Web Content Training + Consultingcontent-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/cs_casestudy_ecri… · on style guides, editorial calendars, and other content best practices. In

Client: ECRI Institute / Industries: Healthcare, Nonprofit

Web Content Training + Consulting

Scientifically-Minded Nonprofit Equips Employees for Seismic Content Shift

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The Client

Web Content Training and Consulting:Scientifically-Minded Nonprofit Equips Employees for Seismic Content Shift

Renowned for its 45-year commitment to patient care, ECRI Institute conducts applied scientific research into medical procedures, devices, drugs, and processes. Over 5,000 hospitals, health systems, public and private payers, medical

professional liability insurers, U.S. federal and state government agencies, ministries of health,

associations, and accrediting agencies worldwide eagerly await their research and publications.

Just as ECRI must keep itself informed about the latest advances in healthcare science and

technology, the organization realized its content needed a fresh, scientific examination. With

its customers demanding more and more easy-to-access website and mobile content, ECRI

decided to redesign its website. As part of the foundation of its new website strategy, ECRI

needed to communicate a new web-centric content direction to employees. To do that, they

needed cutting-edge training, tools, and resources to guide them through this cultural shift and

transition.

In this case study, learn about ECRI’s situation, our solution, and the results.

The Situation3

As the leading organization advising hospitals and healthcare systems on

improving patient care, ECRI Institute is in the business of expert content. Its vision is to offer clients

the right healthcare content for their complex decisions at the right time. With an extensive range of

products and services, content creation at ECRI involves many people with varying backgrounds—

from marketing communications specialists to scientists.

Traditionally, ECRI mostly published through print, so a print paradigm still lingered within the

organization. That cultural paradigm led to content that wasn’t prepared for the web or mobile

devices. Compounding that problem, different groups produced content in silos, and there wasn’t

an organizational standard for online content creation. That led to inconsistent web content quality

and production.

Nan Smith, Director of Web Business Strategy, explains how an experienced, loyal

organizational culture steeped in a print paradigm posed a challenge:

So many people at ECRI have been loyal to the organization for so long

that it created a tough mindset. It was hard to get people to move from

what they were used to doing and instead look at things with a fresh eye.

We really needed to have someone from the outside help us move them

up to another level of looking at web content.

Taking a fresh look became important because the organization had begun a major website redesign

that planned to fix and accommodate many pressing web content needs. But key stakeholders

realized that without web content best practices consistently applied throughout the organization,

the redesign would only superficially fix certain problems. As a result, ECRI needed to evolve its

content strategy to focus on digital and implement web content best practices.

Some teams individually pioneered some web-centric content approaches with the smart use of

SharePoint workflows and enforcing various web content best practices for writers. But how could


ECRI scale these individual efforts into an overall strategic approach for everyone? ECRI needed to

communicate a clear, common set of web-first content best practices in preparation for the new

website, and get employees previously siloed in various groups all on the same page.

As a result, ECRI turned to us to create and deliver customized, actionable web content training, consulting, and resources for all employees.

The Situation continued

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We worked with ECRI to assess their situation and agreed upon some core needs:

• ALIGNING MULTIPLE CONTENT TEAMS around the value of web writing.

• UPDATING PRACTITIONERS on appropriate and useful best practices for web writing.

• PROVIDING A FRAMEWORK for implementing a web-first content strategy.

• PROVIDING PROCESS RECOMMENDATIONS, tools, and resources.

Using ECRI’s vision and questions, as well as our experience and expertise in crafting customized content strategy training for large organizations, we devised a multipronged solution.

Our Solution

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AnalysisOur consulting engagement began by talking extensively with the company’s core team. Our goal? To identify specific, targeted needs that Content Science would address through content

training and consulting. This analysis and investigation included conducting interviews with ECRI

team members and reviewing existing documentation.

Our analysis verified the needs initially identified by ECRI, uncovered some important nuances

about those needs, and suggested some additional needs. This analysis informed the content

training outline and materials as well as influencing our content process recommendations.

Training ClassTo unite employees and stakeholders around a vision for web content best practices and provide

them tools and resources to get going, we planned training customized to ECRI’s needs. Informed by the analysis, we also drew upon our own repository of training materials,

content strategy methods, principles, and techniques. To personalize the training, we collected

specific ECRI examples in collaboration with the organization.

Not only did the customized training relate well to employees, but also

separating content from the business unit silos meant more people working together to achieve

a web content-first approach. Smith applauds that approach:

The training exercises were excellent because of the way Content Science

structured them. People from different departments worked together in

groups to talk about ECRI content, whether it was reshaping existing content

or doing content planning. Content Science’s exercises spurred cross-

departmental conversation. In fact, great brainstorming and ideas came

out of that conversation that had an impact beyond the training.

Our Solution continued


We devised and delivered in-person

sessions with two core modules:

• THE FIRST SESSION focused on must-know web content best practices, the benefits of a web-focused approach to content, and why ECRI needed to leave the print paradigm behind.

• THE SECOND SESSION focused on reader / user needs, introduced more web content best practices, and talked about processes, roles, and tools.

Overall, the sessions inspired attendees to fulfill their respective roles in bringing ECRI’s

web-centric content strategy vision to life.

We planned frequent activities to drive

home the learning and overcome attention span decay.

We also provided an additional training session strictly for ECRI’s marketing department that covered content marketing, voice, editorial processes, guided selling,

marketing campaign content, and sales lead content.

The training achieved the goal of getting ECRI in the right frame of mind to create web-

centric content. Smith notes:

When someone trusted from the outside helps us reinforce best practices and compare those best practices against what we see in ECRI’s content, then the points start to hit home. Content Science helped our teams understand that even if they think they’re creating content the best way, there is always room to make it better.

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,"

ACTIVITY 1FIX THIS CONTENT: 10 MINUTES

##"

1. Get into groups of 4-5

2. Select a recorder and a communicator

3. Identify and explain 5 fixes to Handout 2

4. Sketch the fixed version

ACTIVITY WORKSHEET 1 + HANDOUT 2

4: What’s in a Name: Consistency

!*"

Consistency helps users understand their location in your

site and confirm they’re progressing to relevant content.

Link name

Web Content Fundamentals BEST PRACTICES FOR A !

WEB-FIRST APPROACH TO CONTENT!

Process RecommendationsTo help ECRI achieve its web-first content strategy

and supplement the training, we offered process

recommendations for the organization’s content

process. As a way to reinforce important aspects of

the training and give ECRI more guidance during the

website redesign, the recommendations helped the

organization:

• ESTABLISH A REPEATABLE, SUSTAINABLE APPROACH for its member site content.

• MAKE THE TRANSITION from its current site to the new site.

• ESTABLISH AN APPROACH to make content on its public site more effective for marketing.

The process recommendations became an oft-referenced resource that also got

new hires and stakeholders up to speed quickly and efficiently on web content best practices.

Smith points out how essential these process recommendations became to her teams:

Actionable items came out of the process recommendations. The

recommendations helped us formulate our plans of figuring out how we

were going to approach the huge task of migrating our content, and then

getting the content to a place where we could actually start working on it.

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PROCESS RECOMMENDATIONS Supporting a Web-Focused Content Approach Developed by Content Science for ECRI Institute December 2, 2013

!

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Giving everyone involved in creating the content confidence that it’s supported by strategy.

In short, establishing this process ensures you treat your content as a business asset.

Before new content products follow the common core workflow (see A2), new content products should follow a core process of analysis, synthesis, and strategy. (See figure 1.)

!Figure 1: Process for New Content Product Strategy

Analysis

The analysis phase focuses on research, information gathering, and competitive review to answer key questions such as

Who is this content product for? What is the value proposition?

Do competitors offer a similar content product? How is this different from or better than what competitors offer?

What is the revenue potential for the content product?

What are the potential costs to develop and maintain the content product?

Synthesis

The synthesis phase focuses on distilling the analysis into the key opportunities that will guide the strategy. Also, in this phase, if the analysis reveals that creating the new content product is not viable or beneficial, the idea should “sunset” (retire) and not proceed to strategy.

Strategy

The strategy phase further distills the analysis and synthesis into a vision for the new content product. It also answers high-level planning questions such as

Will we create new content, repurpose existing content, or curate existing content?

Will we create the content ourselves, work with an outside partner, or a combination?

Analysis Synthesis Strategy

The actionable training and materials that Content Science provided helped guide ECRI through its website redesign, strengthen the foundation of its content strategy, and

ease scalability. Stakeholders and practitioners are now aligned around a common vision and

they clearly see the content possibilities that await.

Smith agrees, especially concerning the momentum she sees at ECRI:

We’re definitely moving in the right direction. I’m thrilled that we now have

all interested parties collaboratively working together toward an agreement

on style guides, editorial calendars, and other content best practices. In

addition, we’ve definitely seen a transition in getting everybody to move from

a print mindset to understanding how to create a digital work product. That’s

really terrific. Content Science gave our other projects momentum, and its

tools and best practices spread into other areas of ECRI.

Specifically, the process recommendations reinforced the insights gained from the training

in actionable ways. ECRI has incorporated the recommendations into projects, content

development processes, and the overall website redesign where they serve as supporting

documents and starting points for discussion among the various stakeholders.

Smith says that ECRI is following the recommendations, building upon them, and measuring

progress as the organization migrates content over to the new website.

In the short term, the training helped ECRI with:

• A MORE EFFICIENT REVIEW AND APPROVAL of new and rewritten content for the ECRI Institute website, which reduced the risk of delays in launching the website.

• A MORE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT MAINTENANCE of website content, ensuring the website remains effective over time.

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The Results


Participants left the training feeling confident that a web-first approach was best for ECRI

Institute as a whole, for their specific team, and for themselves as individuals. They also walked

away more knowledgeable about web content best practices, able to apply critical best practices,

and aware of web content planning resources.

With such a major change in a large organization, it was important that participants felt

comfortable with the notion that their content processes, potentially including roles and

supporting tools, would change. Our training and process recommendations were a critical part of ECRI’s change management as the organization migrated to the new website.

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The Results continued


Our partnership with ECRI Institute was a success, resulting in training and resources

the organization can call upon now and into the future as it refines its content strategy and migrates

to a new website. Why? We were able to navigate through the complexities of a large nonprofit

organization to get all the players on the same page and taking concrete steps toward a common

vision.

Smith underlines the importance of sustaining a long-term content vision:

Content Science shared a lot of great examples and concepts, but more

importantly they shared tools that we can use that help us with editorial

planning, putting together a plan, communicating that plan to people at ECRI,

and knowing our audience better. We can also replicate many of their core

process recommendations across the organization. The training was not just a

bunch of best practices and good concepts. We incorporated Content Science’s

tools and resources into our organization, making them our own and getting

people’s creative juices flowing.

Why Partner With Us

Smith also commended Content Science’s project management and ability to keep pace with the

momentum of ECRI’s overall website redesign and web content migration projects.

If you work with us on creating content strategy training and resources, you could gain benefits

such as

A FRAMEWORK for more efficient content creation, management, and evaluation.

BETTER COMMUNICATION on your team and among stakeholders about content.

A MOTIVATED, READY-TO-ACT TEAM thanks to a well-understood plan for moving forward.

A STRATEGY AND ACTIONABLE PLAN for content training that creates value both now and later.

A FOUNDATION FOR EXPANDING CUSTOMER REACH, boosting your reputation and increasing revenue.

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Why Partner With Us continued


About Content Science11

We’re an award-winning content intelligence and strategy firm headquartered in Atlanta, GA.

We have advised the world’s leading brands, nonprofits, startups, and government agencies

on making content make a difference to their goals.

Why Content Science? Because content is, indeed, a science. We study what works well—and

what doesn’t—so you can make informed decisions about your content.

Our services include consulting, research, and training. Our focus areas include content

analysis, content strategy, content marketing, user experience, and content systems.

Our subscription products include the innovative software ContentWRX, which takes the

hassle out of understanding whether your content is effective. We also created the online

magazine and training platform Content Science Review to empower you and your team with

research, tools, and insights.

Our CEO is Colleen Jones, author of the popular content book Clout: The Art and Science of

Influential Web Content and frequent speaker.

Want to make your content work for your organization? We can help.

Contact us to find out how. content-science.com/about/contact-us

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Web Content Training + Consultingcontent-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/cs_casestudy_ecri… · on style guides, editorial calendars, and other content best practices. In