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Developing Your Voice &
Defining Your Strategy
Content Strategy for Nonprofits, Part 2
Michaela HacknerDirector of Content Strategy, Forum One
Brett MeyerLead Strategist, ThinkShout
Direction Setting
Define Goals and Measures
● What are our website goals?
● How can we measure our impact to know if we
were successful?
Web redesigns are like a science experiment….
Define and Prioritize AudiencesWho are we speaking to?
● Who are our audiences?
● Which are the highest priority?
● What’s their tolerance?
● What are there motivations?
*Methodology derived from John Schneider
Know Feel Find ActWhat experience do we want to create with our content?
● What do we want our audience to know about us?
● What do we want them to feel when they read our
content?
● What kinds of content / information do we want them to
find?
● What do we want them to do?
Identity PillarsWhat do we want to say and how do we want to say it?
*Methodology derived from Ahava Leibtag
● Organizations define how they are perceived now and
how they would like be seen in the future.
● Result in a high-level framework for organizations to
communicate their brand.
● Defining and adhering to Identity Pillars helps ensure
organizations stay true to their ethics and goals.
Identity Pillars
Current
Brand
Attributes
Future
Brand
Attributes
False Brand
Attributes
Identity
pillars
How we see
ourselves now.
How we want
to be seen in
the future.
How we don’t
want to be
perceived.
How can we
best
communicate
our brand.
*Methodology derived from Ahava Leibtag
Messaging ArchitectureWhat do we want to say and how do we want to say it?
You have about 2 seconds to capture your audience’s
attention.
● Messaging architecture defines and articulates your
organization’s key messages in a clear and consistent
way.
● As information architecture defines the blueprint for a
site’s functional and visual design, messaging
architecture defines the blueprint of all site content.
*Methodology derived from Karen McGrane
Primary message
Should capture the essence of “what” and “why”.
Secondary messages
Provides supporting information answering “who”,
“how”, “when”, and “how much”.
Triggers / change in beliefs desired
What should the user feel after absorbing your
messages, what change should happen in their
mind based on seeing this information?
Messaging Architecture
*Methodology derived from Karen McGrane
This is hard.
But worth it.
Vision / Product BriefHow do we maintain this vision?
● Develop a brief document that clearly articulates these
outcomes.
● Share it with the rest of the organization, and use it to
keep your content and communications decisions
consistent, and on track.
Content Production Planning
Cores and PathsHow does our content relate to our goals – and our audiences?
* Methodology derived from Boxes and Arrows
Cores and Paths helps us:
● Focus on the content & functionality that your users want
● Consider the varied ways a user might arrive at this piece of
content
● Explore how we can engage users in supporting your
organizational goals in the context of a core offering
● Consider where we might want our users to go from there
based upon your organizational goals
Inward Paths
User Goals Organizational Goals
Outward Paths
Search Terms Elements of the Core Calls to Action
Core Content / Functionality
Supporting Information
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Journey MappingWhat is the journey we want our visitors to take?
*Methodology derived from Donna LiChaw and Lis Hubert
Explore the “journeys” key audiences take as the become
more deeply engaged in your organization. Mapping out
this experience helps us:
● Achieve a shared understanding of user needs and
goals and how they relate to the content.
● Identify what content is strong, where the gaps are, and
derive an approach to strengthen conversions.
Content Creation TemplatesHow can we ensure consistency throughout our content?
Once you’ve defined your messaging architecture, you
need to apply those ideas to all your content.
● Content creation templates help you outline your story
before you start writing.
● Doing so ensures you weave an appropriate,
persuasive, and deliberate story across your website
and communication channels.
Editorial CalendarHow do we ensure our content stays fresh?
Content gets stale! Doing all the strategy work upfront is
for naught if you don’t have a plan to maintain it over time.
● Plan out the content you’ll need to write / refresh, identify
owners, and keep track of the status.
● Use this opportunity to re-evaluate older content (6+
months old).
Governance Planning
Asking the 11 questionsHow do we ensure our content governance is successful?
*Methodology derived from GatherContent
1. Do you know how much content you have on your current site?
2. Have you (or will you) audit the content on your current site?
3. Are you archiving outdated or poor quality content on the
current site?
4. Do you know who is going to (re)write all the content for the
new site?
5. Does someone have overall responsibility for content quality
during the project and beyond launch?
Asking the 11 questionsHow do we ensure our content governance is successful?
*Methodology derived from GatherContent
6. Do you know (roughly) how many hours per week will be
dedicated to maintaining content on the new site?
7. Does the current site have dedicated (subject expert) content
owners?
8. Do you know if any current content is syndicated
9. Will you have a (digital) content style guide
10.Do you have analytics running on your current site?
11.Can content be published in phases after the site launches?
Developing a governance strategyHow can we ensure our content stays fresh?
● Interview content stakeholders.
● Identify the good.
● Out with the bad.
● Generate buy-in from senior stakeholders.
● Establish content roles and owners.
● Formalize a plan.
● Train staff.
Resources
• Epic List of Content Strategy Resources | Jon Colman
• The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web | Ahava
Leibtag
• Content Strategy at Work | Margot Bloomstein
• Storymapping, A Macgyver Approach to Content Strategy | Donna
Lichaw & Lis Hubert
• Nicely Said | Nicole Fenton & Kate Kiefer Lee
• GatherContent’s Blog
• Content First User Experience | Steph Hay
• How to Implement a Content First Workflow | Chromatic
• MailChimp’s Style Guide
• A Great Content Strategy’s Anatomy | Search Engine Journal
Giveaway!
GatherContent
1- year subscription!
How many times have you been waiting on a colleague or copywriter to
hand over the content your project needs — or had a team mate trying
to make sense of a big, badly-formatted Word document when they are
pasting content into the CMS? What if you could avoid the usual
headaches on your web projects? GatherContent is a content-first
solution that helps organisations and their staff plan, organise and
collaborate on website content. Pre-CMS.
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