What Hath Halvorson Wrought?
So, Kristina Halvorson is the author of Content Strategy for the Web.
I was excited to hear her speak to the Content Strategy New England Meet Up group on May 24, 2010.
What are the Essential Elements of Content Strategy?
- Auditing and Assessment – so, what’s the available content? What are the skill sets of the persons in the organization? What is their work flow? What do their competitors do? What are the needs? Also, what are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
- Messaging/Substance – what are you trying to say? What should your readers leave with or act upon? Can you archive older, less vital material in order to retain it but also have it leave more room for content that is more in demand?
- Structure – usability and design are key. Make it easy to browse for and search for content. Add a taxonomy and metadata.
- Workflow and Governance – what are the tools to move content through an organization? What are the metrics, and how will they be analyzed? How does the organization decide which content is going to go out there? Who makes the decisions?
Companies With Issues
So, Ms. Halvorson talked a lot about working with companies that simply do not seem to get it. Also, she made it clear that these strategies need to be implemented by humans, not automated CMS systems.
Tips included:
- Make and stick to an Editorial Calendar
- Create a Governance Policy
- Identify Standards and Goals
- Create and adhere to Benchmarks
- Establish Guidelines
- Create a Content Inventory
The truth is, over twelve years later, all of this still applies.
Recommendations from Halvorson
She recommended not only her own book but also a blog post by Rachel Lovinger, The Philosophy of Data.
And she had one final whimsical, yet still serious tip: When you find cool stuff, tweet about it.
And so, we will.
Twelve Plus Years Later…
Content strategy is less of a discipline that needs to justify itself. Rather, now, it is more of a discipline that needs to herd cats. It is a dance of social media, content, advertising, and corporate egos.
It is also a dance of language. A company has to know what it is saying, and it may have to define that for its customers and prospects—the primary audience for the blog and other content machines. Also, much like years ago, companies don’t seem to know what they have half the time.
A Content Strategist can make a decent impact in a new job just by figuring out what the business actually owns. And then figuring out if it’s dated or current, relevant or out there, and if it’s following linguistic requirements. This doesn’t even get into SEO and any attempts to use the various subsets of marketing (like advertising, etc.) in a synergistic fashion.
Advertising creates a campaign to tout a blog post, which is shared on social media. It’s the transcription (more or less) of a recent livestream, now available on YouTube. The video is embedded in the blog post to aid visual learners. And a link to the blog goes onto YouTube and anywhere else the video is housed—so people can get the gist if they prefer the written word.
When all of these work together, content strategy is the conductor or perhaps the ringmaster, making everything work together and making everyone better.
And when they don’t, well, those egos may have had a little something to do with that…
But you never heard that from me.