11th hour copy. Fix-it-later launches. Our users deserve more than the last-minute content we often get stuck with. And you have the power to change the game. Learn how to introduce (and sell) content strategy into your web design process.
[ session description ]

I have a feeling this presentation is going to make the best podcast to listen to. Kristina is awesome. She’d better put this on slideshare.

Presenter(s)

Kristina Halvorson @halvorson

Date

13 March 2010

Tag(s)

#contentstrategy

#csftw

#contentstrategyftw

Books

Content Strategy

If content is king, there sure are a lot of kings that smell bad. When content helps me, answers a question, allows me to complete a task, it’s the best experience. Social media allows us to share those gems when we find them with others.

Content strategy forces organizations to take a hard look of what it is they are doing and why they are doing it. We build things to house content, yet most of the workflow of design is focused on the house not the content.

Content Problem

skillset.org diagram interactive project process

Web writers are often isolated. Projects kick off without really talking about the content: what content do we have? how do we take care of it? All that “can be taken care of later.”

Lies we tell ourselves

Lie: We already have the content. We can just get it, fill in later. It’s just writing, we can always write more. The client will take care of the content.

Truth: That’s copywriting. Not content. Content requires auditing, analysis, strategy, categorization, structuring, creation, review, approval, publication, updating, and archiving/expiration.

Timeline

• Richard Saul Wurman coined the phrase “information architecture”
• Edward Tufte “Envisioning Information”: you can use design to communicate information that is more powerful than just explaining it in text
• jesse james garrett synthesizes user experience. Site objectives/user needs. Functional specifications/content requirements*, interaction design…

* The mistake is to begin to think about content the way we think about features. We focus on the vehicle and its features that houses the ghostly content. But we never engaged the people who were thinking about the website three years from now.

Content is not a feature

It’s something that changes all the time. Reject the status quo of just accepting that content will always be late in the process due to silo.

Content Strategy

A strategy is a plan for obtaining a specific goal or result. Content includes text and data, graphics, video and animation, and audio (“anything you can access online”). However text and data is more dynamic than video/audio products. Text is page copy, articles, links, labels, flash elements, alt tags, error messages, task instructions forms, search results, metadata … All of it.

Messaging

The understanding that we want to impart upon our users as they interact with our content. What is it that we want them to know after they are done reading/interacting our content.

Requirements

Audit your organization’s content and ask: Does this help us to achieve our business objectives as well as meet my users’ goals? Every piece of content should map back to those two things in some way. The creation of this kind of “mapped” content should have editorial guidance and a schedule (editorial calendar).

Structure/Workflow

Without a content strategy, a copywriter will try to accomplish everything in text because they don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish or why people came to a page or what a schedule / ownership for a page is.

Reality

1. Audit. You must know what you have on your site, on your blogs, on your social media channels. Map the terrain so you can create a map to where you want to be. Content Inventory (braintraffic.org). If you have a large site, pick a source of pain that is highly visible to administration, and audit that area. Anything that is Redundant, Outdated, or Trivial can go.
2. Ask. It’s not just the “what”, content strategy is the why, how, for whom, by whom, with what, when where, how often, and what next.
3. Analyze. Look at the value of content, as well as the ecosystems (seo, government, social, geographical) that surround your content. Pay special attention to the internal ecosystem: content ownership, skillsets, politics, campaign portfolio.
4. Align. Content strategy is a plan for creation, delivery, and governance. A strategist is involved in every step of the total product process and helps to keep the organization involved in the product aligned around a lifecycle (create, deliver, govern).
5. Assume Responsibility At the end of the day, you are a publisher. Participate.

What’s the win? Happiness.

• Better user experience
• Greater brand consistency
• New operational efficiencies
• Better risk management through better controls
• Improved seo/analytics
• More effective personalization and targeting

What are our key performance indicators?

Presenter

Margot Bloomstein @mbloomstein

Date

12 March 2010

Article

alistapart (the case for content strategy)

Tag(s)

#contentstrategy

#cswiify

Why are we doing this? What are we trying to communicate? What is our calendar/schedule for communicating across multiple channels?

Content Strategy delivers:

• air-tight solutions (giving users what they need on time/earlier)
• save time, budget, energy on iteration by minimizing revisions
• cohesive UX
• higher conversion
• happier people (clients rallied around a shared vision)

Designers

How do you visualize abstract concepts without concrete terms? A message architecture can provide this if it is built before design begins.

Tool: A message architecture / shared vocabulary exercise builds prioritized list of brand attributes

• card sort terms that relate to how we are seen, how our competitiors are seen, and how we’d like to be seen
• prioritize key messages
• use “real copy” for more unified concepts (so real shared vocab goes into mockups)
• get it right with fewer revisions (words are cheaper than comps)

By starting with content early, more asymmetrical work can begin.

Design is able to be written to exact specs, anticipate user-generated content structures (comments, reviews); the designer anticipates content types, creates richer layouts. Content design and visual design should share a message architecture.

IA and project managers

• no future planning is possible without knowledge of what you currently have / need
• quantity/quality content audit:
• parity in content length/consistency in content structure,
• evaluate quality–current, appropriate, relevant
• quality evaluations are made against the content strategy to inform a more thorough / comprehensive sitemap, useful wireframes; clarifies the gap analysis
• content strategy should be part of the proposal process (e.g., IA choices for labels can be informed by the message architecture / prioritizations)
• sell client on not wasting money

Writers

Content strategy is different from copywriting. Writing is just one tactical part of content strategy that doesn’t address “what are you trying to communicate?” Internal writers (by definition) often lack an external perspective needed to merge strategies with the entire package.

SEO/Ads

A shared message architecture can be mapped against ad/meta copy so that ad copy melds with content redesigns. You can extend where the user experience begins by making tone match “early seeds” inside search results.

Social Media

• Successful social media experiences must transition past “client talking about themselves” to “informing the conversation”. That’s hoping that organizations get that Twitter cannot be a one-way conversation/push.
• “Most organizations are determined to talk about themselves instead of interacting with audiences or creating two-way content (What do you want from us today?).” ~ Jeff Cutler
• Prioritization of communication goals helps to ensure consistency.
• Editorial style guides, editorial calendars help writers to have a consistent/coordinated multi-channel presence that uses a workflow to plan, create, and expire content types/tones/foci.

Presenter

dan willis, sapient

@uxcranks

Date

Friday, March 13

Site

podcast

ux crank

the pdf

Books Mentioned

the experience economy. pine, gilmore.

• cross-discipline teams. exploit and protect the expertise.
• design for specific users and their specific needs.
• embrace your ignorance.
• the business model should begin and end with the user.
• it’s not meant to be easy, so fail quickly and learn.

Design solves problems. Design is what the product does. The visual design is just a means to an end. Just another dead tree: good web is not just print in disguise. “Take a print mag and just do the same thing but with video in it != good web.” Print assumes a linear order and relies on a headline format. taking a brochure and adding some web native tools is not really web design. We haven’t gone past print design; the web hasn’t become a medium in its own right and it should be. Headlines/stories are commodities. Good for the homepage (where there is a judgement of priority) but not great inside the site. once you have the content, chunk it and dice it into nuggets and use metadata to connect (visual thesarus) to other nuggets. In this way, the judgement is the user’s, not the editors. it’s alpha and omega.

1. first, technologists are doing the content.
2. then, slowly, artists get involved to use the technologist tools to build the content. next step.
3. then, even more slowly, you place the content in the hands of content experts/consumers. next step.

Web design needs a grammar. “the grammar of transcendent web design”

• random voyeurism. we like to watch other people at their most honest and raw. so any time content is being created and presented publicly, we don’t just interact with the content, we start to learn about the people who are uploading the content. (e.g., flickrvision)
• self-aware (but uncontrollable) content. data knows data about itself (metadata; xml is self-describing). and the meta data is often created by the reader/viewer/consumer, not the author. the power is shifting from the content creator to the content consumer (from authority to popularity). find content that can be used to support and prove your product from other sources/communities on the web that may not ever interact with your product (pillow research for the benjamen hotel).
• user-created context. online publishers try to control the context of content. you can’t online because each single user makes different choices and controls the context; and if they are forced, they tend to rebel. fighting the user for control will continue to fail. best step: assume you don’t have control of the data you are putting out there. how can you take advantage of that?
• ambient awareness. microblogging. small bits of data (140 characters or less) by themselves are usually useless; but collectively (e.g., body language cues, pointilism) we start learning a lot about what is going on.
• experiential content. something more than chunks of type is the content. the total experience is the content you are creating. start there. EXPERIENCE IS THE CONTENT. the designer shares space with the user because the user is also a designer since the user is the one having the experience.

These are notes from a session at sxsw interactive. My own take on topics are mixed in with what the presenters were actually saying, so do not assume all of this content is my own.