Beyond ROT: Creating useful and meaningful content audits

I've been thinking about content audits a lot lately because, well, that's the stage I'm at in my current project. There's been quite a few discussions and write-ups about audits but I've found that, for the most part, they have a pretty limited perspective. The fact is that a content audit can provide a huge amount of insight into content strengths and weaknesses in the early stages of a project, and help to inform all content strategy and information architecture activities moving forward.

A content audit is simply a snapshot of the current state of content, on a page-by-page basis, before a web redesign or content migration takes place. Perhaps the most discussed way of auditing a website's content is to determine the page count and the ROT: content that is redundant, out-dated, or trivial. While this is essential information, there is so much more information you can gather. And since you're looking at every page anyway, you might as well capture the information that will really help to bring value to your client and the project.

Here are some other content characteristics that you may want to capture, and why they're useful.

Page layout

This shows how the content is laid out on a page. Simply capture a screenshot for each page that uses a distinct layout and give it a name of some sort. I typically use a combination of acronyms and numbers. For example, two different landing page layouts might be LP-1 and LP-2. The purpose of this is to help clients see the inconsistencies in how similar types of information are being presented. It's also extremely helpful when you're doing a content migration where you need to understand how the content works within existing templates and the implications that has on the migration. Finally, it can raise big red flags for content processes if you find that content developers are creating multiple layouts on the fly from a single template.

Content type

Here, you make note of the basic type of content, leaving topic or departmental focus aside. For example, some types of content include forms, contact info, product details, articles, landing pages, FAQs, document archives, profiles, events, etc. You'll develop your list based on your specific project requirements. Together with page layout, this really helps to highlight inconsistencies in how information is being presented. It also helps to raise awareness of pages that are trying to do too many things at once. When you complete your initial audit and sort it by content type, you can quickly scan through your URLs to identify even more redundancy and get a better understanding of the opportunities for content re-use.

Audience

Make a note of who the content speaks to on each page. If it's not obvious after a quick scan of the page content, simply put "unknown". This is a good way to find out if the target audience will be able to immediately identify that this content is relevant to them. If your client has developed customer personas you can use these as a starting place, but remember that the purpose of an audit is to create a snapshot of the current state of content, which may or may not fit well with tools that have been built to guide future changes.

Quality

This is your subjective expert opinion as to the quality of the content on the page. I'll typically use ratings such as excellent, good, satisfactory, or poor, and associate them with qualifying best-practice statements as shown below. If you prefer, you could use grade-scores and use any qualifying statements that make sense to your project. Here's some that are pretty typical for me:

• Excellent = Content and writing style reinforces brand and provides a surprisingly good customer experience. 
• Good = Content is reasonably on-brand and supports users in understanding and acting on content. 
• Satisfactory = Users can get the answers they're looking for, though it may take some effort and the content may not reflect the brand. 
• Poor = Content does not meet user or business needs. 

Quality Characteristics

This is where you list out the specific weaknesses in the page content. It's important to work with a limited set of characteristics, and to define them precisely. You'll develop your best-practice characteristics based on your project needs and area of expertise, and then indicate where these best-practices are not being met. Some that I frequently use include:

• User-focused
• Brand voice
• Consistency 
• Context
• Focused message
• Out of date
• Plain language
• Business relevance
• Substance
• Typography, or information design
• Volume appropriate
• Writing mechanics

This is an important tool to highlight writing and process weaknesses and can really help your client to begin to understand the skills and resources required to create high-quality writing. It also helps to focus writer's workshops or training on areas that are particularly relevant or high priority.

These are only a few of the things you can look for in an audit. Some other common factors to consider include SEO criteria, content format (video, audio, html, pdf, etc), metadata used, or topics and subtopics. The trick is to find the right combination of criteria for your project, resources, and timeline.

Once you've captured the data, be sure to leave some time to analyse it. It's usually very interesting to determine which areas of the site, or which content types, have higher or lower quality content. Or how many different layouts are being used for similar content types? Which sections of the site are the most out of date, and which  are the most user focused? Which formats are being used for which topics? This really begins to surface inconsistencies and problem areas. These findings give you a strong understanding of the current state of the content and provide key insights when creating the gap analysis that will be the foundation for further content strategy work.

While I'm not going to talk about how to create an audit spreadsheet here, I definitely want to mention one tool that I discovered recently (thanks to Jason Armstrong at the +autonomous agency!) that has really helped to speed things up. If you use Google Chrome, you can go to the Chrome Web Store and download "Pasty". It's a free multi-URL opener that allows you to copy rows of URLs from your spread sheet, click the "Pasty" button, and open new tabs for each URL. You can easily open 50-100 pages with one click, and get through them pretty quickly.

What other content audit criteria or tips have you found to be very valuable? Please share them in the comments below!

The 4 focuses of content strategy

There are so many ways to slice and dice content strategy. Each slice has only limited value. The real benefits come from understanding each area of content strategy well enough to integrate them into a complete strategy.

Here are some of the different approaches that I take to content strategy, and how I integrate them.

Front-end content strategy: This is what your audience sees and experiences. It includes:

• User experience content strategy
• Marketing and editorial content strategy

Back-end content strategy: This is how to make the content work well. It includes:

• "Intelligent" content 
• Content governance and operations

Let's look at these four areas more closely.

User-experience content strategy focuses on: 

• User needs and motivations 
• Content flows and linkages
• User reactions and interactions with content
• Content types and formats
• Comments & other user-generated content
• Labeling
• Content findability
• Content usability
• Content usefulness
• Content relevance
• Content consistency

Marketing and editorial content strategy focuses on: 

• Marketing objectives
• Content marketing
• Brand guidelines
• Messaging
• Tone and voice
• Writing style and quality

Intelligent content strategy focuses on: 

• Content re-use
• Content modelling
• Multi-channel publishing
• Component-based content
• Dynamic content
• Customized content
• Content requirements for using within a specific technology

Content governance and operations strategy focuses on: 

• Corporate content policies
• Content development processes and workflows
• Content publishing processes and workflows
• Ownership and responsibilities
• Team building and training
• Organization-wide education and change management
• Content support tools

So, why are we focusing on all of these different aspects of content strategy? So that we know exactly what we need to integrate, and combine with business objectives, to create a holistic approach to content. 

An integrated approach to content strategy across all project phases ensures that content is effective and processes are efficient. It provides a basis for measuring web content success and effectiveness over time, from both a business and user perspective.

Once you understand the different focuses of content strategy, you can be sure that they're each represented in your activities and deliverables. I'll talk more about this in my next post.

How Taxonomy and Metadata Leads to Findability

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

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

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?

Content Strategy Deliverable: The Content Review (aka Heuristic or Expert Review)

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?

28 Content Marketing Tips from the Content Marketing Masters

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...

1. Determine your content goals, and then choose ONE.
2. Focus on a niche, and then get super niched.
3. Don't talk about yourself.
4. The sweet spot is the blend of informative and entertaining.
5. Know what people are thinking about today.
6. Know what people are thinking about when they're not getting paid.
7. Know what your competitors are doing in content marketing.
8. People don't care what you sell. They react to what you stand for.
9. Make sure the audience you're targeting is the market that's buying.
10. "Hide the pill" of important information inside the entertaining stuff.
11. Solve people's problems.
12. Your content should relate a quest or challenge. 
13. Tell stories about people, not products or services.
14. Talking heads are boring.
15. A story needs a beginning, a middle, a conflict, and then an end.
16. Content is a renewable asset. Ads are non-renewable assets. 
17. Connect with people through content.
18. Use a content calendar and identify daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual content.
19. People trust other people like themselves. They don't easily trust corporations or the media.
20. A good information architecture supports business strategy.
21. Taxonomy and content programming can help content to flow efficiently.
22. Niche print magazines are here to stay and have a place near and dear to people's hearts.
23. Do more listening than talking online.
24. Connect with the key online influencers in your market.
25. Distribute content through multiple channels, in multiple formats, in many conversations.
26. Lorem ipsum is shit.
27. You can't manage what you don't measure.
28. 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?

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.

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

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:

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

Do:

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

Any other good ideas? Let me know.

Content Strategy or Content Marketing? I'm Confused!

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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?
   
   
4. 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.
   
   
5. 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.
   
   
6. 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?

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.