In-House Content Strategy
MinneWebCon • April 15, 2013
Meghan Seawell@m3ggiesue
Content strategy is…
• Using your content to meet your business objectives
Common problems
• Silos• Governance• Consistency• Workflow• ROT• Unknown content landscape
It’s not your fault.
Why you?
• Organizational knowledge
• Investment (you care)• Influence• Time
What you can do
• Assess problems• Set goals• Create tools (make it easy)
What are the problems?
Tools to ID pain points
• Interviews• Surveys• Customer support• Informal asking• Analytics• Audits
“Tell me more about that.”
Analytics
• Look for oddities, outliers• Where do people drop off?• Is “unimportant” content getting a
lot of views?• Are people entering where you think
they are/should be?
Content audits
• Complete look at site
• Good for making a case to do more work
• Investment of resources
Sample audit criteria
• Quantitative:– URL– Views– Images– Size– Page name– Section/owner–Word count
• Qualitative:– Branding– Relevancy– Audience– Findability– Readability–Messaging
What are your goals?
Business objectives
• What are your business objectives?
• Which of those can your web content support?
Audiences
• Who are they?• What unique goals
do they each have?• Which are most
important?
Brand voice
• What words could describe your voice?
• If your organization was a person, what kind of person would it be?– (Ideally.)
• What different tones do you use?
Core strategy statement
• What does your content need to achieve?
• What does it need to be?
• What will you need to do to support it?
Sample core strategy
How do I fix it?
Messaging guide
• Core strategy• Top/key messages your
content needs to echo• Ingrain language• Voice/tone notes
Style guide
• Answer any questions that might be useful– Grammar– Nomenclature/language– Content types– Audiences– Voice/tone
• Steal!
Content calendars
• What happens annually?
• Broad themes, granular topics
• Quarterly/monthly/weekly
• Include multiple communications channels
Content brief
• Make a case:–What is this trying to
accomplish?–Who is it for?–What is its lifespan?– Does it fit with core
strategy?
• Tool to say no
Workflows
• Diagram it• How information gets
posted• Life of a piece of
content – Start well before it
gets online
• Current vs. ideal
Communicate
• Talk to contributors regularly–Meetings– Emails– Informal chats
• Pulse checks– Undiagnosed problems
• Continual reminders
Make something up
• Imagine a future in which everything works– How does it look?–What’s the gap?– How can you bridge
it?
Resources
• Links, slides, and sample tools: meghanseawell.com/minnewebcon-2013
• Contact me–[email protected]– linkedin.com/in/meghanseawell
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