Tech comm, content strategy, and coaching
Earlier in the year, I was chatting with Sharon Burton. As an aside to our knitting-focused discussion, I asked her what new services we should offer.
Content strategy after mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions often result in a new content strategy. In a typical scenario, the merged company needs to align disparate content organizations. Before the merger, the companies had different tools, technologies, workflows, deliverables, and content culture. A goal of the merger is to unify company products, and therefore, the merged organization must also unify content development.
Your content strategy easy win
You have a content strategy plan. Management has agreed to fund implementation. Time for the happy dance, right?
A little celebration is in order. But you still have to prove your new strategy will work in the real world. Showing early success with an “easy win” during implementation will give you momentum.
Is your content overhead or a customer delight?
Delight is the difference between what you and your team cost, and the revenue you directly (or indirectly) produce (or protect). This concept is as important to charities as hedge funds.
You may not think that “delighting” customers is part of your content creation responsibilities. But when customer delight is defined in terms of revenue and costs, it suddenly becomes a critical part of your job.
Translation and the complexity of simple content
Translating content for foreign markets can be an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. While it’s important to keep costs in check, the critical element to watch is quality. The only sure-fire way to ensure quality in translation is to build it into your source.
The advent of intelligent content
You can justify intelligent content with efficiency–more reuse, cheaper translation, better content management. The true value of intelligent content, however, is unlocked when you connect content across the organization.
Content should not be an obvious tourist
When you travel, do people ask you for directions and address you as if you live in the area? I’ve had that happen a few times, and friends and colleagues have shared similar experiences.
You may not stand out as an obvious tourist on your travels. But does the content you distribute fit in as well across different environs?
Content strategy: What’s your exit strategy?
You’ve probably heard the announcement countless times: “Please locate the nearest emergency exit.” Chances are you ignore these exits most of the time, but you feel safer knowing they’re there. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant or movie theater or travel on public transportation that didn’t have an emergency exit—so why would you develop a content strategy without one?
In a recent blog post, Alan Pringle brought up the the importance of having an exit strategy, and I wanted to expand on that idea. Without a plan for what to do if your implementation doesn’t go as expected, your company could face tremendous costs—in terms of both time and money—trying to move on to a system that works.
Uber, disruption, and content strategy
I used Uber and lived to tell the tale. And I found a lesson for content strategy in my rides to and from the airport in San Francisco.
The talent deficit in content strategy
Content strategy is taking hold across numerous organizations. Bad content is riskier and riskier because of the transparency and accountability in today’s social media–driven world.
But now, we have a new problem: a talent deficit in content strategy.
