Content Strategy: A Road Map For Delivering Better Websites

North Bay Web Conference
Sunday, May 20th, 2012

Content Strategy
A Road Map for Delivering Better Websites

“A good plan is like a road map:
it shows the final destination and
usually the best way to get there.
—H. Stanley Judd
”

No! I did not
steal Kristina
Halvorson’s
presentation.
http://www.slideshare.net/khalvorson/a-content-strategy-roadmap

What I’ll cover in 15 (OK
maybe 20) minutes!

What I’ll cover in 15 (OK
maybe 20) minutes!
1. Content. What it is.
2. What’s quality content?
3. What distinguishes quality content from the hoi polloi?
4. What’s a content strategy?
5. How can a content strategy help you reach your destination?

Content.
What it is.

http://www.rhino.com/shop/product/various-artists-what-it-funky-soul-and-rare-grooves-1967-1977

1. An ambassador.

2. Good communications.

3. Increasingly important
business asset.

What is quality content?
What does Google mean by quality content?

“We have modified a
classifier we use to promote
fresh content to exclude
fresh content identified as
particularly low-quality.”
–Matt Cutts
www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com

What is quality content?
What do I mean by quality content?

1. Content that earns it’s keep.

2. Content that helps both the
business and the audience
reach their destination.
http://www.choicehotels.ca/en/quality-hotel-cn547 0

What distinguishes
quality content from the
rest of the hoi polloi?

1. Findable
Easy to find
2. Actionable
Capable of being acted upon
3. Measurable
Capable of being measured
4. Shareable
Designed to be shared

A content strategy is a plan for gathering, creating,
publishing and managing content that is findable,
actionable, measurable and shareable; content that
bridges business goals and audience needs.

destination360.com

What a
content strategy
isn’t.

The web has become an “organization’s primary communications, sales,
marketing, and transactional vehicle.”
— Lisa Welchman, Welchman Pierpoint

1. It isn’t a production project. It’s a cyclical and
ongoing business process.
2. It isn’t a task or step that fits nicely into a “do it here”
slot. It informs every step of our web design
processes.
3. It isn’t a fad.

amazon.com

And it’s not a shortcut!
“Thinking about it is easy - doing it is hard.”
–Karen McGrane

How can a content
strategy help you reach
your destination?

Road Trip!
A content strategy is a
plan, and if a web
project was a road trip,
you might order a AAA
TripTik® for your client.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbarefoot/372428701/

Planning a road trip.
1. What’s their destination, and why are they taking
this trip?
2. What resources are available?
3. Who’s traveling with them?
4. How are they going to get there?
5. What do they need to take with them?
6. How will they pack so everything can be found?
7. What will they do when they reach their
destination?

What’s their destination, and why are they
taking this trip?

1. Invite all of the stakeholders to the table.
2. Revisit their mission and vision.
3. Explore what they want to accomplish.
4. Define tangible and measurable objectives.

What resources are
available?
Maybe the trip to Europe will have to wait, but
Las Vegas is doable.

1. How much time and money do they have?
2. Who will collaborate with you?
3. Do they have anyone on staff qualified and
available to create content?
dailymail.co.uk

Who’s traveling with them?
1. Who is their audience?
2. What are their stories?
3. What do they care about?
4. What are they looking for?
5. Are business goals
aligned with audience Dairy Queen, outdoor adventure,
luxury?
goals?
Papiblogger.com

How will they get where they’re going?
1. What is their core content strategy?
2. What are their key messages?
3. What is their editorial strategy, UX strategy?
4. What about “intelligent content and CMS
requirements?

What’s the best way to reach their destination? The direct route, the scenic route,
over the river and through the woods?

What do they need to take with them?
What content do they need? Do they have a swimsuit. Does it fit? Do they need a
new one? If so, who’s doing the shopping? If a new swimsuit isn’t in the budget,
can they get by with the old swimsuit.

1. What do they have?
2. Is it any good?
3. What do they need?
4. Where will it come from?

How will they pack everything so it can be found?
It’s a sure bet someone will want to find a book, camera, snack or iPod you packed.
And they don’t all want the same thing at the same time.

1. How will the information
architecture be structured?
2. What are their taxonomy and
metadata strategies?
3. What’s their SEO strategy?

kidculture.wordpress.com

What will they do when they reach their destination?
What’s the plan? Who will be in charge of activities and schedules? Who will make
sure that folks scuba diving know how to swim and get proper training.
1. How are key content decisions made, initiated and communicated?
2. How will their content be maintained throughout its lifecycle?
3. What are the rules, policies, guidelines, standards that govern their content workflow
and processes?
4. Are content production and CMS workshops and training scheduled
5. Who’s qualified to produce content?
6. How often will they measure success, and who will do it?
7. What is their ongoing content marketing plan and who will do it?

Let’s get this show on the road.
“A content strategy must achieve
a harmonic balance between
business goals, editorial mission,
user expectations, design vision,
the content production process,
and technological capabilities. All
of these elements must work
together to bring a content
strategy to life. …Content is the
common thread that runs
through all of these elements.”
– Rachel Lovinger

This is what your processes can
look like when you have a plan;
a content strategy.

Discovery
1. The discovery worksheet becomes a thoughtful and intentional road map.
2. Plans are made based on available resources.
3. Personas identify what audiences care about.
4. Core web strategies, messaging and editorial strategies inform content and design
decisions, and features and functionality needs.
5. Content audits document the quantity and quality of your content.
6. Purposeful content is planned for, collected and generated.
7. Content modeling and content templates direct content production.
8. Fantasy architecture is replaced with useful, usable structure.
9. Success metrics and a plan for ongoing maintenance are pre-determined.
10. Design and development costs now become predictable.

And all this before you open
Photoshop!

UX & Visual Design
“Content strategy frames a project for the designer.”
– Brad Shorr

1. Branding and visual design decisions support business and user goals.
2. Multiple comps and endless rounds of revision are a thing of the past.
3. The layout supports UX and user goals.
4. Micro-copy, button text, navigation, and error messages are planned for.

Develop
1. Web page “templates” are built based on real content reducing the
amount of HTML/CSS/JS rework.
2. Features and functionality are based on business requirements, user goals
and available resources.
3. CMS requirements drive the build, and content is migrated seamlessly.
4. CMS interfaces accommodate the content, workflow, taxonomy, metadata
and CMS users, etc..
5. CMS Authors are happy!

Deploy
1. Governance and maintenance rules, policies, workflows, and standards
are pre-determined
2. CMS documentation has been created and training has been scheduled.
3. Editorial calendars and style guides ensure consistency in future content
4. Metrics tools are installed and reviews are scheduled.
5. SEO plans are in place

And finally… (Substance before sizzle!)

You’re ready to execute your
marketing plans. Whether you’re
planning for social media
inbound campaigns, blogging or
white papers, your internet
marketing plans will look
remarkably like your plans for
content.

business-opportunities.biz

“As content marketing becomes an integral part of the mix, marketers
need to start thinking about content first”
– Stacey King Gordon, Suite Seven

“Our job is not to convince and evangelize people who don’t get the
importance of ours job, but rather to find the people who get it, and make
them great.”
– Karen McGrane, Art Bond & Science

A content strategy can fix a lot of our
content problems, but…

“You can’t fix everything.”
– Lisa Welchman, Welchman Pierpoint

Thank you!
Know your goals
Know your audience
Know what you have
Know what you need
Know who’s responsible for it
Know when you need help

jeri@lofwebdesign | @jerihastava | Facebook.com/leapoffaithwebdesign

Content Strategy: A Road Map For Delivering Better Websites

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