Think You Know Good Content? Fuggedaboutit. Here’s What Really Counts

Vanessa Fox @vanessafox
Vanessa Casavant, AdoptUSKids, @vancasavant
Jonathon Colman, REI, @jcolman
Misty Weaver, Content Insight LLC @meaningmeasure

Our solution spotlight speaker shares bit.ly/benchmarkreport and asks what social platform converted the most for B2B? Twitter is the answer.

Vanessa Fox starts by saying the best long-term strategy is to figure out who your audience is, what they want and solve their problem. Non-SEOs think of SEO as spam, but then you tell them that you take analytics data and find out what people are searching for and then provide it to them and put it in your work flow — then they realize the value of what we do!

Jonathon Colman is not going to discuss content marketing, but rather content strategy. http://bit.ly/cssmx
“Content strategy plans for the creation, publication and governance of useful, usable content.” – Kristina Halvorson

Content strategy is people strategy. But oh … the feelings! Content is people-centric, not about a system. That changes how we approach content.

5 impacts of a strong content strategy:

1. Voice and tone: voiceandtone.com – Mailchimp styleguide crafted around users’ feelings. This helps the brand always speak the same way, regardless of the topic

2. Inventory and audit: what content do we have? What content do we want? What content do users want?

3. Consistent templates: on doing an inventory, REI found 32 custom headers. Four types of video players. Unifying them would speed up content deployment

4. Real meta data: not the HTML kind, but data that helps you categorize and pivot on content

5. Structure and modeling: findability, portability and reusability is enabled

Vanessa Casavant is going to talk about consistency in content (it’s more important than you think). Creating a consistent voice in different communication channels strengthens the brand online and offline.

“Content strategy is the development of a repeatable process that manages content throughout the entire content lifecycle. And that means , from planning to creation to management within the CMS, to publishing, to post-publishing activities, and back through the next iteration of planning, and so on.” – Rahel Anne Bailie

Content is political because there’s an overlap of requirements: technical, editorial and web strategy and planning.

Content strategy isn’t new. Newsrooms have used content strategy for hundreds of years. We can learn a lot about workflow since they’ve put out consistent quality content on a cycle. As soon as you have a website, you’re a publisher.

Content strategy is change management. Use existing hierarchy to shape an editorial process. By formalizing the content processes into rules of governance, the brand look and feel and voice became consistent.

Misty Weaver is talking about inventories and audits. She says that anything done in Excel is the sexiest thing you can do. As a community manager you notice people, content and schedule are required. What is digital experience – “Content Strategy for the Web” is a book she recommends. The main thing content needs to be is usable and useful. But, to whom? To do what? That’s what to look for in an inventory and audit.

The value of inventory is knowing the people who use it. On day one, she learned to make a spreadsheet. On day two she learned it’d be a mind-numbing Odyssey. If you’re going to go on an Odyssey, you need ear plugs. You know what to look for and where to focus. But inventory is necessary. It lets you pivot. It lets you create workflow. It lets you COPE (create once, publish everywhere). It lets you talk to your team. It gives you the ability to take action.

Quantitative Inventory:
1. Title
2. Location
3. Document Type
4. ID – create it, where the page occurs up and out

It can show you quick wins like weird nesting and duplication. Also add to the inventory: persona the page speaks to, tasks accomplished, business goals. Templates are available here: http://bit.ly/11VgWoA

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.