E3 Content Strategy

How Taxonomy and Metadata Leads to Findability

2012-02-06T17:18:00.000-08:00

Kathy's note: This is the ninth installment in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey that discusses the intersection of content strategy and user-centred design. Read all posts by Theresa.
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Taxonomy and metadata are becoming much more popular these days. Companies need to keep track of their information, but can’t use traditional classification systems, such as Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress Subject Headgings. In the last 10 years, faceted taxonomies have taken on new importance on the web; XML has upgraded the visibility of metadata.
Having the skills to create taxonomies and metadata will serve you well. Most people don’t have the instinctual skills to create information organization structures that are useful or the practical knowledge and experience to be confident in the structures they create. Understanding how taxonomies and metadata feed into user interfaces allows you to recommend good designs that improve findability.

Technical writers, content strategists, other writers, business analysts, requirements analysts, information scientists, information architects, information designers, etc., are trained to organize knowledge and are perfectly positioned to help people build new, non-traditional knowledge structures.

Practical Observations
As an information architect, I work with companies who are struggling with information organization. They recognize the need to put their information into a content management system (CMS) to ensure digital information or digital surrogates for physical objects can be found. As a consultant, companies hire me to help build metadata and taxonomy structures.

Not only am I hired for a third-party, outside view, but also because these skills have not been kept in-house. Historically, companies have seen information structures grow organically according to idiosyncratic tastes. Employees create structures that are useful to themselves, but they don’t have an understanding or the research to make a structure that fits for a larger population. These structures are not ecumenical or scalable.

I’ve also observed that people who do have a naturally good grasp on information organization rarely have confidence in their ideas. I've been thinking lately about how people in North America may often be taught how to use classification structures, the prime example being the Dewey Decimal Classification while in grade school, but aren’t taught about the fundamentals of information organization. We know how to use the system, but we don’t know why the system is structured and organized the way it is.

Just like different library classification systems, each CMS needs a different information organization system because it is based on the company’s domain and the users in that company. The technology the company is using is different too, so the way the taxonomy and metadata are implemented can vary. We can create taxonomies, but companies need to be educated on how to use a taxonomy and metadata, how to build a user interface that allows employees to find information, and how to manage the taxonomy and metadata over time.

How You Can Learn About Taxonomies and Metadata and Findability
Last year I wrote a paper about faceted classification and rounded up a bunch of resources. There are a lot of them out there, but here are a few of the freely available ones:

A useful how-to article:
How to make a faceted classification and put it on the web: http://www.miskatonic.org/library/facet-web-howto.html

Interesting background on the Art and Architecture Thesaurus:
Getty Trust “About the AAT” from http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat/about.html

For an example of a thesaurus: Getty Trust Art & architecture thesaurus online
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat/

One of my favourites:
National Information Standards Organization. (2005). ANSI/NISO Z39.19: Guidelines for the construction, format, and management of monolingual thesauri http://www.niso.org/kst/reports/standards/

A useful explanation of how to make a faceted classification:
A simplified model for facet analysis: Ranganathan 101 http://iainstitute.org/en/learn/research/a_simplified_model_for_facet_analysis.php

W3C. SKOS.
http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/

Findability

While we can create taxonomy structures and tag digital content with metadata, all this classification doesn’t help if users can’t find the information. Findability is part of the taxonomy and metadata arena where we will be able to use our understanding of information seeking and retrieval. Morville defines “findability” as,

“a. The quality of being locatable or navigable, b. The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate. c. The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval” (Ambient Findability, 2005, p. 4)"

To increase findability, we can advise on and design interfaces for digital environments. Lately I've started realizing how important it is to recognize that users of these interfaces will not be familiar with or understand Boolean searching and will most likely be more familiar with full text search (or Google or Bing). While Google and Bing might be easy to use, Boolean searching can be more powerful.

It is extremely important to bridge the gap between a single search box and complex search parameters to allow inexperienced users to find precise, appropriate information. We can also design and manage metadata and taxonomies to ensure users can continue to find information and that systems support navigation and retrieval.

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About the Author

Theresa Putkey is an information architect consultant living in Vancouver, BC. With a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Davis, she focuses on integrating user needs into website and software design projects. She's currently doing her online Masters of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University. You can find out more about Theresa at www.keypointe.ca, or follow her on twitter @tputkey. Read all posts by Theresa.

Designing content modules

2012-01-21T21:49:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I talked about the "why" and "how" of using content modules to improve efficiency and user experience. In this post, I'll talk about some of the specific considerations in designing content modules.

Content Module Categories

It's important to think about content modules as a whole, and not to use them for a bunch of one-off messages. Think about the type of information that you want to convey through content modules, and then categorize them. For example, in a recent project that I worked on with Theresa Putkey for Rocky View County in Alberta we decided to use these categories:

Alerts
Events/Meetings
Profiles
News
Related Topics
Contact
Application CTA
Survey
Interesting Facts

Categorizing content modules is extremely important for a number of reasons. Categories are a cornerstone of developing an effective taxonomy, which is they only way to automate updates of contextually relevant content. They're also important to ensure that similar types of information are presented consistently.

Content Module Types

Once you've got your key categories, you can break them down further into content types. These represent the different common types of information that you'll present in each category. You really need to have a strong understanding of your content at this point. Using the examples from the Rocky View County project, here are two of their categories broken down into standard content types:

Alerts:

Fire bans
Weather warnings
Road closures

Events/Meetings:

Basic statistics and link
Statistics with brief description and link
List of upcoming events/meetings and links

Defining content modules to this level helps to keep them focused and consistent and prevents a reactive approach to using them to publish any small bits of content that don't fit anywhere else. It also really helps writers to have a template to follow so they can quickly and easily write content that works for each type of content module.

Content Module Priorities

Depending on your website, you may want to assign each category of module with a different priority so that your CMS can pull one type of content module in preference to another. In the examples listed above, the Alert modules were the only content module given a priority one. This meant that in the spots that we wanted Alerts to appear, they would take precedence over any other content modules if they were available. If there were not, then that spot would be filled by a priority two module that met other specifications required of that spot.

Content Module Design

Once you know the type of content you'll be working with in each module, you need to define design requirements. Content modules should be designed to stand out on the page, but not compete against each other for user attention. “Alert” modules should be the most prominent element on any page. Strong CTA's should also be very prominent and obvious. All content modules should follow a consistent visual schema, with each type of content module having its own consistent structure and design.

Some of the design decisions you'll need to consider and standardize include:
Visual design
Size and dimensions
Text and font size
Headings and phrasing
Information design
Number of characters or words per text element
Use of photos and/or graphics

Visual design aside, the best way to figure out these design issues is to draft some copy for a number of each type of module and get a sense of the "norm". Then you can develop sample copy for each content module that can be used to inform the visual design and content guidelines. That way you can be sure that the design requirements actually support the content and not the other way around.

Below are two examples of different types of content modules in the Events category:

Looking at these examples, you can see how a visual designer could get a good understanding of the type and scope of content that he's designing for, and how you could easily create templates and guidelines to help writers develop consistent content across similar content modules.

Be sure to include content modules in your writer's style guide, and include specifications for each content module type. For example, one type of content module may consist of a heading, brief description, and a descriptive link to the main topic page. You can also specify if there are any constraints such as character limitations, phrasing preferences, or tone of voice variations.

What other ideas do you have for working with content modules? I'd love to hear other stories about what has worked well for you, or what challenges you've encountered.

And I extend a huge "Thank You" to the Rocky View team for allowing us to reference their project work and examples in this post.

Using Content Modules to Improve Efficiency and User Experience

2012-01-09T02:58:00.000-08:00

What Are Content Modules?

Content modules are small chunks of content that can be placed on standard web pages, typically in the right side-bar area or at the bottom of the page. Each module contains content that can be automatically (or manually) updated or changed based on certain criteria. Some types of pages, such as a home or landing pages, can be built almost entirely by using content modules as building blocks.

Why Use Content Modules?

The number one reason to use content modules is to provide consistent, up-to-date, relevant information across a website without having to manually update each and every page. If you build a home or landing page by using content module building blocks, the primary page content can be automatically updated to make sure that it's always fresh. On most other types of pages, content modules provide secondary, or supporting, content. Using content modules based on a clear taxonomy and specific criteria is the only efficient way to provide dynamically updated content designed to create a specific user experience across an entire website.

Through content modules, you can create an information path for users to follow that is changeable and outside of the standard navigation. Content modules provide visual distinction and consistency to specific types of information (such as call-to-actions, article excerpts, alerts, etc) and enables you to easily update information throughout the site. If a contact number changes, simply update the information in your content management system (CMS) and all content modules used in the website that refer to that contact number will automatically update.

Consistency between similar types of information helps users to accurately predict and find information on any page in your site. Content modules are also a great way to give your users more than they came for. If you know that people visit a specific page on your site to learn about something, use content modules to provide the next steps in learning or taking action. Correctly anticipating what your users want or need next, and providing an opportunity to proceed, goes a long way in creating a positive user experience. Content modules can keep your users engaged, on your site, and pleasantly surprised.

The specific purpose of the content modules will depend on your overall content, user, and business goals as well as on the capabilities of your CMS. Here are some ways that you can use content modules:

Time-sensitive themes or campaigns. In many websites, you have huge areas of static, never-changing page copy and then a blog area that is frequently updated with new content. There is often very little interplay between these areas and, editorially, there is no connection. Using content modules allows you to unify your entire website, not only by promoting your blog posts throughout your website, but also by presenting a common theme or perspective for a period of time. For instance, you may want to showcase your in-depth knowledge of your industry by sprinkling interesting and relevant facts and informational tidbits throughout your site. Or you could profile people who have inspired you or your customers (or of course you can profile your staff and your customers). You may want to highlight seasonal information or advice, or raise awareness of a specific current affair that's relevant to your business and your customers.

To create themes you need to think like a magazine editor. Themes are determined through a strong understanding of customer interest and business strategy and are defined in advance to give content contributors an opportunity to develop relevant content. Using themes helps to prevent a "mish-mash" approach to content that often ends up just creating "noise" where every message competes with each other, rather than demonstrating a unified voice that conveys a strong message.

Here's an easy way to think about themes: In reality, your website is a mosaic of messages. Every page, every piece of content, has a distinctly different message. Content modules are small content bites that also each have their own message. Frequently, different stakeholders are each given their content "real estate" and they're each invested in getting their message across. The result is a mosaic of messages that creates no real sense of unity or clarity. By introducing themes through content modules you're able create a layer of information on top of your static page content that combines to create a clear message (or picture) that reflects your organization. When you change the theme, the core content on the site remains the same, but the modules send a completely different message that reflects your corporate values in a new way. These changing and distinct messages are much more apparent and memorable to users than consistently presenting many competing messages.
Call-to-Actions. One of the most common uses of content modules is to provide standardized call-to-actions (CTAs). For each type of CTA that you need, simply develop it once and plug it in wherever it's relevant. This results in a much more efficient process and consistent set of CTAs. These can include contact information, "buy" or "apply now" messages, forms of any sort, surveys, downloads, links to more information... anything that causes the customer to take further action
Contextual richness. Every module should be contextually tied to the content on the page where it appears. If it's unrelated, it doesn't belong. For example, you would not place a content module with an article excerpt about weed control on a page about recycling. Similarly, you would not put an “Apply Now” call-to-action on a page that had no associated application. A strong taxonomy is essential to provide this type of contextually relevant content.

As you design your web pages and content, design a standard set of content modules that support your communication strategy and user goals. Then, pick and choose which content modules to include on which pages and assign specifications for updating the content based on a taxonomy. For instance, you may set the content modules to check for new content once a day, once a week, or seasonally at pre-defined times. And you can specify that specific modules only update if the new content contains associated tags.

Next week, I'll discuss in more detail how to design effective content modules and the common categories and content module types. In the meantime, what are some other ways that content modules are used?

Using Wireframes to Communicate Information Architecture

2011-08-31T10:26:00.000-07:00

Kathy's note: This is the eighth installment in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey that discusses the intersection of content strategy and user-centred design. Read all posts by Theresa.
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What are wireframes?
As mentioned in my previous Site Maps post, wireframes are akin to a blueprint for a house. For each major page on a website, a wireframe tells you which box should go where, what content should go in the box. You can easily find examples of wireframes by searching for “wireframes images.”

What are they good for?

Since an information architect (normally) has a deep understanding of how users are trying to find information, a wireframe can show others how the information should be laid out so users can best access this information. There are a number of benefits of wireframes, including:

Showing layout: for the major pages on the site, a wireframe can act as a template for how the information, images, videos, and forms should be organized on a page. It can also show you how the global and local navigation will appear and behave on a site.
Verifying persona needs: With your personas in hand, you can make sure the wireframes represent the most important information needs of the users. For example, a user might need to see a daily financial update announcement instead of the weather. You can ensure this update is in the appropriate wireframe.
Fulfilling user scenarios: Scenarios represent what people are doing in “real life” and how the site helps them fulfill their “real life” needs. Wireframes can make sure all the scenarios are satisified. Although the whole scenario doesn’t need to be represented in the wireframes, you can represent the whole scenario or you can represent the more complex parts of the scenario. Ultimate, the wireframe helps you discuss the scenario and see if anything is missing in your design.
Verifying requirements: While creating the wireframes, you can refer to the requirements list, then clarify the meaning of any requirements. In the wireframes themselves, you can note which box fulfills which requirement.

How many do you need?
With a site, you don’t need to represent every page in the site map. You only represent the major pages that are significantly different from each other. For example, you might have a content page, a home page, a secondary landing page. If you have any forms or workflows, you can represent these as well. How many you need depends on how many significantly different pages you have and any processes that need to be represented.

What are some challenges?
While wireframes do help communicate the information layout, I’ve run into several challenges with them:

Requirements elicitation: Invariably, wireframes always generate more ideas. Instead of being a confirmation of the existing requirements, once people see things on the screen or page, they think of more ideas. This is often called “scope creep.” Often, people don’t have a clear understanding of how detailed the requirements, personas and scenarios need to be and end up fleshing out this detail in the wireframes phase. It happens in every project - I haven’t found a way to avoid it. There should be room for creativity and interpretation in wireframes, but new ideas always elicit a response!
More abstract, less concrete: Unlike visual design, wireframes are more abstract. While I use Axure for wireframes and can make them somewhat interactive, people relate to visual design more than they do to the wireframes. Visual design not only adds colour to a design, but it also pulls the eye to certain aspects of the page, gives a better “feel” for the page, and evokes a response based on colour. People respond so much better to visual design, sorry to say. They can agree to a wireframe’s functionality, but once they see the visual design, they get excited. I like to think that the wireframe’s work allows the visual designer to make splendid design.

Conclusion
Wireframes help communicate the information layout for a site. They help the visual designer produce a great design and they speed the development process. While there are some downfalls to them, such as being more abstract and sometimes being used too heavily for requirements elicitation, they do help with agreement on site layout and design.

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Site maps

2011-07-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

Kathy's note: This is the seventh installment in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey that discusses the intersection of content strategy and user-centred design. Read all posts by Theresa.
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Site maps are something I’ve been struggling with lately. With content dynamically generated, what’s the best way to do a site map? Perhaps it’s best to back up for a minute, explain what site maps are, and then explain my quandary.

What are site maps?
Site maps show the structure of a website. While wireframes are called the “blueprint” of the UX world, I’d say that a site map is more like the electrical wiring diagram or plumbing diagram. These diagrams show you the path that the wiring or plumbing takes through the house. They make sure there’s no wasted materials, no pipes leading to dead ends, no electrical wires not contained in junction boxes.

The site map is used for structuring the pages on the site: it groups the pages into some logical order (based on the user needs or personas for the website). To create a site map, you’ll need to do a content audit or content inventory, deciding on what you want to keep and what needs to be removed. Site map creation can be driven by card sorting and you can test your site map through task testing.

Site maps can be done by either information architects or content strategists. As I see the division:

For an IA, the site map is more important for structuring the site properly and creating a representative number of wireframes so the content on the site can be accommodated.
For the content strategist, the site map is more important for creating and editing content.

For examples of site maps, do a search for site map images. You’ll find a number of examples.

What are they good for?
Site maps shows you links between pages. The highest level is normally used for the global navigation while the secondary level and tertiary level can be used as sub-navigation items and page links, respectively.

By using a site map, you agree to the site structure before you build it. You know what pages you have and the stakeholders, project team and developers know what should go where. Based on the site map, during the development phase, the content strategist can start creating or editing content to fit onto the pages and continue to revise the site map should it need further modification.

Quandaries
Some issues I’ve experienced in the past include sites that are dynamically created. For example, a page can be created based on a taxonomy. If you take Epicurious.com, they have an infinite number of pages driven from their faceted classification. In this case, a site map cannot express the structure of the site. The wireframes must hold all the information necessary to display information and they must be standardized enough to accommodate the faceted classification. Explaining and agreeing to this structure and functionality with a team that doesn’t understand how faceted classification and the technology works can be quite difficult. I frequently encounter clients who don’t understand the technology driving the websites. While I do explain it to them, there’s always someone else who comes along in the project who does not understand the technology. It’s constant give-and-take between education and progress. You can’t progress and make decisions if clients don’t know how something will work. It’s a constant source of vexation for me because I always have to judge how much someone knows, sometimes I get it wrong. I’m always thinking about how to improve my communication skills so the customer gets what he/she needs out of my work.

Another issue I’ve encountered is what I would call “a site in transition.” For example, some companies need to move their intranet to a new platform, but intranets sites fall into the decentralized control area. Sometimes there are too many sites to move them all at the same time. The site map for the first version of the new intranet might be very small (showing the pages that belong in the first version of the new intranet). But the navigation may still need to lead to these decentralized sites. Not all the sites are carried to the new platform, are on the old platform, look different than the new site. It’s best practice to link navigation to pages within a site and the idea of having landing pages with links has been thrown out. Sometimes the navigation must link to sites that look different. This will cause the user to feel disoriented. It’s also quite difficult to denote these different links within a site map. What pages are on the site? What pages are only in the navigation but not on the site? To solve this problem, I created a site map and a “navigation map,” if you will.

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Personas

2011-06-29T22:36:00.000-07:00

Kathy's note: This is the sixth installment in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey that discusses the intersection of content strategy and user-centred design. Read all posts by Theresa.
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Creating user personas is a fantastic way to get stakeholders to focus during the design. You’re not just designing for people who like... well, everything... you’re designing for that particular someone who likes to do something particular. I always say, “Ask for what you want and you’ll get it. If you don’t ask, people won’t know what you want.” It’s the same with designing software: if a UX professional doesn’t know what the users want, then they don’t know what are they supposed to design.

For content strategists, personas inform the content needs on the site. You can use personas to tell you what things users are looking for, and you can ensure each content need is met on the applicable pages. You can also use the existing personas and fill them out more to meet your content strategy needs.

What is a persona?

A persona is a single, fictitious person who represents the needs and wants of many people. This representation has been created by information gathered in the user interviews. Personas are a great way to focus the design and to resolve design disputes. The team can focus on concrete people and, when questions arise, they can be asked and answered based on the persona’s needs.

Personals are Built from User Interviews

Personas are built based on user interviews. Whether with a new or existing product, you’ll need to identify different types of people who may use the website or software, then line up interviews with those types of people. If you’re just starting off on the design and interviews, your questions might tend to be more general. If you’re further into the design work, your questions might be more specific and get into more process.

Going Without User Interviews

I’ve worked on “user centred design” projects where user interviews were not allowed. It was the second in a series of projects, each building on the last. For the first project, we had personas, but they were specific to that specific project. For the second project, there was a complete turnover in the team (which also meant educating the new people about UX), and it was determined that the personas for the first project would suffice for the second and user interviews would not be done.

As a UX professional, it was tough to hear that the work I was recommending wasn’t valuable, but it also meant that the second project would lack focus. The user interviews wouldn’t be done and the personas wouldn’t be updated. How do we deal with this refusal?

Here’s a great interview for understanding personas, “Making Personas Work for Your Website: An Interview with Steve Mulder.”

I think personas not based on actual user research are absolutely better than no personas at all. A lot of customer and user knowledge already exists in many organizations, and by looking at the sales, marketing, product, customer support, and tech support perspectives, you can bring all these existing bits of knowledge together into personas without talking to any actual end user.

In this case, turn around the refusal of no user interviews by asking for second-hand information. Companies might feel more comfortable giving this information, since it may be readily available.

In a content strategy project, you may not be able to do more user interviews if the business analyst has already done stakeholder interviews and the UX professional has already done user interviews. In this case, interview the business analyst and UX professional, then look at the secondary sources yourself. Fill out the personas as needed.

How Does a Persona Help Us Focus?

In this interview, Mulder communicates the purpose of personas:

The main thing a persona allows designs teams to do is to think outside themselves and really get an understanding of who it is they are designing for. When design teams build a persona, they write a story about a character that represents a whole type of user that is fundamentally different from themselves. They put themselves in the shoes of their users and think about how the persona would interact with a web site or design.

Have you ever been in a meeting where someone in the room says, “I don’t like this aspect of the design. I mean, my mom doesn’t use this kind of thing, she uses this other thing, so I don’t think this aspect is important.” That’s a great way to take the design off-track. Personas help the team focus on the persona using the product. The conversation can be directed away from that person’s mom and onto the persona with some form of this sentence, “I understand your point, but I want to make sure we’re designing for the personas...”

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UX Kickoff, Collaboration & Reviews

2011-05-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

Kathy's note: This is the fifth installment in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey that discusses the intersection of content strategy and user-centred design. Read all posts by Theresa.
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In my time as a UX professional, I’ve had numerous kickoff meetings, done a lot of collaboration, held a lot of reviews. The kickoff, collaboration and review area all part an overall communication strategy that gets people to agree to the user experience as soon as possible and to help it evolve quickly over time.

In content strategy, you’ll also need to have a kickoff, to collaborate and hold reviews. You can use the thoughts below to make your meetings and work more efficient and effective. The overall point of what I say below: don’t wait until you’re done with the deliverable to get feedback. Get feedback all along so what you present is on-the-mark (or darn near close).

Here’s some problems I’ve had and some proposed solutions for them.

Kickoffs

In January 2011 I wrote a post on my own blog about kickoff meetings. In that blog post, I said,

In recent projects, I’ve been struggling to set the right tone for the project. I mean, the project goes well once we get going, but there isn’t the right kind of kickoff that 1) gets the client excited; 2) sets expectations; 3) educates everyone; 4) builds a team dynamic within this group.

I can’t say that since January I’ve had any further luck with kickoff meetings. I’ve even attended an IA/UX kickoff meeting where were spent 15 minutes on IA/UX and 1.5 hours on a website hosting issue!

What’s really important for UX is to have an actual UX kickoff meeting where the UX people set the agenda, invite the appropriate players, and do the appropriate exercises at the UX meeting. I can’t stress enough how important it is to set expectations up front, to control the agenda, to have something for people to *do* during the meeting, and to let people know ahead of time what is on the menu. Otherwise, people can co-opt the meeting, feel directionless, feel like they weren’t included. Kickoffs are about communication, about making people feel included and making them aware of what’s going on.

Here’s a great post on A List Apart by Kevin M. Hoffman: Kick Ass Kickoff Meetings.

Collaboration

Once you hold your kickoff, it’s time to collaborate. When I used to work in the waterfall development method, I’d sit in a cube for 2 weeks, write a 150 page document, present it for review, have it torn apart, go back to my cube for another 2 weeks and re-do the whole design. It was defeating, humbling, and discouraging.

Collaboration includes brainstorming, card sorting, affinity diagraming, design workshops, anything that moves you closer to understanding each other, getting ideas out there and vetted. You can collaborate in the kickoff meeting, in subsequent workshops, or ad-hoc in the office or over the phone.

When I stepped out of waterfall and became a consultant, I wanted to show my clients that I was working on something, so I started presenting my deliverables earlier and earlier in the design process. I got much needed feedback that I wouldn’t have gotten if I held onto the design till the formal review. I would have spent a lot of time and money doing the initial design, it might have been off base, and I would have spent a lot of time reworking the design (and not necessarily gotten paid for it).

For these reviews, I don’t schedule review meetings with all the stakeholders, but simply talk to other team members to discuss the design, take feedback, update the document. I would also show it to one or two of the more important stakeholders to get initial feedback.

Don’t wait until a design is almost final to present it. If changes are requested, they may not be able to be incorporated or they will take significantly longer to make. Sharing design is a great way to help people feel included and informed.

Reviews

Reviews are tough. I’m an information architect who likes to present a deliverable, give explanations, then take feedback. But I’ve been in meetings where I’ve asked my clients to wait till the end to make comments and have then been told, “Yeah, I don’t work like that, I’m going to give feedback as we go along.” Invariably I get the question, “What about X?” and I say, “We’re just about to get to it.” I can’t communicate my vision, but some people don’t care about that.

Sometimes its best to just give up the explanation of the vision time. People attempting to use a website or web app don’t get an explanation, so if the deliverable can’t be understood without me, is it much good? (Sure sure, there are limits here, but think about the question and think about how you might improve your deliverables to communicate better without explanation.)

On my projects, I like to do paper sketching and silent review periods. I like to get peoples’ impressions without being able to explain myself.

In any case, reviews are meant to gather consensus on the deliverable. Set an agenda for the meeting, have someone take notes, don’t ask people to solution, just ask what they do and don’t like.

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Information Architecture Deliverables

2011-04-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

Kathy's note: This is the fourth installment in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey that discusses the intersection of content strategy and user-centred design. Read all posts by Theresa.
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In information architecture, there are a few deliverables meant to communicate the information design to all the stakeholders. We’ll discuss some of these in more detail in later posts, but here’s a brief overview of what can be delivered on an IA project and why these things are important.

This list of deliverables is by no means exhaustive. These are some of the typical ones I work with on a project, but I also do stakeholder interviews, user interviews, scenarios, etc. With the links I’ve provided, you can browse through the websites to learn more.

Content Audit or Content Inventory
A content audit or inventory looks at the content on a website, intranet, extranet or software program to see what is redundant, out of date or trivial and also to see what information can be kept. The audit/inventory can identify the different types of content needing to be accommodated in the site map, wireframes and design. This content audit/inventory is used with any new content needed for the site.

Learn more: http://usability.gov/methods/design_site/inventory.html

Taxonomy and Metadata
A taxonomy is essentially a way to categorize content in a content management system or digital asset management system (or records management system, etc.). To create taxonomies, the information architect looks at the existing content and finds the important words, looks at the new content needing to be accommodated on the site and finds the important words, and then creates a structure that spells out these words and their relationships. A taxonomy is a controlled list of terms with one or more terms being applied to each piece of content.

Metadata helps identify each topic or content part. Metadata can include fields for the file type, author/creator, editor, date created. Metadata is a controlled list of fields whose values are added by the person (or machine) to the content.

A taxonomy is a way to categorize information while metadata is a way to mark up content with more information. Both of these information structures can be used to pull in content onto a site, to dynamically create pages and topics.

Learn more: http://www.earley.com/webinars/jumpstarts/taxonomy-and-metadata/what-is-taxonomy-and-why-do-you-need-one

Personas
As I tell clients, personas are “fake people” that help us design for a concrete user. Without a specific audience, we lose track of who we’re designing for and why. If we’re designing for Maria and know that she is more interested in celebrity gossip than world politics, we’ll create a space for her that centres on celebrity gossip.

Learn more: http://usability.gov/methods/analyze_current/personas.html

Site Maps
A site map spells out the structure of the site. It can be a very useful discussion point for stakeholders and developers. Stakeholders see how and where their content shows up while developers get information about the structure of the site and how the backend needs to be set up.

The content audit/inventory feeds into the site map. From the audit/inventory, you know what pages you have and what you want to have, so you can create a site map that reflects these pages.

Learn more:

http://usability.gov/methods/design_site/define.html#CreatingaSiteMap

http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/

WireframesWireframes show the design of the site without any visual design. It shows how information should be laid out; displays the navigation according to what the site map has specified; uses the taxonomy and metadata to pull information into a site. The personas feed into which content to display and where.

Learn more: http://usability.gov/methods/design_site/define.html#CreatingaWireFrame

It’s About Communication
While an information architect can deliver these documents, the work products are more about communication. If a wireframe or site map isn’t communicating well, it’s not doing its job. If everyone understands what’s supposed to be happening, then reams of documentation are not required to further communicate ideas.

Any first version of a deliverable needs to be used as a talking point. It should never be considered final, but should be considered as useful to progress the design discussion. These deliverables are meant to help communication, so use them wisely.
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Information Architecture

2011-03-16T23:25:00.000-07:00

Kathy's note: This is the third in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey that discusses the intersection of content strategy and user-centred design. Read all posts by Theresa.
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In the last post User-Centred Design and Its Processes, we discussed what user-centred design is and how to learn even more. This post, the third in a series of posts, will give you an introduction to information architecture. My approach is to educate those who don’t know a lot about the practice.

There are a lot of resources that explain information architecture. I view it, essentially, as helping people create context on the Internet, helping them use these spaces better to build community or achieve goals. A lot of people liken it to regular architecture—that to use a space, an architect needs to design the layout and then the builder has to implement the layout. If a builder came along with a plan, you’d get a really bad building! Information architects are much like regular architects, only IAs work with digital spaces.

Here's a short quote from Wikipedia that sums up IA quite nicely, although probably a bit abstractly:

Information architecture is the categorization of information into a coherent structure, preferably one that the most people can understand quickly, if not inherently. It's usually hierarchical, but can have other structures, such as concentric or even chaotic.

Here's a quote from Iain Barker from What Is Information Architecture:

Organising functionality and content into a structure that people are able to navigate intuitively doesn't happen by chance. Organisations must recognise the importance of information architecture or else they run the risk of creating great content and functionality that no one can ever find.

These next two items were from an Explain IA contest on the IA Institute Discussion List. (You may not be able to see the Flickr group if you're not part of the group). Here's a great video from Nate Bolt and Kate Nartker that explains IA:

Here's a drawing from Murray Thompson that helps explain it:

For more about IA, you can also see my review of Andrew Hinton's article.

How Does IA Fit in with Content Strategy?

In the mind of an Information Architect, I see Content Strategists as taking over where IA left off. The IA might design the space, but someone has to fill it with furniture. Content Strategists do the filling. If the IA is particularly good at handling content, then the IA and Content Strategy role can also be combined into one, with the IA designing the space and filling it. The same holds for the Content Strategist: if the Content Strategist can design and fill the space, that’s great. One point of difference that I see is that Content Strategists would be better at content, in other words, better at writing content. IAs would be better at resolving the information interactions happening on the site, in other words, when the user clicks this, it goes here and the expected result is...
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Content Strategy Deliverable: The Content Review (aka Heuristic or Expert Review)

2011-03-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

This article is part of Rahel Bailie's series on content strategy deliverables. To read all articles in the series, visit Rahel's content strategy deliverables blog list at Intentional Design Inc. You can also follow Rahel on twitter @Rahelab.

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Content Review sample report

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One of the best ways to get an initial picture of content strengths and weaknesses is through an expert review. Also known as a heuristic review, or a content scorecard, the expert review shows how well your current content stands up to industry standards and best practices.

Benefits of expert reviews

Expert reviews are great for demonstrating content strengths and weaknesses to a client. They’re faster and more affordable than user testing, and can be scaled to meet client and project needs. In conjunction with a content audit, they’re an effective and efficient way to get a really good understanding of the scope of a potential redesign or rewrite of the site. They’re also incredibly valuable in helping to establish project focus and priorities.

Limitations of expert reviews

An expert review is subjective. The quality of the findings is completely dependent on your expertise as a content reviewer. And you need a deep knowledge of writing mechanics and technique, usability and interaction design, information design, content marketing, and branding if you intend to provide holistic results. It’s better to limit the scope of the review to one specific area rather than provide feedback on areas outside of your expertise. It’s also a good idea to have three independent reviewers work through the same heuristics, if possible. Then they collaboratively analyze discrepancies between their opinions and provide focused, consolidated findings. This eliminates some of the potential bias of a single reviewer.

It’s important to note that an expert review is a diagnostic tool, and content validation should always include testing with real customers.

Determining the heuristics

It can be a challenge to find the right set of heuristics, or criteria, to include in your evaluation. Typically, I include detailed criteria across 5 – 8 core categories. The focus of the heuristics depends on project and client needs, and your specialized expertise. Usability.gov has some great usability and design guidelines, many of which focus on content. There are tons of different usability and user-centred design guidelines, but they’re all adapted from Jakob Nielsen’s classic set of ten usability heuristics. Think about how these heuristics relate to content and make sure these areas are represented in your criteria. Finally, keep in mind the current best practices for social media and customer engagement when you’re finalizing your criteria.

Make sure the criteria are specific, granular, can be demonstrated easily, and are organized into relevant categories. In the attached expert review sample, the table of contents shows the categories. The report detail pages will include one page per category, each page listing the specific criteria. In the sample, I’ve demonstrated how one category (Is the information design logical, effective, and consistent?) is made up of eight specific criteria.

Conducting the review

I like to conduct expert reviews around user scenarios. It helps establish a user-centred perspective, keeps you focused on priority areas, and provides a good cross-section of page types. Choose two or three key scenarios to evaluate.

Create a spreadsheet that includes all of your criteria, the pages you’ll be reviewing, and plenty of space for notes. This is for your eyes only! As you work through the scenarios, evaluate each page based on the criteria. It’s easiest to do multiple sweeps through the pages, focusing on different elements each time.

Documenting the findings

You end up with LOADS of data from an expert review! The challenge is in boiling it down to key messages that are useful to your client. I always start by providing the big picture, and then drilling down to more detail. For each category, I like to show an example of one criterion with specific comments and recommendations. If a client needs more clarification about specific criteria that I did not highlight, I talk them through it or provide an example at their request. Usually, the focus of the report is on high-level findings and recommendations.

Have a look at my Content Heuristic Review sample report.

I’d love to hear from other people who conduct content or usability expert reviews. Do you have any other tips or advice? What’s worked for you, or what challenges have you had?

Presentation: Creating an effective content team

2011-02-21T16:22:00.000-08:00

I finally made some time to play around with Prezi, and I used it to clarify my thoughts about the roles and responsibilities necessary in an effective content team.

Have a look and let me know what you think. It's my first attempt at Prezi, so I'd love to hear your comments about that. And, of course, your thoughts on the content itself.

To view the full-screen version of this presentation, click the forward arrow once, and then from the More menu in the bottom right corner, choose Fullscreen.

Creating an Effective Content Team on Prezi

User-centred design and its process

2011-02-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Editor's note: This is the second in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey that discusses the intersection of content strategy and user-centred design.
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In the last post, Integrating Usability & Content Strategy: Series Kickoff, we briefly discussed what usability or user-centred design is. This post, the second in a series of posts, will give you an introduction to user-centred design and the process for approaching a user-centred design project.

My approach is to educate those who don’t know a lot about the practice.

Clarify roles
When talking about usability, people can refer to it by many different names: usability, user-centred design (UX), user-experience design. In these posts, I use the words interchangeably and abbreviate the term with “UX”.

Those who work in UX may be known as information architects, interaction designers, visual designers, usability engineers, user-experience designers, user-experience architects, business analysts, user researchers, and content strategists. Wow, I’ve really lumped a big portion of roles into this one area. It’s important to think about what you need on the project and then find the right UX team with the right strengths. It can be confusing, but just as there are different construction contractors who focus on different types of buildings, so there are different UX experts who have different focuses.

Essentially, different roles can fulfill UX needs, depending on what you need. For example, if you need an interactive web application with some visual design, you might choose an interaction designer who can use Photoshop. If you have a content heavy site that needs some refreshing and an information layout, you might choose an information architect. If you have a content heavy site that just isn't meeting your objectives, a content strategist may be the right choice. Many UX professionals have multiple skill-sets, so you can cover multiple roles with a few people.

UX: One Part of an Overall Project
When talking about user-centred design, it’s important to know that this is a portion of a larger project. For example, a software company is trying to build a software product. There are a lot of stakeholders in this process and a lot of tasks. If we look at the project schedule, it would have such tasks as building a business case, doing market research, figuring out the business requirements, planning the features, doing user research and interface design, as well as lining up the developers, quality assurance, technical documentation, technical support, and sales.

Given all the tasks needed to product such a product, you can see that UX is one part of the overall puzzle. As a UX expert, it actually took me a long time to realize that my expert advice wasn’t the only aspect of the project!

The main differentiator is that the UX expert represents the user interests. In all of the tasks for producing a product, it's easy to overlook the user. While the user perspective may be considered, the project team has a lot of interests to balance. The UX expert represents the user interests throughout the project and has specialized experience or training to help them effectively understand and communicate user needs.

It can work in either a “waterfall” software development method or in an Agile environment. UX can make all aspects of the development process easier and it can also be a bottleneck!

UX: What's It Good For?
One of the best books I’ve read that presents the business value of UX is “Built for Use: Driving Profitability Through User Experience.” It was published in 2002, but I think everyone should read it. I’ll give you one quote:

“Successful user experiences deliver a firm’s value proposition--the brand promise--to customers in the most effective and appropriate way. Usability is now linked to revenues--and profits--as never before: If customers can’t engage in the full brand experience because of usability issues, the value proposition is diminished in the customers’ mind.” (Donoghue, page xviii.)

In other words, the purpose of UX is to ensure people have a good experience with the developed product or service and to continue to refine the experience, from a user perspective.

All Well And Good, You Say, But What’s The Process?
User-centred design can take many forms, but there are some agreed-upon approaches. One of my favourite sites for introducing people to UX is the Usability.gov site. This site has a great explanation of the process and the tasks involved. Instead of reiterating process again here, I'm just going to let you check it out there. But here's one quote to whet your appetite!

“To create a user-centered Web site you must think about the needs of your users throughout each step in the development of your site, including:

planning your site
planning your site
collecting data from users
developing prototypes
writing content
conducting usability testing with users

The Usability.gov site doesn't specifically mention content strategy, since it's a relatively new specialty. On the Design a New Site page, a content strategist would typically be responsible for the content inventory, card sorting, and writing for the web portions. But a content strategist will also get involved wherever there are content considerations.

Once you look at this site, you can start searching the web for more information. I've provided some links at the bottom of this article to get you started.

Problems
I might have gone out on a limb earlier by saying there are “agreed-upon” approaches. The UX field is still “gelling” and establishing itself as a valuable service to an organization. As I mentioned, there are numerous roles able to represent the user interests on a project. When hiring a UX expert on a project, make sure you know what skills you need and that this person fits the bill.

There are almost as many UX job descriptions as there are usability experts. When thinking of becoming a UX expert (or if you are looking for a focus), market to your strengths. If you like information organization, move towards information architecture and content strategy. If you like design, move towards interaction design and visual design. If you like analysis, move towards business analysis.

Resources for Learning More
When I was first learning about usability, I read “Built for Use,” a great book on the business value of user-centred design. But there are a bunch of resources! Here are some of my favourites:

Books: Keep On Learning
Blogs: 10 UX Blogs You Should Be Reading

Websites:

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About the Author

Theresa Putkey is an information architect consultant living in Vancouver, BC. With a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Davis, she focuses on integrating user needs into website and software design projects. She's currently doing her online Masters of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University. You can find out more about Theresa at www.keypointe.ca, or follow her on twitter @tputkey.

Text is Not an Ugly Step-Sister! What Web Writers Can Learn From Technical Communicators

2011-01-25T09:16:00.000-08:00

Note: This article was inspired by, and has borrowed liberally from, Duncan Kent's Writing Revisable Manuals: A Handbook for Business & Government. I've frequently referred to this excellent resource over the years—ever since Duncan assigned it as required reading for one of my first tech-writing classes. It's fantastic to know that, in this era of ever-changing technology, basic principals continue to remain true. Thanks, Duncan!
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It's no secret that there's more than one way to present information online. In fact, there's a dizzying array of ways. But this article isn't going to address videos, podcasts, presentations, infographics, or any of the other sexy communication methods that are important to engage and entertain your audience. Because text-based web pages still makes up a large part of the communications online, and will for many years to come. And most text-based web pages still really suck.

One reason why web content continues to suck is because most of the discussion about presentation methods take us away from text. Text is treated like an ugly step-sister we have to deal with, while we give all of our attention to the prince charming of social media and creative communications. But, text is not an ugly step-sister! It's the foundation of most online communication strategies, and it's way past time that we integrated better presentation methods within our text-based web pages.

After all, technical communicators have been all over this for years. There's a few tricks we could borrow from them. Here's a few "Tech-Writing 101" presentation tips that every web writer should master.

Narrative text
Narrative text is best for telling a story. It's also useful as introductory text before other presentation methods. When you use narrative text by itself on a web page, for a story or article, break it up with multiple sub-headings and consider adding sidebar text to highlight certain elements. Try to avoid using only narrative text on product or service pages.

Bullet Lists
Bullet lists are not the silver bullet of web writing that they're often made out to be. I can't tell you how many web-writing guidelines I've read that tell people to break narrative text into bullet lists without any more guidance than that. In my opinion, that's a crime. But bullet points are very useful if you follow some basic rules:

Use bullet lists for three or more related items.
Structure all items within a list similarly (for example, if one item begins with a verb, they all should).
End complete sentences with a period. If any item on a list is punctuated, punctuate every item.
Do not use numbers unless the sequence of the items is important. Bullets imply random order.

Checklists
Checklists are simply lists that have tick boxes in front of each item. Use them when you want to help readers ensure they have all of the proper materials or have completed all required tasks. If you use a checklist, provide and easy and obvious way for readers to print the page so they can actually use the checklist.

Sidebar text
Sidebar text is used to call out information that is related to the text on the page. If you use sidebar text, make sure that its design immediately differentiates it from the body text on the page. Some examples of when you may want to consider using sidebar text include:

To provide commentary on the text.
To emphasize key concepts.
To provide definitions of technical terms.
To highlight quotations.
To provide tips.
To provide supporting information.
To show a short example of the key concept at work.

Tables
If you have to convey a large amount of data, using a table is often the best way to do it. Tables are also useful to compare different products in terms of characteristics such as size, weight, price, or performance. "If... Then" tables are excellent when you want to show different conditions. Here's some tips for writing tables:

Introduce the table in the text preceding it. Don't expect readers to figure it out entirely for themselves.
Simplify the table data down to just that amount of data that illustrates your point (without distorting the data!).
Don't put the unit of measurement in every cell of a column. For example, in a column of measurements all in millimeters, don't put "mm" after every number. Put the abbreviation in parentheses in the column or row heading.
When there is a special point you need to make about one or more of the items in the table, use a footnote instead of clogging up the table with the information.

Charts and graphs
Charts and graphs are actually just another way of presenting the same data that is presented in tables — but a more dramatic and interesting one. However, they provide less detail than tables. Imagine the difference between a table of sales figures for a ten-year period and a graph for that same data. You get a better sense of the overall trend in the graph but not the precise dollar amount.

Step-by-step procedures
Use step-by-step procedures to describe tasks that the reader must carry out in a specific order. Don't bury procedures in narrative form. Use step-by-step when there is a consistent linear pattern without a lot of decisions to make. If there are a lot of decisions required, consider using a decision tree instead. Here are some guidelines for writing step-by-step procedures:

Use the imperative style, beginning each step with an action verb (for example, “Calculate the amount of tax payable….”).
If the step is conditional upon something else, state the condition first (for example, “If you have expenses, complete the Expense Form and attach your receipts.”).
Order steps in the sequence in which they must be carried out.
Number each step. Don’t include more than one activity in a step.

Playscript procedures
Playscript is a simple variation of step-by-step procedures used where several people are involved. It specifies which person is responsible for each step by including the name or role in front of a numbered when the person responsible for that step changes.

Flow diagrams
Use a flow diagram to provide a graphic overview of the relationship between things, how processes work, or how documents move. Don’t try to illustrate every step in a complex procedure—this is better left to step-by-step procedures. Flow diagrams are also good for showing feedback loops and branches within procedures. Here are some tips on creating flow diagrams:

Keep the number of shapes to a minimum. Stick with the standard shapes, and always include a legend explaining the meaning of each shape.
Indicate the start point.
Don’t cram a lot of text into the shapes—the purpose is to provide a graphic overview, not to give readers all the details

Decision trees
Decision trees are a form of flow diagram in which readers are routed according to their responses to questions. Use decision trees to provide a visual representation of conditional steps in a procedure, or to help readers decide which procedure to use. Each box of the decision tree can indicate a different procedure.
Here are some tips on creating decision trees:

Use diamonds for questions and boxes for actions.
Always indicate where the reader should start.
Try to keep the text in the shapes to four or five words.
Keep the shapes the same size.
Don’t include more than one action in a box. If necessary, refer the reader to a step-by-step procedure.

Still not sure which presentation method you should choose? Check out Duncan's table of content presentation methods.

Did I forget any major content presentation methods for text-based web pages? If so, let me know in the comments!

Integrating Usability & Content Strategy: Series Kickoff

2011-01-16T18:42:00.000-08:00

Editor's note: I'm excited to present the first in a 12-part series by Theresa Putkey. Once a month, Theresa will share her perspectives on usability and information architecture to help us see why they're so important to content strategy. I hope this will start some conversations about how to integrate these disciplines to create even better solutions for businesses and end-users. Please add your thoughts as comments below. ___________________________________________________________________

In the last 10 years, we’ve heard a lot of talk about usability and user-centred design. Given that the idea has been around for a while now, you’d think that people would have a good idea of what usability is. Not true! As a usability expert and user-centred designer, a lot of my work involves educating clients on the value and purpose of user-centred design and the tasks that go into making a usable technology product, such as a website, intranet,or mobile phone interface.

What is “usability” anyways?
User-centred design is a way of designing a product so that it meets the needs of those using it. Usability refers to how easy it is to actually use that product.

When a company designs a product, it does so because it sees a business need for that product. However, there are many many details that go into making a product that are not answered by the business need that drives it. One way to answer these questions is to talk to the people who will be using it. This is where the “user” in “user-centred design” comes into play. We find the target product users and ask them what their current problems are, what would make their lives easier, observe them at work or play, and then create a design that integrates more seamlessly into their lives.

If the product fulfills the business need and is easy-to-use, then the user will likely find this product more valuable. This person will use it more, recommend it to friends, and help contribute to the success of the product. But using a product isn’t always by choice. Sometimes employees in a company are required to use certain products, such as an intranet, to do their work. The faster they can access the information they need on the intranet, the more efficient and effective the employee will be. Usability improvements add to the company’s overall success.

What does usability have to do with content strategy?
If people can’t find information or understand what they’ve found, then that content isn’t usable. User-centred design and usability testing helps you discover the information that your end user is looking for and how they want it delivered. It also helps you validate that your messages are being perceived in the way you want them to be, and highlights opportunities to improve.

This series
In this 12-part series, I hope to shine some light on usability and user-centred design. My approach is to educate those who don’t know a lot about the practice. In this series, I’ll go over:

User-centred design and its process
Information architecture
Deliverables
Kickoff, Collaboration & Reviews
User interviews and personas
Site maps
Wireframes
Taxonomy and metadata
Usability testing
Wrap up

Resources to get you started
Usability.gov has a great overview of the user-centred design process. Although I’m an expert in usability, I still refer to this site for information! You can also look at this article, “The Five Competencies of User Experience Design,” to give you a good understanding of the various roles in the usability arena.
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28 Content Marketing Tips from the Content Marketing Masters

2011-01-14T00:14:00.000-08:00

I went to a fantastic content marketing retreat today, put on by Langley New Media. The speakers were amazing -- knowledgeable, entertaining, and very human. There were so many great ideas and discussions, not just between speakers and participants, but also online in real-time.

I swear I'm the only person left of the planet who doesn't take technology to a conference. Just my pen and paper. And, for the most part, I'm so distracted by what the presenters are actually saying that I forget to take notes. But I did feel a bit left out of the Twitter party, so I thought I'd share my tidbit take-aways with you here. There were tons of great nuggets and this is only a small handful of them...

Determine your content goals, and then choose ONE.
Focus on a niche, and then get super niched.
Don't talk about yourself.
The sweet spot is the blend of informative and entertaining.
Know what people are thinking about today.
Know what people are thinking about when they're not getting paid.
Know what your competitors are doing in content marketing.
People don't care what you sell. They react to what you stand for.
Make sure the audience you're targeting is the market that's buying.
"Hide the pill" of important information inside the entertaining stuff.
Solve people's problems.
Your content should relate a quest or challenge.
Tell stories about people, not products or services.
Talking heads are boring.
A story needs a beginning, a middle, a conflict, and then an end.
Content is a renewable asset. Ads are non-renewable assets.
Connect with people through content.
Use a content calendar and identify daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual content.
People trust other people like themselves. They don't easily trust corporations or the media.
A good information architecture supports business strategy.
Taxonomy and content programming can help content to flow efficiently.
Niche print magazines are here to stay and have a place near and dear to people's hearts.
Do more listening than talking online.
Connect with the key online influencers in your market.
Distribute content through multiple channels, in multiple formats, in many conversations.
Lorem ipsum is shit.
You can't manage what you don't measure.
Make sure that what you measure is relevant to your key stakeholders.

My apologies to the presenters for not capturing all of their key ideas. But I've listed their names below, and Twitter handles where I could, so please check them out to learn more about their particular focus in content marketing... they're a crazy-smart bunch of people!

Joe Pulizzie @JuntaJoe
Russell Sparkman @fusionspark
Terri Nopp
Jack Penland
Hanson Hosein @hrhmedia
Eleanor Fye @eleanorfye
Kevin Lund
T.A. McCann @tamccann
Bill Flitter @bflitter
Drew Davis @TPLDrew
Matt Heinz @heinzmarketing

What's better: Fewer clicks, or greater simplicity?

2011-01-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

For a project I'm currently working on, part of my content strategy involves coming up with a simple information architecture (IA) for a large product & service section of a website. These aren't products or services that people buy frequently, and visitors are only expected to come to this section of the site occasionally. In the IA that I proposed, the user needs to make a few more clicks then they do on the current site but the pages are clean and simple and the path to the products is clear and straight-forward. This was getting some push-back from members of the project team who felt that there were too many clicks. So, what did I do?

First, I asked (yet again) to do user testing. There were all sorts of vague excuses that may make for another interesting blog post, but the bottom line was "no".

Then, I engaged our Vancouver User Experience Group in a lively discussion about which is better: fewer clicks, or greater simplicity.They provided really valuable feedback, and I thought I'd share the gist of it here with you:

There is no acceptable excuse for not testing with users in a project of this size. Be creative, be sneaky, but get the design options in front of real people!
Overwhelmingly, for infrequent site visitors, people supported 5 or 6 easy clicks and clear signposts over 2 or 3 clicks that require users to slow down to find the right link. (But for frequent users this isn't true.)
Use personas and do scenario walkthroughs to make sure that you've considered how users will go through the site to find what they need.
Be aware that these types of discussions are sometimes more about ego and being right than what's best for the user.

To see the full conversation, check out the VanUE mailing list archive.

But this is design and usability, so what does it have to do with content strategy? Well, design needs to support content, and usability makes sure that content is easy to get to. But everything on the page -- words, buttons, links, navigation --, and the pages themselves, are all content. How the user experiences this content is all part of a content strategy.

So now all I have to do is put on a mask and cape like Zorro, and find some unsuspecting people to walk through our designs... Don't give me away if you see me on the streets of Vancouver!

Please use the comments below to provide your 2 cents worth about what you think is better, fewer clicks or greater simplicity.

New content for the new year

2011-01-03T09:54:00.000-08:00

What better way to start the new year than with the resolution to improve your web content? With E3 Content Strategy entering its second year in business, I'm making the resolution to heed my own advice. And I'm really excited about the content I have lined up!

First of all, I have 2 great new blogging partnerships. Ahava Leibtag and I are teaming up to bring you a series of videos that use real-world examples to demonstrate key content strategy concepts and practices. Ahava (@ahaval) is a content strategy superstar from Washington, DC, and founder of AHA Media Group. She's also one of the presenters at the upcoming Confab content strategy conference, and is a whirlwind of creativity and ideas. Then, I'm swapping guest blogs with Vancouver-based information architect and founder of Key Pointe Usability Consulting, Theresa Putkey (@tputkey). With more than a decade of content and usability experience behind her, Theresa is completing her Masters degree in Librarian and Information systems. She's an incredibly smart cookie, and I'm thrilled that she's agreed to contribute one post per month to E3 Content Strategy showing how information architecture and usability are essential to content strategy. In turn, I'll be writing guest blogs once a month for Key Pointe that show how content strategy integrates into the user-centred design process.

In addition to these partnerships, I'm going to focus on a couple of themes over the next few months. You'll see a lot of new stuff on content strategy solutions, best practices, and quality writing. We've all been talking a lot about the process and discipline of content strategy, so now I want to talk more about the actual solutions. What they are, what problems they solve, how to implement them, and when they're useful.

Throughout 2010, I've read so many great articles, and run across so many good books, that I've decided to share them with you this year. Each month I'll publish a list of the best content strategy content that I find -- articles, videos, presentations, infographics, books... anything that's interesting and relevant. I'll even be sharing new content Strategy people that I've discovered. Let's face it, they're cropping up everywhere!

And I'm going to implement a couple of improvements to make it easier to find and share my content. Towards the end of 2011, I'll launch a client e-newsletter and update my website to make it easier to find articles of interest.

The biggest challenge will be for me to stick to my editorial calendar and regular blogging schedule. I like to set things up, come up with topics, make charts and put dates beside everything. Sitting down and getting it done is not always so much fun. But that's what resolutions are for. One blog per week, minimum, no exceptions. Bonus points if I publish two. There, I said it. Now you can hold me accountable.

So, between that and my client work, contributing to Firehead's Bitesized Content Strategy initiatives, and attending some great industry conferences (the Content Marketing Retreat and Confab are currently booked, yay!), I'm really excited about 2011. It's shaping up to be very busy, but very fun.

What would you like to see more of in the new year? Are there any topics you're particularly interested in? Or, what do you plan to contribute to the content strategy arena? Please leave a comment and let us know!

I wish you all an incredibly happy and successful new year, and thank you most sincerely for being part of my success in 2010.

Customer-Centric Content: 10 Do's & 10 Do Not's.

2010-12-15T10:29:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that if you want to engage your customers, you need customer-centric content. Business people, writers, and marketers are all getting on board with this. But what does customer-centric content look like? And, right now, I'm not talking about the medium or the delivery channel or the content provider. Sure, social media makes it easier to have a conversation with your customers, and customer-generated content is inherently customer-centric... but what about the copy that your company writes? With our ingrained habits of talking about ourselves, our company, and our key benefits, we're not always as good at writing from the customer's perspectives as we'd like.

Here are some tips to keep you focused.

Do Not:

Write about how wonderful your company is. It's not credible coming from you.
Use a gazillion wonderfully exciting adjectives to describe how unique and revolutionary your amazing new products and services are.
Use many words at all.
Focus on what you sell.
Be too stuffy and serious.
Expect your customers to come to your website...just because.
Expect to get it right the first time.
Interrupt your customers with irrelevant content when they're trying to do something.
Try to say more than one thing at one time.
Assume your customers are just like you.

Do:

Demonstrate that you know who your customers are, without telling them.
Demonstrate how wonderful your company is, without talking about it.
Write as if you're a person, wanting to build a relationship with your customers.
Reflect your customers motivations, emotions, and life-context in your writing.
Provide content that is relevant to both your customers, and your business.
Be generous in sharing your knowledge in your area of expertise.
Get customer feedback, rewrite, revise, repeat.
Make products and service details easy to find and make the buying process easy.
Publish your content where your customers hang out.
Focus on your industry expertise and customer needs.

Any other good ideas? Let me know.

Content Strategy or Content Marketing? I'm Confused!

2010-12-09T14:42:00.000-08:00

In the past few weeks I've had a lot of people asking me about the difference between content strategy and content marketing. If you remove the first word from each label, it's pretty clear: content strategy is about STRATEGY and content marketing is about MARKETING. But both of them focus on content to get the job done. Let's look a bit closer...

A Content Strategist evaluates business and customer needs and provides strategic direction on how improved content and content processes can help to achieve specific objectives. The focus is to provide direction on how to improve content to meet measurable business goals.

A Content Marketer evaluates the market to find ways to engage with customers and prospective customers through relevant content. The focus is to attract and retain customers and promote the brand.

So, clearly there's overlap. The word "content" is in each of them for good reason. And frequently a content strategy contains a content marketing component which in turn requires a more defined content marketing strategy. And THIS is why people get confused!

Make sense?

Creating a Castle from Content Building Blocks

2010-11-28T18:12:00.000-08:00

There are so many decisions that need to be made when creating content. To make that process efficient and effective, you need a system. Here's one of the easiest tricks I've found for wrestling messy content into shape: Think about all of the content-development decisions as building blocks. If you wanted to create a castle out of building blocks, you'd choose different blocks than if you wanted to build a truck. And if you wanted to build a bridge, you'd put the blocks together in a different way again. And so it is with content. You can pick and choose different elements (or building blocks) to use to create different effects, and to engage different audiences.

Trying to consider all of these elements whenever you create a new piece of content may seem daunting, but it really isn't. Your resources will dictate some choices, your audience some others. As you get used to making content decisions in this way, it builds a repeatable system that's efficient, and results in content that has both variety and consistency. The variety will keep your customers engaged and extend your reach, while the consistency will create a predictability which your customers will appreciate and learn to recognize. This reinforces your brand. You'll see patterns develop, and you'll learn that certain building blocks go together well and get good responses from your customer, and that other ones just don't.

Every company has different content requirements, but here are some of the building blocks that I typically think about. This is just a list. It's certainly not the list. Use it as a basis to brainstorm which building blocks are relevant within your organization and for your customers.

Content Goals

Stick to one primary goal for each piece of content. For example, the primary purpose of your content may be to:

Engage
Inform
Educate
Advise
Persuade
Inspire

Content Types
For instance, is your content essentially:

An opinion
An analysis
A description
An overview
A how-to
News
A story
Tips & tricks
Wayfinding

Content Source
Where does, or should, the content come from?

A dedicated content team
Marketing
Key contributors within your company
Your executives
Your subject matter experts
Your staff
Your customers
The public

Content Voice
The voice of your content should be distinct and recognizable. Even an overall corporate voice is made up of a tapestry of individual voices. So, is a specific piece of content best served by the voice of:

A specific individual
The "company" voice, and if so does the tone vary based on purpose or different customer segments?
Your customers
The public

Content Topics
These are completely driven by your business, but you'll likely have different topics that you frequently speak about relating to your areas of expertise, your customers needs and motivations, and your community actions or involvement.

Content Format

This is all about how you're communicating your content. For instance, as a:

Blog
Video
Webinar
Article
Image
Diagram
Interactive tool
Checklist
Interview
Call-to-action
Presentation
Newsletter

Content Placement
Where is this content best published and presented? It could be:

On your website. If so, where on your website?
Your blog
On YouTube, Facebook, or other social networking platform
External to your company

Content Promotion
What's the best way or ways to promote your content? Through:

Twitter
Facebook
Website links
Presentations

If this list seems overwhelming, then trim it down. Just try to think about the key decisions that are part of your content development process, and then create building blocks that you can keep coming back to. That way, you learn how to build a castle, or a truck, or a bridge, whenever you want to and your customers won't have to look at the pile of content on your site and wonder what the heck it's supposed to be.

Thank you, content strategists everywhere!

2010-11-26T06:15:00.000-08:00

Well, all of the American Thanksgiving vibes must be drifting north to Canada, because I find myself needing to take a moment to let you all know how truly grateful I am to be part of the amazing group of people who make up the content strategy field.

Earlier this year, as I was starting my business, I sought out other content strategists and asked them what it was like. What did they do, how did they get customers, what did they charge? You name it, I asked it. Everyone, including content strategists in my own town, were so welcoming and generous in sharing their knowledge and experiences. My "competitors" became my mentors and advisers.

When I showed up at my first content strategy conference last spring in Paris, I arrived knowing one person, and left knowing a whole network of content strategists from around the world. And every one of them has been open and excited to share what they know. This is also where I learned about the not-to-secret place where content strategists hang out... Twitter.

And that opened up a whole new world! In the last six months, I've found an endless supply of fantastic resources, a way to share thoughts and experiences, and I've found some real friends. The energy and enthusiasm that comes from content strategists everywhere is contagious... how can we not be thrilled about what we do when we're all so damned excited about it and each others successes!?

So, to all of you who have shared their expertise and experiences so generously, who have welcomed me so warmly into this community, who have provided such great material to feed the fire... and to all of you who have done the same for others... I thank you for making this a truly exceptional place to be.

Content strategy: Getting started in bite-sized steps

2010-11-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

Content Strategy is fairly new and companies are still struggling to understand how to get started. They don't know what to ask for, or who to ask. They hear the buzz, but are not sure why they need a content strategy. As corporate content gets more complex, and the field of content strategy gains more exposure, executives begin to feel like they should know where to start but this only adds a layer of embarrassment to their ignorance. THIS IS NORMAL, and it's OK!

As content strategists, we frequently run across companies that really need a content strategy, but are not yet ready to commit. Sometimes it's because of lack of budget, sometimes it's because they are unsure of the value. And many times, it's just because they really don't see what all the fuss is about. But while we're all doing our best to educate our clients and the business world at large, one organization has decided to tackle this issue head on, and spread the content strategy love around. And not just around their own cozy circle of acquaintances, but around the world.

Firehead is a recruiting company that specializes in matching the right content strategy and technical communication people with the right companies. With head offices in Sweden and the UK, they've come up with a program that matches interested companies with some of the leading content strategists around the world to deliver a "Bitesized Content Strategy" specific to the company's needs. For very little cost or commitment, the content strategist will 1) inventory, 2) audit, and 3) analyze their web content and then 4) define clear next steps on how to improve the content to meet business goals. Simple, quick, easy, and effective.

I won't go into detail about the Bitesized program here, because you can read about it on Firehead's site. But I was so happy to see that somebody is actually filling this need that I wanted to share it with you. And I ask you to share Bitesized Content Strategy with businesses you know that really need a content strategy but don't know what to ask for, or who to ask.

Check out these links for more information about Firehead and their Bitesized Content Strategy program:

Firehead's website
Firehead Bitesize, and more here, and here.
Or follow the Bitesize team on twitter: @FireheadLtd, @fionacullinan, @fit_to_print, @word_forge

Stakeholder interviews for quality content: Why, who, and how

2010-10-27T20:44:00.000-07:00

Stakeholder interviews aren't very sexy. They're not new, or controversial, or unique to content strategy. They don't lend themselves to interesting diagrams or sketches. Both writers and clients often overlook them entirely. I'm not sure why. I think they just don't get it. They just don't see how powerful and useful stakeholder interviews can be. They must have tried it once, found it lacking, and gave up on it. If you're one of "them", I suggest you try again.

After all, how can we speak for our clients, if we don't speak to them? Here are some tips to make it easy for you.

Why do stakeholder interviews?

To build relationships and establish credibility. What better way to reach out and establish a conversation with the people who can make or break your project and those who know the most about it? You get to know them, they get to know you, and information is much more likely to flow your way after that. If you're walking in cold as a new project team member, stakeholder interviews (done right) are a fantastic way to establish yourself as someone who can listen, contribute, and add value.

To identify patterns. Whether you're trying to determine content requirements, business objectives, customer needs, or anything else, you have to look for patterns. And the best way to identify patterns is to ask each similar type of stakeholder a similar set of questions. Of course, you're going to ask on-the-fly follow up and probing questions, but when your core set of questions are consistent throughout your interviews, you'll find that patterns emerge. These patterns point you in the right direction.

To find discrepancies. Identifying differences of opinion early in the project is critical. If key stakeholders disagree it's better to bring that to light before any development is done. Sometimes discrepancies are OK (like different business units having different objectives) and can be dealt with in various ways. Other times, you really need to facilitate a commonly accepted approach, whether or not everyone is in agreement. For example, neither you nor the project will be successful if there is no widespread acceptance of who the target market is or how to communicate with them. Discrepancies can also indicate an abundance of subjective opinion and lack of real knowledge. You want to base your content strategy and content decisions on sound research and knowledge.

To unearth that golden nugget. It doesn't matter how prepared the project lead is, and how many stacks of documents they've given you outlining project research and requirements, there is ALWAYS a gold nugget still locked away in a stakeholder's brain. Maybe it's an interesting insight, or a great piece of research, or some examples that demonstrate what can't be articulated through words. Sometimes you just need to get the facts straight, or validate your assumptions. Stakeholders are powerhouses of knowledge, and there's always something new to find out through talking to them directly.

Who do you interview? The people who..

Hold the purse strings. We gotta keep them happy. They also tend to know a lot of useful stuff. Think department Directors, VPs, etc.

Influence the people who hold the purse strings. These people are a giant step closer to the actual project. They've usually fought to get the project budget from the person above and are highly invested in it. You better get input from these people, because if you head off in a direction they don't understand they'll stop you in your tracks. These are often business managers.

Have customer knowledge. These are your customer stand-ins and advocates. They work directly with customers and understand their motivations and pain points. They often have a practical perspective and can provide insights that help you to see past a mountain of wish-lists and identify the few, critical, customer must-haves. These may be call-centre staff, sales people, or service providers.

Have technical knowledge. It's all fine and well to create a brilliant content strategy, but if the client doesn't have the technical resources to make it happen, then it will die before it's born. Do your homework: talk to the IT guys.

Have subject matter knowledge. As a writer, you know a lot of stuff. Especially about writing. But odds are, there are people in the company who know a lot more about what you're writing about than you do. You need to combine your writing wizardry with their knowledge. These people could be anyone. They may have an official title (like "Subject Matter Expert"), or they could be any old employee who has specialized knowledge.

How do you interview?

Get as close as possible. Face-to-face is best. By phone is OK if necessary, and sometimes preferable. For example, I'll often choose to do stakeholder interviews over the phone prior to an out-of-town, on-site project kick off to begin establishing relationships and so I can have something to contribute when we all meet. Then when I arrive on site, they already feel like they know me. But for the most part, interview in person when possible. Don't use surveys of any sort.

Be respectful of time. There's no right or wrong time frame. It depends entirely on the purpose of the interview and who you're interviewing. But as a basic guideline, ask for half the time you think you'd really need and stick to it. If you frame your questions well, and stay on track, you won't need all the time you think you do anyway. And you can always follow up later if necessary. Most of my stakeholder interviews run about 20-45 minutes, depending on the purpose. Subject matter interviews may need longer, but for anything requiring more than 1 hour it's better to break it up over multiple sessions. Or turn it into a half day session and call it a workshop!

Carefully craft your questions. This is critical. Developing really effective interview questions is both art and science. Read up on how to design good interview questions for your objectives. Focus your questions on three or four main topics and make sure that every question counts. Edit out the weak questions and eliminate redundancy unless it's part of your interviewing strategy. Always test-drive your interview questions on a real person first. Bonus points if that test person has a similar knowledge base as your actual stakeholders.

Take good notes. Consider having someone else take notes for you so you can focus on the interview. Make notes of any potential quotes that you could use if you're delivering a stakeholder interview report. Quotes that reflect common themes are a great way to personalize the data you collect.

Content strategy tip: Show, don't tell.

2010-10-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

If you're like most business people (and many writers), the concept of "show, don't tell" is hard to integrate. When I talk to clients about demonstrating their corporate characteristics, and living their brand, and acting on their mission statements, I always get very enthusiastic head nods, and "Yes!" exclamations. Everyone's excited and on-board. And then they say, "And on the home page, we need to say something like 'We care about each and every customer as if they were our children, and you can trust us to provide the best service in the industry, bar none! You have our word on that, and our word is our bond!'" Hmmm... they missed my point.

Please, for your own sake, stop trying to tell your customers what to believe. They don't like it, and they don't trust it. That kind of copy is not only useless, it's potentially damaging. People just don't believe what they're told anymore--they believe what they experience. You still need to develop key messages for your website, but instead of conveying these messages through your copy, you need to convey them through experience.

Let's look at the client's message above and see how we can turn web copy into web experiences.

What's the first message in their home page copy? "We care about each and every customer as if they were our children..." OK, fair enough. But, instead of telling them, how can we show that you care about them? First you have to care enough to really know and understand them. DO YOUR RESEARCH. Get to know your customers well. Parents don't care for their children simply by telling them they care. They look after them and guide them. How can you look after your customers? How can you guide them? (Hint: It's NOT by telling them that you have the perfect product for them!) When customers come to your site and find information that's useful and pleasantly surprising--information that fits into the context of their lives and makes them feel understood--then they know you care.

Next message? "...and you can trust us...". Can they? What inspires your customers to trust you? It certainly isn't you telling them to. But maybe it's your credentials, or your professional reputation, or how long you've been in business. Maybe it's because you're local, or maybe it's because you're global. It may be because you have testimonials or reviews or recommendations from other customers just like them. Or they may trust that if you've already sold 20 billion products to 20 billion happy customers, then they're likely to be a happy customer too. Again, it's all about knowing what inspires your customers to trust, and then showing them that you're trustworthy.

And: "...the best service in the industry..". Says who? Other than you, I mean. If you can back up that statement by showing that reputable organizations, publications, or awards have recognized you as being the best, then do it. If not, don't say it.

And finally: "You have our word on that, and our word is our bond!' Really? What guarantees or warranties do you offer? What's your return policy? What experiences have other customers had that demonstrate you sticking to your word? Make these things obvious on your site rather than your verbose promise. (And ditch the exclamation marks. Nobody trusts exclamation marks.)

If all of these messages are demonstrated through the content on your site, you don't need to say them. Your customers will see it, believe it, and say it for you.

So here's my challenge: Take a look at your corporate mission statement and key customer messages, and think about ways that you can demonstrate them through your web content. Then share your ideas with us in a comment below. And a call-out to all the other content strategists and web writers out there: What other messages and values have you demonstrated online, and how?

Content strategy in 6 crazy-simple steps

2010-10-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

I keep reading about how content strategy is so difficult. People say it's hard to pin down, it's vague, it's a moving target. Those are really just excuses. Content strategy is difficult in the same way that losing weight is difficult. The process is not complex. It's not hard to figure out what needs to be done. The challenge is in mustering the commitment and willpower to do it.

So, let's say you really are serious about implementing a content strategy for your website this time. Here are 6 surprisingly simple steps for you to follow:

Conduct a content audit. Look at the content already on your site. What's worth keeping? What needs to be thrown out? Which pages bring in traffic, and which pages are never visited? Determine the "OUCH factor" for each page: is the page outdated, unnecessary, current, or has to be written? It's a simple idea, but the challenge here is in developing a deep and meaningful relationship with your spreadsheet.
Review existing research. Odds are, in a company of any significant size, there is already some research done on your customers, your website performance, your competitors, and standards within your industry. There is often both in-house and third-party research for you to reference. Part of your job here is to paint as clear a picture as possible about these things, and the other part is to identify the research gaps that still need to be filled.
Do primary research. You know the research gaps, so now you get to fill them in. In addition to the items above, you need to get crystal clear about your business goals, marketing objectives, technology constraints, and project requirements. You also have to get to know your customers as if they were your family. Who are they, exactly? What are their goals and motivations for doing business with you? What are their barriers? Where do they hang out online (or even DO they hang out online!), and why do those places appeal to them? What do they expect from you, and what would it take to pleasantly surprise them?
Create customer personas. Now that you know so much about your customers, distill all that knowledge into a few well-researched, well-written personas. Personas are fictitious people that represent each of your target customer groups, but are based on real market data and customer research. Include personality, story, or lifestyle elements that answer each of your key customer research questions. Make sure that every team member gets to know these personas well, and run every web and content design decision by your personas to see how they react.
Define your content strategy and tactics. You now have clear view of your business goals, marketing objectives, project success metrics, technology constraints, and, of course, your customers. You know where you are now, and are ready to figure out where you need to be to meet your goals, satisfy your customers, and beat your competition. In a nutshell, that's the first step of your actual content strategy--figuring out where you need to be based on all of the things above. It's really about knowing what the overall business strategy is, and determining how your web content can support and reflect that. Once you have your strategy, you can determine the tactics, or the techniques and tools you'll use to get there. For more on strategy and tactics, Chris Moritz wrote a great post for the Content Marketing Institute on diagramming content strategy and tactics that you should check out.
Set guidelines and processes to support your strategy. Knowing what has to happen, and how to do it, is easy compared to actually doing it! A solid content strategy will fail if the people executing the strategy don't have the tools or resources they need to effectively carry it out. This is the stage where you create an editorial calendar and a writers' style guide. This is where you push to ensure you have sufficient resources to hire people with the right skill sets, or retrain the people you have. This is where you ensure that your processes support your strategy, and that they include continual testing and evaluation of all things content. This is where your hard work and brilliant insights will either fall flat, or take wing!

Alright, alright... I never said that content strategy was easy.I just said that the process is very simple. And I know you won't let the need for a bit of hard work, creative problem-solving, mind-boggling analysis, and insane powers of persuasion scare you away from doing what's right for your business. Then again, if you're easily scared, you can always give me a call.

Where does "tone & voice" fit into your content strategy?

2010-08-24T15:09:00.000-07:00

Frequently, a new client will ask me to set the “tone and voice” of their web content. And way too frequently, they don’t have a clue what tone and voice really is. They just know that they’re supposed to have one that works. So to all you business people out there who know you need an effective tone and voice, but don’t really know what that means, where it fits in your content strategy, and how to go about it... this one’s for you!

Tone and voice: What the heck is it?

The easiest way to understand your web copy’s tone and voice is to compare it with your mother.

The voice of your mother (and your web copy) is always recognizable. She has a clear point of view, a distinctive personality, and language idiosyncrasies that make her unique. Her “voice” never changes. It always sounds the same. It’s always recognizable as your mother.

Your mother’s tone, on the other hand, is changeable. She may use a completely different tone when baking cookies with her 5 year old grandson as she does when berating you for driving too fast. She may use a different tone of voice depending on the mood she’s in: angry, happy, confused, scared, or sad. She may use a different tone of voice depending on who she’s speaking to: her colleagues, her friends, her husband, or her children. She may also use a different tone of voice depending on the type of information she’s sharing: she’ll communicate serious information differently than she would tell a joke.

So, the voice remains consistent and recognizable, while the tone may change depending on the audience, the mood, and the message being communicated.

Where does tone and voice fit into your content strategy?

It’s an important piece of the much larger puzzle that makes up your overall content strategy. Yes, tone and voice is really important, but simply defining your tone and voice isn’t enough to get you where you need to go. If you’re looking at your web content seriously, you need to consider the other critical content elements: Are your content processes effective and efficient? Have you got good people with appropriate skill-sets caring for your content? Have you got a suitable content budget and can you demonstrate your content ROI? Does your content contribute to a positive customer experience? Is your content getting your business where it needs to go? Can you (and do you) test the effectiveness of your content? Have you got a clear plan for managing, developing, and publishing content over the next year? How can your content give you a competitive advantage?

Just as your mother by herself does not create a cohesive family, a strong tone and voice by itself does not create great content. Your web content needs to be effective and strategic, and an appropriate tone and voice is only one of the tools you use to get it there.

How do you develop an effective tone and voice?

First, think about voice. You need to have a voice that your core audience will relate to and trust. To do this, you need to really understand your customers. Who are they? How do they speak? Who do they trust, and why? What are they interested in? What do they want or expect from you? What gets them through their day?

An effective voice is not just about writing style. It’s just as much, or more, about what you have to say. What’s your key message? What’s your point of view? What kind of a communicator are you? How much information do you share, and when? How do you respond to customer feedback? What channels do you communicate through? All of these things impact your corporate “voice”, and this voice should personify your brand.

Next, think about tone. For each different type of information, you need to define an appropriate tone. Do you want to use the same tone for your security guarantees, marketing copy, advertising copy, and customer service FAQs? Probably not. You should identify an appropriate tone to use for each type of content, based on its purpose and your customers’ goals and expectations.

Finally, think about people and processes. This is the glue that holds it all together! Now you need to determine the actual writing mechanics, phrasing, and vocabulary that create the desired tone and voice. Develop content prototypes and, if possible, test them with real customers. Make sure that your customers’ perceptions are aligned with your perceptions of the tone and voice, and that it’s effective. Create a writer’s style guide that documents writing and word choices. Keep it up-to-date, and ensure that it’s used by all content developers for all content. If you have multiple writers, assign an editor to ensure that your content has one consistent corporate voice, rather than a chorus of different voices. Make sure that your writers are comfortable using a style guide, and that you have sound content development processes that support quality content.

So, just make sure that you know your company as well as you know your own mother. And before any word is written, ask yourself what your company would say.

How useful is your content?

2010-08-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

Previously, I wrote about how you can ensure that your web content is readable. But it doesn't matter how readable it is if it's not useful. Here are four easy ways to make sure that your content is useful to your customers:

Create customer profiles and personas.

Who are your customers? Exactly? Create 3 or 4 primary customer profiles and personas that define who they are, what their needs are, and what they want to accomplish on your site. What are their personal or business motivations? What do they most value? What helps them to make a final decision? Think about the type of content that may be useful to them that they don't even know they need. Use facts and data (to create profiles) and then weave those into engaging characters (or personas) to help you accurately focus your content.
Make it easy for your customers to do something useful.

Your customers may want to contact you by e-mail, by phone, or by online chat. They may want to subscribe to your blogposts, leave a comment, or provide a product or service review. They may want to order your product or services online, refer you to a friend, or compare your products. Discover what they want to do on your site, and make it easy for them. (Tip: Customers don't often know what they want until they experience it!)
Help your customers to learn something useful.

Most prospective customers will come to your site to learn more about your business or products and services. They may also want to learn about your customer service and support policies. Be generous and transparent in your information. Gone are the days when you could provide a morsel of vague information and expect customers to contact you to learn more. They'll just move on to another site that gives them the information they're looking for. Existing customers will come to your website for customer service and support, to purchase additional products or services, and, if you provide truly useful content, to learn more about something relevant to your business and their lives. That type of content (also known as content marketing) often takes the form of blogs or newsletters, and not only keeps your customers coming back, but is often widely shared among prospective customers.
Provide content that encourages customers to make a decision.

Most prospective customers won't make a purchasing decision until they have sufficient information about the product or service, and trust in your company. Why should they buy from you, instead of your competitor? Have other people just like them been happy with your product or service? Why should they buy Product A instead of Product B? Which of your products or services is best for them right now? What happens if they're not happy with their purchase? Again, be generous and transparent in your information. Prices, taxes, fees, additional charges, and return policies should be clear, unless you have a good reason not to publish that information. Testimonials, customer reviews, and customer comments help to instill trust. If your product or service offerings are extensive or confusing, help your customers to determine which is best for them.

How readable is your content?

2010-07-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

Content readability is a basic writing fundamental that’s often overlooked when writers or researchers evaluate online content. I’m not sure why. It seems to have gotten a bit lost in all the complexities of content strategy and design. But your content isn’t worth spit if your audience can’t read it! Here’s a quick primer to help you understand the basics of readable online content.

What is readable content?

Content readability describes how easy or difficult it is to read and understand information. Readable content is familiar and invisible. You read it and don’t notice the words at all. You just end up with a strong sense of the message and the personality or brand behind the message. You don’t have to think, interpret, or decipher. You just sort of absorb the information, quickly and easily.

Why bother?

In case you need a few reasons beyond, “It’s the right thing to do”, check these out:

The average North American adult reads at a grade 8 level.
Consumers will not read web content that is difficult for them to understand.
There are an increasing number of regulations and laws to ensure that public-facing legal, medical, and government information is easy to read.
It’s becoming competitively critical to speak clearly and directly to your customers. If you snooze on this one, you’ll lose.

How do you know if your content is readable?

Integrate good content practices into your writing and editing cycles, and test your assumptions.

1. Check your writing mechanics

There are some basic rules of readable content. Ask yourself these questions as you conduct your first round of editing:

Do you mostly use an active voice? Use passive voice only when it serves a particular purpose.
Do you use first and second person point-of-view whenever possible?
Do you use consistent terminology? Don’t vary terms for variety sakes.
Are your sentences short? Say, no more than twenty words per sentence?
Are your paragraphs short? About 3 or 4 sentences per paragraph, max?
Do you use serial commas?
Do you use mostly simple sentence structures?
Do you follow conventional rules of grammar (unless you have good reason not to)?

2. Check your information design

Since you’re editing for mechanics anyway, check this stuff too:

Do you use lots of headings? Preferably short, descriptive ones.
Are you presenting information in a way that makes it easier to scan? Maybe a bullet list, or a table, or an illustration, or a graph? Or something else. Just don’t automatically default to narrative text because you have no imagination.
Is your page (or paragraph, or sentence) loaded with too much information?
Does your information have a logical and natural flow that your audience will understand?
Is there enough white space around and between the text?
Is your type big enough so people don’t have to squint to read it? Typically, 10 pt for a general audience or 12 pt if your audience is over 45 or under 16 years old.
Is your typeface legible? Sans serif fonts usually work well for online body text.

3. Use readability formulas

Readability formulas have their limitations, but they’re an effective way to identify possible problems early in the content creation cycle. They’re also a great way to show “before and after” improvement statistics. Here are two of the most common and easy-to-use readability formulas. You can set up Microsoft Word to run these formulas when you run your spelling check:

Flesch Reading Ease: This formula takes into account the number of words in each sentence, and the number of syllables in each word. It gives you a score from 0-100, where 100 is extremely simple and 0 is extremely complex. The Plain Language Institute suggests that a score of 80 or higher is considered to be plain language. In web writing for a general consumer audience, we aim for 60 or above. This article scores 61.0 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: This formula takes Flesch Reading Ease results and translates them into North American school grade level equivalents. Remember that the average North American reads at a grade 8 level? That’s where your web writing should be, unless you have clear research about your audience that says otherwise. This article is written at a grade 7.6 level.

4. Most importantly, test with your audience!

Seriously, do not skip this step. You’ll be amazed at how effective this is in letting you know what’s really going on with your content. Find 6 or more people within your customer demographic to read through your web content. Ask them to find key information and then pay attention to how long it takes them and what they look at and read as they find their way to the target content. Then, ask them just a few questions to gauge their understanding of key concepts and get a feel for how they experienced the content. Nothing is better than putting real content and real customers together, and seeing what happens!

Now you know how to make your content readable, learn how to make your content useful!

40 web-writing lessons I learned from tech-writing

2010-06-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

Most web writers come from different backgrounds. They may have trained in marketing, or journalism, or English literature, or a hundred other things. We each bring our unique experiences, passions, and skills to the way we communicate online. I consider myself very lucky to have a background in technical communications.

Here are some of the things that I learned as a tech-writer that help make me a really great web-writer.

1. Think in 3D. Consider access and departure points.
2. Consider how the information will be used.
3. Predict frustration points and eliminate them.
4. Write clearly.
5. Write consistently.
6. Use short sentences.
7. “Show”, rather than “tell”.
8. Provide context up front.
9. Use graphics and illustrations.
10. Follow rules and industry standards.
11. Break the rules when it helps you to communicate better.
12. Consider ways to help your audience find what they need.
13. Less is more. Except when it’s not enough. Learn the difference.
14. Embrace technology. You need it, so you need to understand it.
15. Know your audience.
16. Know your business drivers.
17. Have clear communication goals.
18. Make sure your goals focus on your audience.
19. Find ways to test your product’s success.
20. Be creative through the constraints.
21. Learn from other disciplines.
22. Break information into small chunks.
23. Think about different ways the chunks can fit together.
24. Layer information.
25. Use lists and tables.
26. Don’t vary word choices just to add variety.
27. Write descriptive headings.
28. Make sure the information hierarchy is visually obvious.
29. Design your information.
30. Learn how and when to use different information design techniques.
31. Write meaningful links.
32. Review and edit everything before it’s published.
33. If in doubt, write for a global audience.
34. Become best friends with your dictionary and style-guide.
35. Hone your project management skills.
36. Never sacrifice quality.
37. Deliver to deadline. Even if it’s not perfect.
38. Edit ruthlessly.
39. Polish your writing and editing skills. Never stop.
40. Find a great mentor, if you can. Thanks, Jerome!

Please add to this list, or create your own using your past experiences!

Small business owner? 5 Tips for getting a low-cost, high-value content strategy

2010-06-15T15:06:00.000-07:00

It’s hard work to secure a budget for content, let alone content strategy. For small business owners, there may be less hassle to get the budget, but there’s also less budget to get. How can you make sure that your small content budget covers the content strategy activities needed to make sure your content is effective?

Make sure your content or design budget has some room for content strategy, research, planning, and design. We can work with “low cost”, but “no cost” will send your content into the world completely unprepared.
Cut costs by eliminating formal reports. Small business owners really don’t get much value from what usability expert Steve Krug refers to as “the big honking report”. Reports are time-consuming to write and expensive. Forget about them. You’re better off actively communicating with your content strategist. Share working notes, spreadsheets, doodles, and ideas. Talk to each other! Write everything down, but don’t worry about getting a polished presentation report.
Get involved! With a limited budget, your content strategist will appreciate a helping hand. Gather up any existing customer or competitive research you have. If you don’t have any, go get some. Define your core brand messages. Think about what you want your customers to do on your site. Make sure you are super-duper clear on your specific business goals and customer needs and motivations. Then share this with your content strategist. Discuss it, shape it, evolve it, test it. Sit in on customer testing.
Use quick-and-dirty guerrilla testing methods. Every design or content budget should include a content strategy component, and content strategy should always include testing. This is the only way that you’ll be able to prove the success of your content. There are tons of different ways to test different things but here’s a couple ways you can test quickly, easily, and for next-to-nothing.

Customer validation testing:

Surveys. Validate any assumptions that you made about your customers. Work with your content strategist to define customer goals, motivations, and demographics. Get your content strategist to put together a short survey that you can distribute to past clients or anyone else who fits your customer profile. Your understanding of your customers will skyrocket when you start listening to them.

Benchmark testing, before and after your content strategy is implemented:

Web metrics. If you don’t currently have web analytic software, set up Google Analytics (free) and get a snapshot of your web traffic and performance prior to redesign. Go into as much detail as your budget and expertise allows. Then compare these benchmark metrics to post-launch metrics at 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year.

One-On-One Customer testing. Always do customer testing of some sort. If necessary, sit in a busy coffee shop and offer people who vaguely resemble your customers a free latte for spending 15 minutes to help you out. Or hang out where your customers are, and offer them... something, anything that makes sense and that you can afford.

Get somebody who knows what they’re doing (your content strategist or usability expert) to put together the test scenarios and conduct the tests. You stay to watch and learn. You may want to run perception testing, key task testing, readability testing, or any combination of these, depending on your research goals. There are lots “right” ways to test, but always remember: Any customer testing is WAY better than no testing.
Be open-minded! Your content strategist will probably come back to you with some new ideas on how to develop, distribute, or manage your content. If they’re good at what they do, those ideas will somehow fit into your budget and timeline, and will reinforce your business goals and your customer needs. You’ll probably know, deep down, that their content strategy makes really good business sense. But you may find yourself panicking, thinking, “Whoa. Hey, I didn’t mean I wanted to change everything.” What you’ll really mean is, “Do I really have to pack in my brochure-ware site and get with the 21st century?” If you want to keep doing business online, the answer is probably yes.

At least you have a sound content strategy to guide you on your journey!

What Kind of Content Are You Serving?

2010-06-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

What kind of content are you trying to serve to your customers?
And what does it say about you?

2 New Ways to Think About Content

2010-06-08T11:54:00.000-07:00

We all know that content creates the web experience. So let’s go beyond that. If you think of content as any scripted business communication, the opportunities for impacting business strategy and customer experience increase. Customers will experience your content either directly, or indirectly through your employees.

Customer/Content Touch-Points

Here are some common ways in which customers interact not just with your business, but with your content:

Being welcomed as they enter your business (Think, “Good afternoon, welcome to Burger Bonanza where we make big beautiful burgers, my name is Nancy Natterbox, what can I get for you today?).
Listening to customer service or sales reps go through their spiel.
Listening to, and interacting with, voice messages or recordings.
Filling out application or membership forms. And sometimes more forms. And more forms.
Reading follow-up e-mails.
Reading your service contract.
Reading your privacy and policy statements, guarantees, and disclaimers.
Reading reminder notices.
Reviewing invoices and statements.
Reading print newsletters, brochures, or articles.
Completing surveys.

Employee/Content Touch-Points that Impact Customer Experience

Your customer’s experience is also directly impacted by how your employees interact with the content that you provide to them. Here are some ways in which your employees interact with content that can make a massive difference to the customer experience:

Reading from scripts.
Going through checklists.
Filling out print or online forms.
Getting face-to-face training, or reading training materials.
Searching for information on the intranet.
Referring to policies or procedures.

Take a moment to think about all of these different content touch-points in your business. What other content touch-points do you have? Do they all work together to create a consistently great customer experience? Do they effectively convey the same core values and brand messaging? Do they provide an effective and efficient tool for both customers and employees?

If you’re like most businesses, you’ve just identified a huge opportunity to strengthen your customer experience strategy simply by improving your content. Some tools that are particularly helpful to get you started are journey mapping and content assessments. More about those later!

Where does your organization fit in the content process maturity model?

2010-06-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

Almost every organization creates content, but only a few value their content enough to invest in it. Which, of course, creates a Catch 22: Not valuing your content creates content of no value.

Where does your organization fit in this maturity model? And what are your excuses for not climbing higher up the quality-content ladder?

I’ve adapted the table below from JoAnn Hackos’s “Information Process Maturity Model”. If you’d like a more in-depth look at this model, or almost anything to do with document product and project management, I highly recommend her excellent book, Information Development: Managing Your Documentation Projects, Portfolio, and People.

Thanks for the inspiration, JoAnn!

(If the image below is too small to read, just click on it and then enlarge the image.)

How to add content activities to your UCD process

2010-05-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

Are you part of a UCD or Customer Experience team that's recently had a eureka moment and realized that you need to pay attention to content? You know that quality content needs to be part of your process if you're ever going to create really great customer experiences, but what does that look like?

Here's a simple diagram that shows various content-related activities that can be done throughout the various project stages. Some of them reflect traditional UCD activities, just be sure to include a content component in each of them!

Writers need businesses backing them up!

2010-05-25T13:47:00.000-07:00

There are really only two reasons why professional writers write crappy web copy: they’re either not the right person for the job, or they don’t have the business support that they need. If you’re a business decision-maker, this is good news—both of these things are in your control. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about hiring the right writer. Today I’m going to show you how to provide the support that writers need to do their job really well.

Just follow these 5 tips for success:

1. Develop and use a writing style guide
Having an effective, usable, corporate style guide is critical when you want a consistent tone and voice, consistent terminology and phrasing, and brand-focused content. A style guide raises quality and reduces costs by eliminating the constant changes and choices around specific wording and phrasing details. It enhances creativity by focusing the writer on creating compelling content within brand and usability constraints. It also makes it possible to have a team of writers, or multiple consecutive writers, write for one product or one company with one voice. I’ll write more about what makes a great style guide later.

2. Engage the writer early and often
Please, please, please, don’t leave the writer out of the loop until all of the research, design, and preliminary testing is done! A writer cannot contribute their expertise in information design, customer focus, or almost anything beyond grammar if you provide them with a fill-in-the blanks activity two seconds before release. Grammar is important, but it’s seriously not enough to compete in today’s online world. Find a writer who has great ideas about content that go beyond basic web writing. What can they contribute to content design, research, testing, marketing, or usability? Find that person, and then engage them early and often.

3. Make sure that content is a recognized part of all project stages and processes
This is similar to the item above, but reflects the need for content requirements and contributions to be a recognized part of every project stage. There should be someone with specialized content knowledge who ensures that the product is being designed and developed in a way that allows for the most useful and usable content possible.

4. Invest time and money in content
Sure, free content is readily available. You could write it, or the product manager, or designer, or your receptionist. You could leave it to the end, and then quickly fill in those content gaps. But its worth will be equal to your investment—pretty much zero. Good content costs money and it takes time. It needs drafting, revising, editing, and testing. And then more of the same. Good content means paying a professional writer who has specific expertise. The good news is that your investment in content will pay off. In increased sales, customer conversions, customer engagement, customer loyalty, improved branding, competitive positioning... you get the picture.

5. Let go, and trust in your processes and people
This is sometimes the toughest thing for business people to do. Everybody has an opinion about writing, because everybody writes. But if you have the right writers, and the right processes to support them, you need to let go and trust in their expertise. You still need to pay attention to content, just be sure that your personal opinion isn’t responsible for major changes in the direction of the content. In fact, nobody’s personal opinion should be responsible for major changes. Pay attention to your writer, use personas as a tool to stay focused, and continually confirm or adjust the effectiveness of content through customer testing and analytics.

A Real Feel-Good Online Experience

2010-05-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

I love great online experiences. I never expect them, because they're almost non-existent. I'm more used to frustration and roadblocks. But every once in a while a great experience jumps out and surprises me and gives me a big fat smile. I was so happy with my purchase of the book Rework, and my experiences leading up to it, that I have to share it with you. It's a terrific example of great content, after great content, after great content... all working together to create a great customer experience.

Good content #1: Social relevance and intrigue

I read a tweet from Copyblogger recommending the book Rework, from 37signals. In less than 140 characters, I was captured by two persuasive messages: 1) Somebody else (like me) enjoyed a specific product, and 2) he commented on how much he liked Rework's web page, which made me curious enough to actually go look at it.

Good content #2: Product positioning

A big image of the book. On the cover: A great but concise testimonial from a well-known name, and an interesting graphic. I keep going. Back cover: Interesting, controversial, concise, clever. Definitely keep going. I see three YouTube videos, which I watch one by one. And I'm completely sold! The movies convey the basice theme of the book, and I get a sense that the authors are smart, clever, funny, articulate, and a bit irreverent. AND they're talking about something that interests me! I love it. I see the table of contents (in this case "essays") which confirms my first impression. I want to buy this book.

Good content #3: Super-slick, 1-click shopping with almost invisible upselling

Cut over to Amazon (In the USA you can do this directly by clicking on the book's image). I'm not a big consumer. I rarely shop unless my kids clothes are two sizes too small or it's Christmas. But I do admit to a certain fondness for books. Some call it an addiction, but that's just semantics. At any rate, I have an Amazon account with 1-click shopping set up, so literally all I have to do is select the book and click to purchase. But I like to watch my dollars so I check out the price before I buy. Very reasonable! So reasonable, in fact, that I need to add another book to get free shipping. No problem, there's always a good selection of books sitting in my Amazon wish list. Easy, easy, easy. I don't need to dig out my credit card. I don't need to spend time finding another book to purchase. There is not a single thing to distract me from my decision to buy, and buy right now.

So, who wins?

Everyone. Copyblogger wins because I talk about him, retweet his tweet, link to him in my blog. 37signals wins because I bought their book Rework, and am talking about it. And Amazon wins because not only did I buy Rework from them, I added another book to the order! And I win, because I'm happy that everything just worked to support me. I never felt like I was being sold anything at any point along the way. I was being shown something that I would enjoy, and was provided with a quick and easy way to buy it.

Was this just random good luck? No. It was a result of well-designed, effective, strategic content that provided me with an effortless experience. Someone else did all the work so I didn't have to.

Now, I just have to wait to enjoy the book.

Hiring the Right Writer

2010-05-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

You already know that it’s more effective and cost-efficient to hire a professional writer to develop your business copy than, say, getting the product manager or designer to do it. But how can you make sure that your content investment pays off? And why do so many professional writers do a lousy job of getting your message across?

Well, the good news is that bad writing is not necessarily the writer’s fault—it may very well be yours. That’s good because it means that great writing is within your control.

Many businesses hire writers because somebody tells them the writer is good or they read something the writer wrote, and liked it. This is a bad approach. There are way too many different types of writers, with different styles and skill-sets, writing for different audiences and business purposes. What’s divine in one instance is deadly in another.

Here are 6 steps to help you hire the write writer:

1. Don’t rely on their title

Writers use many different terms to describe their role: copywriter, web writer, technical writer, marketing writer, SEO writer, and content developer are a few of the most common. But these all mean different things to different people. The title is pretty much irrelevant. Ignore it.

2. Ask for writing samples that demonstrate familiarity with your project type

Just because somebody has written great marketing content on a website doesn’t mean that they have the skills to write user-interface text for your web application. An article writer who was trained in print media may not know how to effectively adapt their skills online, and an ad writer may make a mess of your e-newsletter.

The audience is also important. The skills needed to write for Mr. and Mrs. Everybody is very different than those needed to write for software developers, or the youth market, or research scientists. Is your writer experienced in speaking to your target audience in a natural and compelling way?

Look for strong writing samples that reflect a similar purpose, audience, and communication channel to your project.

3. Make sure they have sufficient subject matter knowledge or good research skills

Many businesses rely on writers to “create” rather than just “write” content. But writers need to get their information from somewhere. Be sure to hire a writer that has demonstrated a solid understanding of the subject, or has excellent research skills. Even if you’re providing all of the content, a writer who has research experience knows how to ask the right questions and can identify and strengthen weak areas in your content.

4. Choose somebody with the appropriate level of experience

If you have a good understanding of the writing requirements, only require one specific type of writing, and have a strong writer’s support system, then a junior writer may be appropriate. Look for a writer who is articulate and eager, has an adaptable writing style, and at least some experience in your specific type of project. It’s ok if this experience was gained through a school project or volunteer work. It’s essential that they know how to ask relevant questions and follow direction and the systems you have in place. I’ll talk about more how you can support your writers next week.

If you do not have a good support process in place, or if you need a writer to develop content for different purposes across multiple communication channels, then you need an experienced writer. Look for a writer who can clearly explain how their writing approach will be different in each context and the processes that they follow.

5. Choose a writer who can articulate and defend their writing choices

With every sentence we write, we make a series of choices. During the interview process, ask the writer to explain why they made the choices that they did, both in terms of language and information design. Listen to see if you think their points are valid in speaking about your business to your target audience. If the project is online, can they explain why their content is easy-to-use and easy-to-read? Can they explain why their content is compelling and effective?

6. Verify the quality of their writing

Get an expert’s opinion of the quality of the applicant’s writing. This is often easiest when you ask each shortlisted candidate to complete a brief writing assignment. This way, you can directly compare writing styles and techniques based on a writing sample relevant to your project. If you don’t have the necessary background to effectively evaluate the quality of the writing, hire a professional editor to provide feedback. For many people, mediocre writing may appear to be great. But the impact of mediocrity on your business can be huge.

Content Strategy: Sitting at the Customer Experience Table

2010-05-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

Content Strategy is in its infancy as a recognized discipline and, like infants everywhere, is often overlooked. We’re still in the process of figuring out how we communicate our value and skills to ourselves let alone our clients. But people are starting to take notice, so we really need to ask ourselves: “Who do we want to be when we grow up?”

We all know the importance of first impressions. We’re in the unique position of being able to significantly impact how the business community views content strategy as a discipline. Because they’re only just starting to notice we exist. Think about that for a minute—it’s really, really cool!

As a new discipline, we have a responsibility to take our own advice and think strategically. We only have one chance to create our first impression in the business world.

Looking beyond the details

Too often we fall into the trap of carrying out our work in a tactical way. We educate clients about the need for improved processes, content testing, and editorial calendars. We focus on content audits, content design, and content management systems. We talk about web content, mobile content, structured content, and social media. These are great things—they’re the tools, technologies, and methodologies that we rely on to do our job. But, if these things are only tools, who are we as content strategists?

We need to step back and really articulate why we do what we do. Not how, but why. Why do we care about plain language so much? People don’t go to websites to find plain language any more than they go to them to experience the navigation. Why do people consume social media content like they’re starving? It certainly isn’t because they love the quality of the prose they find there. Why do so many people still pick up the phone hoping to talk to a knowledgeable and friendly support person?

At the most basic level, these things are successful because they make customers feel good.

Content strategy is customer experience

Every successful piece of content creates a positive experience for the person who interacts with it. You may have a brilliant piece of writing, efficiently developed through streamlined processes and targeted to a specific audience—but if it doesn’t contribute to the customer having a good experience with your client’s company, then it’s not successful.

The “strategy” in content strategy needs to reflect our focus on contributing to, and even driving, the overall customer experience. Even when we only implement a single element of the content strategy, such as web content or content process improvement, we need to know how it fits into the bigger picture and who the other players are. And we want to help shape that bigger picture whenever possible. It’s not just about unifying and improving content to create an effective website, or mobile application, or whatever. That’s content strategy for a project. We can aim even higher.

We can also contribute to the overall communication strategy and articulate content needs not just for online channels, but for print materials, face-to-face contact, phone support, corporate communications—basically, for every customer touch point. Because it’s the combined effect of every touch point that creates the customer experience. And that’s content strategy for a business.

The business community is realizing that the quality of customer experience is quickly becoming the leading differentiator that provides competitive advantage. And content is at the very core of customer experience.

Integrate, collaborate, and contribute

Currently, user-centred design (UCD) teams are beginning to fill the screaming demand for improved customer experiences. And they’re making tremendous headway. But the vast majority of these UCD teams do not have the necessary content-related skills or experience to even identify the current issues with content, let alone provide strategic advice on how to include content in the overall experience strategy. So content continues to be ignored.

Just when content strategy is becoming grown up enough to sit at the web design table, the UCD teams are moving to the customer experience table! This time, we need to invite ourselves to dinner before the meal is served. We’ll be welcome, because we’re bringing something that’s new and needed. By combining our content skills with traditional UCD skills, we can finally impact all communication channels, organizational silos, and customer touch points to create a truly holistic, consistent, and effective customer experience.

So, while most of our actual content-strategy work may relate to one particular channel, or audience segment, or project stage, we need to retain a very clear focus on what it’s all about. And that’s creating great experiences for our clients’ customers, and making sure that our clients know that that’s what we bring to the table – not just audits, and metrics, and copy, but experiences.

If we position ourselves as an integral part of the customer-experience team, rather than focusing on isolated content elements or communication channels, then businesses will view us in that way. We can grow up knowing that we are an accepted contributor to a core business strategy. Which is exactly where we need to be.

Multi-Faceted Content Strategy

2010-05-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

I’m trying to figure out how we, as content strategists, can articulate what we do. As a starting place, I’m listing all of the things I can think of that are sometimes part of our job. Content strategy is an evolution and convergence of a number of different disciplines, so we do a lot of things.

If content strategy is a niche discipline within experience design (and I believe it is), then will we see even more niche-disciplines within content strategy? Will we need to know the basics of all of these items, and have in-depth knowledge of some? How can we package these skills and areas of expertise into easily defined marketable services?

Please share your thoughts, or add to this list!

• A/B testing
• Blogging
• Branding
• Business analysis
• Change management
• Competitive analysis
• Content audits
• Content best-practices
• Content convergence
• Content curation
• Content management
• Content mapping
• Content reviews
• Conversations
• Copy writing
• Corporate communications
• Customer experience
• Customer research
• Editing
• Editorial strategy
• Globalization
• Information architecture
• Information design
• Journey mapping
• Localization
• Marketing
• Multimedia
• Plain language
• Presentations
• Process analysis
• Process definition
• Project management
• Publishing
• Report writing
• Search engine optimization
• Social media strategy
• Storytelling
• Structured writing
• Style guides
• Subject matter research
• Task analysis
• Technical writing
• Technology analysis
• Translation
• Usability testing
• User interface (UI)writing
• User-centred design (UCD)
• Web writing
• Whew!