Discuss: A Checklist for Content Work
by Erin Kissane
- Editorial Comments
2 Good content attracts users (SEO)
Many websites are primarily focused on conversions and thus speed visitors through a funnel. Good content will let a user jump in to whichever step of that process via search engine results matching highly targeted keywords on the page.
Sometimes, sacrificing clarity for some SEO is necessary.
posted at 11:40 pm on March 8, 2011 by rviscomi
3 Content Support
I wholeheartedly agree with the premise that “good content is supported.”
In my arguably limited experience I find that without a support plan, i.e., someone to keep the web site fresh and relevant, the web site does more than become stagnant. I find the owner of the site, not getting the value out of the presence on the web in the form of page hits, search engine rank and overall response to content, can not fully realize the value of the web as a medium for existing and potential customer communication. In other words, the site to him or her becomes nothing more than a yellow pages ad.
posted at 11:55 am on March 9, 2011 by Matt Fitzgerald
4 quantity
quantity is important. i’m unable to concentrate if there’s too much happens on a single page, ie. adsie, retweets, fb likes, etc..
posted at 09:48 pm on March 17, 2011 by mogmog
5 Contastic
Thank you for content on content that is witty and insightful. While some say “content is king”, I think the ruling power comes form context – that of the user, the task(s) they come to our sites to accomplish, and our business goals. Without context our content often turns into a madlib of marketing and SEO terms.
One of the root causes of my company’s content challenges comes from distributed authorship – which is akin to awarding road construction projects to the lowest bidder. Any thoguhts on how to create/manage good content in this type of environment? Like Margot’s comment above “(And if you answer that in full in the book, well, “RTFM” is an acceptable answer.)”
posted at 04:20 pm on March 22, 2011 by D Lars
6
Very good article… as usual!
What a great site
posted at 09:31 am on March 23, 2011 by GlobuleDesign
7 Adaptive Content
How do you see adaptive content working with more traditional strategy models in terms of planning and execution? We’ve been experimenting with providing different content from a CMS based on organic/paid search keywords, which ties in nicely with the idea of context. The problem is that it compounds the effort it takes to create content for multiple scenarios. Not sure if you’ve had experience with this but I would be curious to hear your thoughts.
PS – Mods might want to take a pass at the spam posts above.
posted at 05:29 pm on March 25, 2011 by juddgefizzy
8 Even More Excited to Read Your Book Now
Bought your book a week or so ago. I just skimmed this article, but it’s making me more excited to read the whole book.
Looking forward to it. As soon as I get a free minute…….
posted at 08:41 am on March 28, 2011 by Albany SEO
9 Responses! Late but sincere…
Apologies, guys, for the very delayed responses. I failed at subscribing to my own comment thread. Bad governance! Bad! :/
First up, Margot’s excellent comment.
@Margot:
Here’s my question: how do you think consultancies need to evolve their offering and how they sell it in order to educate their clients about governance, community management, and ongoing content cultivation? Is it a cultural shift that both agencies and clients need to embrace, or more of a trend that’s already happening?
Can I have it both ways? I think it’s becoming clear to a lot of organizations that if they’re going to publish content online, they’re going to have to deal with long-term editorial strategy, content management, and so on. And I think that’s happening mainly because the lack of this kind of thinking has produced a whole lot of pain in the last ten years.
As for agencies…I think that’s a trickier question. I think a lot of agencies recognize that clients need governance tools as much as they need content management systems, but that a.) as an industry, we’re still figuring out what those tools are, and b.) we’re also figuring out which parts of long-term governance need to be developed within the client organization, and which can effectively be handled by an agency—especially when that agency doesn’t have a battalion of content specialists to send into client organizations.
Anyway, I do get into it in the book, but perhaps not so directly. What’s your take on the whole situation?
@D Lars:
While some say “content is king”, I think the ruling power comes form context – that of the user, the task(s) they come to our sites to accomplish, and our business goals. Without context our content often turns into a madlib of marketing and SEO terms.
I completely agree. That’s so much of the idea of appropriateness. Content without attention to the user isn’t much good to anyone.
One of the root causes of my company’s content challenges comes from distributed authorship – which is akin to awarding road construction projects to the lowest bidder. Any thoguhts on how to create/manage good content in this type of environment? Like Margot’s comment above “(And if you answer that in full in the book, well, “RTFM” is an acceptable answer.)”
This is something I do get into pretty extensively in the book’s third section—and also [url=“http://www.alistapart.com/articles/content-templates-to-the-rescue/”]a bit in another ALA article[/url]. Managing a distributed publishing process is genuinely difficult work, and requires specialized processes and tools—and centralized oversight, without which it’s either going to to turn into Wikipedia or dissolve into a puddle of goo. Which may be the same thing.
@juddgefizzy
How do you see adaptive content working with more traditional strategy models in terms of planning and execution? We’ve been experimenting with providing different content from a CMS based on organic/paid search keywords, which ties in nicely with the idea of context. The problem is that it compounds the effort it takes to create content for multiple scenarios. Not sure if you’ve had experience with this but I would be curious to hear your thoughts.
This is such interesting stuff, though not something I have direct experience with. If the method you’re using is essentially another form of navigation, I think you could work through the content in the usual ways, though the mind reels at the extra spreadsheet space required to track serious adaptation. It sounds to me as though you’d be spending most of your time on data modeling and getting all the (editorial) templates into really good shape. It’s a bit outside my area, but the emerging field of intelligent content gets into this stuff in really wonderful detail, so you might follow up by looking some of the books and blog posts by Ann Rockley and Joe Gollner.
posted at 12:09 am on March 31, 2011 by Erin Kissane
10 Thank you!
Content about content…it’s about time.
Thank you for an insightful article on the use, timing and nurturing of content!
posted at 12:17 am on March 31, 2011 by LillianH
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1 So, how can we train the topiary?
I love this, but can’t help wrestling the common sense of agriculture against the typical concerns of consulting. We’ve all seen how politics, finite budgets, and the pressure of competing deadlines get in the way of post-launch maintenance when companies outsource their web initiatives. It’s a problem with codependent enablers: clients send RFPs for new websites, blog templates, or content; consultancies respond with ideas to relaunch anew, with sparkling new content—and too often, the timeline stops there.
Some agencies are starting to move away from the launch-and-leave model, but their efforts are misguided at best: maintenance contracts that focus on posting press releases and governance documents that live more in documentation than culture are no substitute for the model of vigilant care you describe.
Here’s my question: how do you think consultancies need to evolve their offering and how they sell it in order to educate their clients about governance, community management, and ongoing content cultivation? Is it a cultural shift that both agencies and clients need to embrace, or more of a trend that’s already happening?
(And if you answer that in full in the book, well, “RTFM” is an acceptable answer.)
posted at 02:17 pm on March 8, 2011 by Margot Bloomstein