Undertaking a project to improve your organization’s content creation process is overwhelming. It is not easy to move into structured content, create a new taxonomy, or develop a new content delivery platform, for example. Here is a list of things to do before you start any content project.
Looking for ways to save your company time and money? Content reuse allows you to write content once and use it again in multiple places. Do these use cases for reuse apply to your content?
Do your customers know the right words to search for? Does marketing refer to your product one way while the tech team refers to it another? Inconsistent word use causes confusion within your company and negatively affects customers’ perception of your brand. So what causes the inconsistencies, and how do you fix them?
If done properly, a new content strategy will bring added value to your organization. The transition itself is not always easy, and the success of the projects depends on your stakeholders. Much like trick or treating, you never know what to expect when someone “opens the door” to change:
When you want to put new content development processes in place, proving the return on investment (ROI) of your strategy is one of the most effective ways to get buy-in from managers or executives.
You can calculate ROI by showing how much money you’re currently spending creating content, and comparing it to how much money you will save over time with a more efficient workflow. But what if there are roadblocks preventing you from gathering the metrics you need to get those numbers?
Because of a merger or a change in company direction, you’ve got snazzy new branding to roll out across your marketing content: updated logos, corporate colors, fonts, and more.
And then you realize you’ll have to adjust hundreds (if not thousands!) of InDesign, Microsoft Word, and other files to reflect the new branding. Ouch!
So you’ve decided to move your content to DITA. You want all the benefits of reuse and less expensive translation, and you’ve completed your content model. But now the question is, “What do we do with our existing content?”
In an agile environment, a company develops its products in continuous iterations with incremental deliveries called sprints. This approach allows the company to test the success of each small change to the product and adapt the development process accordingly. So what does that mean for content?
When you ask management to fund your content strategy initiative, you need to show them the money.
Nested content is one of the biggest differences between structured and unstructured content.
I’ve been working at Scriptorium for almost four years, but last week was my first opportunity to attend a conference. I spent a good amount of time on the exhibit hall floor, but I was also able to attend presentation sessions.
A proof-of-concept phase is often the key to unlocking the budget for an entire content strategy project. When defining the scope and goals for a proof of concept, don’t forget your team will still need training.
In 2015, we talked about a vision to tackle, lead and map out an enterprise content strategy. Today I wanted to provide an update on making that vision a reality, and how to expand it beyond a singular team and into other parts of an organization.
The rollout of an enterprise content strategy can be done in phases to define content goals, clean up existing content and then expand to additional departments.
A misfire by a German grocery chain entering the US market reminds me of a very important content strategy commandment: Know thy audience.
When winter weather makes commuting to Scriptorium’s NC office difficult, we work from home. We have set up a cloud-based infrastructure to support remote employees (hello, Bill Swallow!), and it works well for the rest of us during weather events and business travel.
Scriptorium wraps up 2017 with a look back at posts on content strategy, localization, DITA, and other content conundrums.
We often talk about building content strategies from the ground up: first, coming up with a strategy to address your content problems, and then implementing a solution. But not all implementations happen that way. If you’ve already started implementing a new system, it’s not too late to think about content strategy—in fact, it’s crucial to make sure your new processes will be sustainable.
The scope and practice of content strategy is ever-expanding. From marketing to user experience to technical content development, the need for a strategy governing content creation and production grows. With this growth, the definitions of content strategy can vary, but they all recognize that the need for effective and targeted content is critical.
Here in the United States, the summer is now officially over and students are back to school. For many, this means a change in routine and a fresh outlook on the remainder of the year. This is an excellent time to direct that fresh outlook to your content by measuring your content strategy ROI.
This post is part of Scriptorium’s 20th anniversary celebration.
Content creators love their tools. So much, in fact, they sometimes mistake selecting tools for developing a content strategy.
This post is part of Scriptorium’s 20th anniversary celebration.
A common content strategy mistake is duplicating the look-and-feel of existing content when you’re implementing new tools and processes.
Coauthored by Sarah O’Keefe and Alan Pringle
First published in 2001.
Structured authoring and XML represent a significant paradigm shift in content creation. Implementing structured authoring with XML allows organizations to enforce content organization requirements. The addition of hierarchy and metadata to content improves reuse and content management. These benefits, however, must be weighed against the effort required to implement a structured authoring approach. The business case is compelling for larger writing organizations; they will be the first to adopt structured authoring. Over time, improvements in available tools will reduce the cost of implementing structured authoring and make it affordable for smaller organizations.
Without centralized localization processes, you will pay more for translated content, provide inconsistent translations, and possibly expose your company to significant legal liability. Here are warning signs your company needs a better localization strategy:
This post is part of a series on the value proposition of localization strategies.
When people think of internationalization (IF they think of it), software labels often come to mind—buttons, menus, and other user interface text. But content development can benefit from it as well.
