Content Needs to Be The Thing in a Content Strategy
The next session I am attending is facilitated by Kristina Halvorson (Brain Traffic) about content strategy: Content Strategy: What's Real, What's Relevant. I was attracted by her statement in the conference brochure: The moment you launch a web site, an email campaign, a mobile application, or content of any kind, you’re a publisher. Shouldn’t you start acting like one?
Kristina talks about different roles in organizations with regards to web publishing. Do you have a content strategist? A copywriter? A web editor? She says that in the process of designing web platforms, content often does not get the required attention because a lot of resources are eaten up by other functions such as programming, platform design, visual design, application development etc. There is also a lot of false hope associated with content generation "The user will create it for us!"
Clients will make decisions based on your content - about whether they will like you or not. So, here is a content strategy:
Not just:
- A series of eductational articles
- Blog by our employees
- A sponsored channel on YouTube
- A CEO Twitter account
- etc.
- What
- Why
- How
- For whom
- By whom
- With what
- When
- Where
- How often
- What's next
- search - findable content
- links - guides to content
- authoring - orginators of content
- tags - road signs about content
- signals - RSS feed delivering content
Content has to work for you, check which website really offers value for you. As an example she talks about mint.com, where the demands of the user and the benefits for the user are in the centre of the message at the home page.
"Content needs a new home in organizations: a cross functional content strategy board, or a content specialist well connected."
So, is your content:
USEFUL?
USABLE?
ENJOYABLE?
So, this sounds really like work to do if you want to create a good content on the Web. Better think twice about the resources you will need to emabrk on a Web 2.0 corporate strategy.
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