Content Strategy
Organize information to inspire action.
The problem
Too many websites and products feature confusing, poorly organized, or straight-up outdated content that degrades their user experience.
When people ask what I do, I tell them I “make shitty websites easier to use by putting information where you expect it.”
The solution
Now I’m no Maoist, but you could say that a little red book changed my life: Halvorson and Rach’s Content Strategy for the Web. I consider it the bible of content strategy.
Here’s how it works:
Research
Who what when where how… and why?
- Target audience research, analytics review, content auditing, interviews, competitive reviews, surveys, heuristic analyses.
- Project scope and client archetype determines which research activities are best suited.
Strategize
Identify, then prioritize solutions to challenges.
- Create a detailed, clear plan to address the most important challenges.
- Consider focusing on the lowest-hanging fruit to demonstrate success.
- Condense the strategy’s essence into a core strategy statement.
Measure
The painful part: take a peek and see if you succeeded.
- A good strategy will define how success is measured. This can feel like the hardest part of the whole thing.
- Be honest if something doesn’t work: you may have uncovered a new opportunity.
- Loudly trumpet your successes.
An innovation I’m particularly proud of is combining the content strategy methodology with Sarah Winter’s Content Design as a mechanism for implementing the content strategy.
Content Design as a discipline grew out of content strategy, so this always made sense to me. Our position embedded on UX Design teams meant that Winters’ toolbox was immediately applicable.
Success story: manufacturing
In my time at ITX, I have completed eleven content strategy projects across a variety of industries. 3 more are currently ongoing. But this one, for a lean manufacturing consulting firm, is my absolute favorite.
Problem
A wellspring of sales leads was drying up.
- For an unknown reason our client was experiencing declining website conversions.
- Their sales strategy relied on a steady inflow of website leads.
- They were rapidly losing search engine traffic, indicating a pervasive SEO issue.
Solution
We set to work on a content strategy that would address these issues.
- We investigated the issue and determined that Google had been penalizing them for low-quality content such as duplicated copy on multiple pages.
- We interviewed client content managers, completed an audit of the clients’ site to better understand user behavior, and identified pages that provided the ripest opportunities for improvement.
- We implemented new tools to improve insight into user engagement while providing the ability to monitor the site’s search engine performance.
- We laid out a content strategy that included new value propositions, content improvements, and an search engine optimization approach that’d ameliorate Google’s penalization.
- We implemented the site improvements and also trained client team members on how to create—then upkeep—new content.
Results
- 6 months after implementing the content strategy, site traffic had increased by 35% and search engine impressions had increased by 38%, indicated we’d successfully tackled the duplicate content problem.
- Contact us conversions in the same time increased by 5X, indicating that the new content strategy had helped us identify—then implement—more engaging information.
Oh hey, you made it.
While you’re here, wanna check out my video production chops too?