on this conference..

These thoughts were originally published in  Issue 297 on A List Apart, December 8, 2009

The term “curate” is the interactive world’s new buzzword. During content creation and governance discussions, client pitches and creative brainstorms, I’ve watched this word gain traction at almost warp speed. As a transplant from museums and libraries into interactive media, I can’t help but ask what is it about this word that deserves redefinition for the web?

Curation has a distinguished history in cultural institutions. In galleries and museums, curators use judgment and a refined sense of style to select and arrange art to create a narrative, evoke a response, and communicate a message. As the digital landscape becomes increasingly complex, and as businesses become ever more comfortable using the web to bring their product and audience closer, the techniques and principles of museum curatorship can inform how we create online experiences—particularly when we approach content.

Read the whole article on A List Apart or feel free to discuss here!

Way back on November 9, 2009 I attended Louis Rosenfeld’s workshop in Washington DC on site search analytics. As part of a book release Search Analytics: Conversations With Your Customers, co-authored by Marko Hurst (who recently presented at HUGE) this workshop proposed a practical strategy and  useful tips and tricks for getting your site to perform better, be smarter and be more contextual to your users needs.

I’m looking forward to the release of the book for additional insight, but here’s what I took away in a nutshell from the day:

Data Gets You Hot – Remember the game “hot-cold” from the playground? You’re getting closer; no you’re not – you’re ice cold! In the context of web, data from your analytics software or search logs is like a cheatsheet to this game. Search analytics gives you the confidence and justification to drive your content program in a focused, backed-up way. It gives you the foundation to make content for what your users are looking for – or tells you when you are “hot” or “cold.”

A Site Search Analytics Strategy is like an Archaeological Adventure – Wading through the remains of the past in search for valuable golden trails of information is the art that resides between hard data reporting and user experiencing guestimating (of what users want). Within this data, you have a window into the lives of your community – you can live in their shoes through exposed seasonal keyword trends and see what time they search for certain things. You can reconstruct (through design, architecture, linking and metadata) the paths through which they would typically flow (or want to flow); serving those who are yet to come.

Data Makes the Subjective Substantial – Interpreting search records to inform content decisions gives you footing to make smarter content decisions. Have a creative editorial vision? In addition to (or maybe in lieu of) spending time and money on fancy focus groups, take a look at your search data to see if you can identify clusters of terms and/or untapped topics. But this can’t be done by a computer. Believe it or not, humans are still smarter than computers – and the absence of a human interpretation means a loss of true meaning. Allocating human resources to your data analysis offers you interpretation of context and identification of subtle relationships between items in your site.

The Middle Torso is the Wild West – These are Louis’s own words and what he means is paying attention to the middle torso of the long-tail curve. More specifically, according to him “the middle torso is where the new wave of terms appear and where short head terms go to die.” When you graph your data, you’ll get a group of keywords that are used most frequently and most often.  This short head (at the front of the curve) is the most stable aspect of what your users are looking for. The rest is a fall towards a long-tail of unique phrases that are generally too specific for content targeting.

Grasping Search Stats Helps Your Metadata Plan – In times of poor tagging and scarce resources site search analytics can offer you a means of employing a metadata strategy that prioritizes the most important content (most valuable in terms of search). In this scenario, only the premier content gets an overhaul and energy dedicated to optimizing it. Some nerdy librarian-type might argue this as a triage approach to metadata application — one that ignores moving towards standardized metadata. Why put your valuable time and money against terms that are not your highest performers? In times of resourcing, budgeting and time despair, I think this strategy is spot on.

Check out the shared presentation:

“Why do we need content strategy?! We have an editorial team!” - anonymous client

In my consulting experience I’ve heard this statement enough times that I’m willing to facilitate a kumbaya moment for content representatives of both sides.  Let this post be such a record.

When my company gets hired by your company, we are tasked with building the perfect website for your business and user needs - but of course it’s not so simple when it comes to roles and responsibilities. This issue of consultant Content Strategists and client-side content folks working together brings up questions around job descriptions, roles and power for decision-making abilities.

Since we’re both are responsible for the same content — to make it superior and different in the marketplace– it may seem like we are performing the same role. But like parenting a child, building a great content program requires shared responsibilities and looking to one another for expertise and assistance.

So how can we work together better? Here’s a little break-down of how our roles can be defined to successfully work in sync:

My role as consultant content strategist:
One of the things I’ll do is work extremely close with you to research, provide insight on your existing content and help you expand your holdings and position them competitively in the marketplace. Sometime it’s hard for clients to completely see outside of their own content. Being in-house, you live and breathe it, it’s harder to see objectively to analyze it and take risks in creative departure. You may not be able to take a creative departure due to political or budget constraints. But with a redesign, you can make changes to your content program that will impact your audience long term. It’s my job to help you see your content from a different angle, help you identify your premium assets, be the objective eye who drives the construction of the new structure and determine what the best course of action is given a new site vision.

In commitment to our trusted partnership, since I work day-to-day (ok hour-to-hour) with the design team, I represent you and your voice when we are wireframing your product. In other words, I am the bridge between your editorial needs and my team’s design ideas – pushing against designs that you won’t be able to manage due to resourcing constraints.

I will also lead you through my team’s design process, identify gaps that need to be filled in relation to the new designs, guide you through the major content decisions you’ll need to make and help set you up for production and migration in time for launch.

Your role as in-house content owner:

I believe the biggest relief I see that I give my clients is guiding them through the decision-making process for content while they still have to maintain their full-time editorial responsibilities. It’s a lot to take on when you are in the midst of a redesign, so here are some things that you could do to help the success of the new designs.

• This is probably the most important one: Loop me in on all major internal editorial decisions, ideas and requirements so I can make sure they are built into the designs

• Establish a key working editorial team who can look long-term and is in the position to make long-term strategic content decisions.

• Serve as a subject-matter expert in the content you know most about

• Socialize the best parts of the new design to you other coworkers not lucky enough to be on the working team — it will be an easier transition when the switch is flipped to the new production format

• Turn the strategy we come up with together into a product in real life. This means employing our defined strategy, using analytics to make page-level tweaks so the site performs better, maintain standards and consistency in describing assets, and manage growth according to plan over time.

How we play nice (of course, bonding over drinks also enhances this relationship):

• Workshop to define content features you’ll have for the long-run

• Construct your new content structure (me as the organizational expert, you as the subject-matter expert)

• Adapt your existing publishing schedule and flow with the new one (based on new template designs)

• Closer to launch, we can partner in training and onboarding new or existing editors , writers and content managers to make sure the content program we just created together gets implemented to match the site’s vision

• Work together to successfully migrate your content to a new home and prep for management for launch

On a data level, taxonomies most often relate to URL structure and site hierarchy. However, there is also another angle to taxonomy construction which is more aligned with editorial scope and vision - this is what we can call a topic strategy. In this sense, topic strategies are based on larger strategy that defines the content ownership areas your brand covers, distinguishes your content from competitors and gives your editorial team a sense the scope, depth and prioritizes highly on-brand topics to pursue production around.

Why this approach? When you build a taxonomy including the perspective of topical ownership, the way you attack existing and future content becomes more sensible and grounded. Once this high-level direction is secure and tested with your existing or future content, you can then commence creating hierarchy and relationships on a detailed level. All said and done, you’ll have a more structured set of content.

Additionally, getting a much-needed handle on the what you are producing will give you foundation to start designing pages – so ultimately, you’ll end up with a much more focused how (what content types) and when (how often to produce).

Here are some practical steps for this approach:

Consider your current content holdings – Conducting an effective content audit can help you zero in on the best and worst aspects of your current inventory. It also gives you invaluable insight to determining your content gaps and opportunities in terms of topical ownership.

Figure out what your topical ownership should be

1. First, determine what topics your best content covers. This is your on-brand content. After you do this, figure out if you want to/should  focus on and how much of your editorial efforts should be used to increase content around these topics. This is a much more mathematical look at how many resources (and how often)  should be spent on priority topics.
2. Then conduct a competitive analysis by looking for exactly what topics your competitors cover and how hard it would be for you to beat them and claim authority.
3. Finally, use analytic tools such as Hitwise or Google AdWords to figure out what people are looking for around your subject matter so that you can meet their needs.

Identify what third-party content you have/will have - What is the topical scope of your partner content? To what depth does it cover? In terms of mapping into your structure, consider how it fits into the topical structure you’ve devised. Does it easily map? Then it sounds like it’s a sure fit for being on-topic. If it doesn’t easily fit into your topic structure, ask yourself whether or not it makes sense (requiring expansion of your taxonomic buckets).

Determine what areas you want to grow into - In line with how you’ll evaluate third-party content, devise a long-term strategy for topical scope and growth. Relevant future topical areas need to be built into your taxonomy in order to save headaches later and ensure your content stays on-topic and on-brand far after launch, which means that you address and consider upfront categories or subject matter that your users or writers will be talking about.

On September 24, 2009 I worked with independent User Experience & Web Analytics consultant Marko Hurst to share some of his insight on search analytics at HUGE in Brooklyn. The event was part of the CSNYC monthly meet-up group.

Marko’s talk specifically addressed how search analytics can be part of the Content Strategist’s toolkit. It’s a curious question at this time, as we in the Content Strategy field are beginning to formally define our deliverables and areas of ownership. Analytics increasingly comes up for the Content Strategist as a hard-and-fast way to find out if your content is really working for you and if your readers are finding, moving through and getting the most out of your content. Analytics are also a way to apply numbers to your content so you can create topic strategies that have a high return on investment.

Marko’s presentation featured some of the great ideas in his upcoming book Search Analytics: Conversations with Your Customers co-written with Louis Rosenfeld, available December 2009.

What personal qualities make a good Content Strategist?

Key attributes are being able to simultaneously think creatively and analytically. When dealing with clients you have to stick to your guns about what you believe is best and when working with colleagues, be flexible enough - but also push for what is best for the content and what will take the brand to a new level. It’s also good to have the ability to think like an editor, but also think like a systems person who can set up the flow of the content through the system.

I’m not the only person who has an opinion on this. In fact, Rachel Lovinger recently wrote on this very topic - and there’s a killer thread.

I’ve noticed a good amount of Content Strategists or IAs have degrees in library science. Is getting a Masters in Library Science, or at least taking a few classes, something you recommend to aspiring Content Strategists?

A degree in library science is not necessary – although it may be helpful to take classes in library science or new media studies. Content Strategists that come from library backgrounds bring with them a mindset that is centered on principles of responsible content management: accurate description of objects, standards, open access and education.

What few library schools teach are design principles (with the exception of burgeoning human computer interaction programs). This is the other aspect of what makes a good Content Strategist – to understand the methodologies for designing something that will be used by many people. Some of these principles stem from engineering and industrial design and include research, prototyping, testing and creative problem solving.

It’s not that you have to have these exact skills (otherwise you’d make a great ID!) – but it’s incredibly important to understand that you are building a content program that has to be researched, tested and creatively built within a set of constraints.

What is a typical day for you?

It depends on the phase of a project. During the discovery phase, I will be interviewing content stakeholders (managing editors, content managers, marketers) to gather business requirements and wishes for content. I’ll also participate in user research to gain insight on what types of content they want and how they need to access it. Parallel to these activities, I do an inventory and extensive audit to learn about the subject matter and topical scope of the content I’m working with. I’ll then analyze how well it’s working, identify gaps and make recommendations that will feed into a product vision.

In the design phase, I work extremely closely with Interaction and Visual Designers in order to build page templates and an overall experience that effectively balances quality content against sleek design. The bulks of my deliverables are produced during this phase and include: overall content strategy vision, editorial strategy, search engine optimization, taxonomy development, style guides & messaging strategies and content production or migration recommendations.

During development, I work closely with the technology team in producing metadata schemas, CMS customization and handle migration issues.

How do you network within the community?

It’s all about the CS NYC Group and Linked-In CS group. The community is growing and friendly - so just befriend and you will surely be pointed in the right direction!

What type of blogs, podcasts, and literature are you consuming in order to stay current?

I have a running list of Good Reads to reference (take a gander at the right rail!)….and sometimes Jakob Nielsen covers content issues to get perspective on writing for the web.

Print Resources (some of which remain influential from my days as an art history student):

Kristina Halvorson will be releasing Content Strategy for the Web very soon. It’s going to be the official CS primer.

Information Architecture for the Web by Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville

Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger

MIT Press publishes stellar work around the more philosophical issues around digital information and implications on society.

Memory Practices in the Sciences by Geoffrey C. Bowker.

Ways of Seeing, John Berger

Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture by Jonathan Crary

The Medium is the Message by Marshall McLuhan

Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

Can I ask you another question?

Sure! Pop it in the comments and I’ll gladly answer.

]]> http://www.dopedata.com/2009/07/29/faqs-folks-ask/feed/ http://www.dopedata.com/2009/07/23/panel-on-the-content-life-cycle-at-razorfish/ http://www.dopedata.com/2009/07/23/panel-on-the-content-life-cycle-at-razorfish/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:02:27 +0000 erin http://www.dopedata.com/?p=94 As part of the Content Strategy Meetup Group of New York City, I participated along side Jeffrey Durland, Independent Content Strategist and Paul Ford, Associate Editor, Harper’s on a panel discussing the various phases of the content life cycle.

Watch the archived livecast or read the Tweetscript at #csnyc or #contentstrategy.

Moderator Michael Barnwell, Content Strategy Group Manager at Razorfish set the goal of the June 23,2009 event:

The discussion will address some of these questions: When does the work behind content strategy really begin? When does it end? And who’s doing what in between? We’ll talk about the content strategy work process, coming at it from different perspectives: agency side, client side, pure marketing, editorial governance, and enterprise management.

Speaking specifically to the content life cycle in the agency world, I spoke to the the specific differentiators in the cycle from in-house content strategy.

My sketch for the agency life cycle:

]]> http://www.dopedata.com/2009/07/23/panel-on-the-content-life-cycle-at-razorfish/feed/ http://www.dopedata.com/2009/07/17/6-signs-you-need-content-strategy/ http://www.dopedata.com/2009/07/17/6-signs-you-need-content-strategy/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:33:35 +0000 erin http://www.dopedata.com/?p=79 You are about to embark on a site redesign and you’re starting to feel that spine-chilling feeling that somehow, someplace the content is being ignored. Enter Content Strategy.

Any way you spin it, a good Content Strategy is about creating long-term solutions for producing useful content. These 6 signs will help you build your case:

1. The site is big and old. The older and bigger it is, generally the more need for content architecture work. This usually means that content lives in several databases and there is a high degree of outdated, irrelevant, and potentially off-brand content that is still live due to SEO reasons.

Big, old sites also have old content models that are primarily page-based. Since current design practice often offers more modular and flexible templates, the existing classification structure must be reexamined and reworked to maximize performance in the new design.

Enter taxonomy. Oftentimes, behemoth sites have rusty taxonomies that have grown in strange ways. Your taxonomy defines your areas of topical ownership. Cleaning this up and establishing how deep, how wide and how detailed your coverage establishes the back bone of your content program. Once this is established, you’ll get a much more focused idea of where you will need to produce content, where you can fill in with partner content and what differentiates you from competitors.

In addition to the overarching content structure, legacy content will need to be prioritized for migrating in order to preserve SEO traffic. Prioritization is a balance between what is performing well (getting traffic) against what fits the criteria for what you consider to be “quality” content worth migrating. This activity is a simple checklist that you run against a particular piece of content to make sure it adheres to your requirements. This includes: the new brand attributes, topical relevance (fits into the taxonomy) and level of effort to bring it up-to-date.

2. A New CMS will be Installed. New content management systems always have customization needs from a content perspective. Most likely the existing tag system and organizational structure needs an overhaul—and this new structure will need to be customized into the CMS. How effectively, accurately and detailed you describe your assets using metadata will directly impact how easy it is to find them both from a user perspective(SEO, semantic web) and content management perspective (no more assets lost to the digital void!).

3. The Site is Part of a Larger Family. Sister sites, parent sites, micro-sites, print, broadcast network –Figuring out the often complicated relationships between all brand properties is key for defining the content strategy vision. There may be an opportunity to share content between these sites and a plan for attacking this will need to be built into the project plan. You’ll also need to determine how content will be shared or related to one another. It should also define a strategy for how the various properties can market to one another.

4. There is a Demand for an Innovative Advertising Model. User experience professionals generally like to stay away from this aspect of the web and pretend it doesn’t exist. However, advertisements (especially advertorial, sponsored content areas and sponsored links) are indeed content your readers will glance at and interpret if they can trust what you are providing them with. Baking in a plan for the best execution of these content types is the only way to ensure alignment with overarching content goals and structure. It’s also a great way for UXers to communicate with marketers in order to sell advertising space most effectively – through accurate tagging that matches the taxonomy. This plan could also include pushing content away from the site (syndicating), partnering for content, and creating templates for special advertising needs.

5. The Online Brand is Tired, Old and/or Ineffective. Content is the verbal compliment to visual design. If your website is getting a new visual treatment, you’ll need to ensure that the tone, voice and key messages match visual branding. Aspects of this range from editorial style, marketing copy approaches to article and asset development. What and how you produce for your site are the determining factors for effectively fortifying your brand.

6. There’s a Community. Related to rebranding is the question of how to deal with an existing community. Oftentimes, the longer an online community is available, the more chance that community can totally separate from the brand. In redesign, these communities and message boards are often ignored aspects, but they call for a strategy around how to approach the delicate ecosystem.

Urban Baby is a great case study for how a thriving online community can quickly fizzle given a facelift. Once a go-to place to commiserate, get answers and reduce your anxiety about parenting issues quickly turned into a rogue group of loyalists who reformed on another site (created by former Urban Baby users), taking others with them. Without a thoughtful community migration strategy, the risk of this happening to your site increases.

When a new online brand and online experience is created, you’ll need to consider how you are approaching and communicating with the real people who are part of what keeps your online brand alive. If the community itself is being redesigned, the Content Strategist’s role is to work closely with stakeholders, community leaders and editorial staff to determine strategy around migration to new platform. One should also create a strategy which outlines how the business should staff, seed discussion and interact with the community. And if the community is on a separate platform and not scoped for a full redesign, it is the Content Strategist’s responsibility to develop a solution for how the brand can reengage with the community to reignite the spark in the relationship.