00:00 Bill: Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts podcast, brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In episode 13, we discuss measuring the return on investment in a content strategy implementation. Hi, everybody. This is Bill Swallow, the Director of Operations here at Scriptorium. I am here with Sarah O’Keefe, the founder and CEO.
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.
Coauthored by Sarah O’Keefe and Gretyl Kinsey
Commissioned by Adobe Systems, Inc. (What does this mean?)
Organizations can no longer funnel people into convenient pre-sales and post-sales categories. They need to align their content creation efforts for marketing and technical content. Adobe offers a solution that allows for creation of structured technical content (DITA) and less structured marketing content in a single repository.
My 2017 trend is the impact of machine translation on content strategy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
