Online it ALL Matters

7 Tips on Using Hospital Videos Strategically

2012-02-24T10:59:00.002-05:00

Your hospital should be using video as part of a social media marketing campaign to capitalize on a huge opportunity to engage Web visitors and draw new traffic to your site. However, there are certain things you want to consider.

Videos make your website more interesting and helpful for visitors. And, most importantly, videos help viewers make a personal connection to your facility and doctors. Posting brief doctor introductions or video tours of maternity rooms or pediatric floors demonstrates in a very powerful way that you care about the patient experience.

Examples of Good Hospital Videos

Consider this short but effective video tour of the Janet Weis Children’s Hospital in Pennsylvania. In just 2.5 minutes, viewers – likely parents – can clearly see this is a facility that prioritizes children, from the decorated elevators to playroom spaces and kid-level nurses stations. There’s no written description or single photo that can drive home that marketing message in the same way.
If you’re still not convinced, consider these stats about how video can help prospective patients find your site:

• Staying competitive is not just about Google hits anymore. YouTube is the third most-visited site in both the U.S. and worldwide, according to Alexa, a web information company
• When key words are used correctly, web pages with videos are 50 times more likely to show up on the first page of a Google search than those with only text, according to Forrester Research

Aha Media and Johns Hopkins Hospital Video Findings

When our company researched the use of video on Johns Hopkins Hospital’s website, we were amazed by our results. For example, when we tested users’ ability to remember a certain health fact that would help them lower their risk of diabetes, we found that 63% remembered what they read. But when we put video on the page, some users elected not to watch it, and when they did, their retainment rate fell. Only 20% who watched the video could remember the health fact, as opposed to 63% who had read it.

You can learn more about this study by watching our presentation on Slideshare: Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Healthcare Content Conundrum.

7 Ways to Make Hospital Videos More Effective

Whether video is a new marketing effort, or the videos you have aren’t working hard enough, these best practices will ensure you are getting the most out of your video content:

1. Content matters: Don’t upload videos for the sake of having video on your site. If viewers watch one video that isn’t helpful, they are less likely to watch others.

2. Complement, don’t substitute: Videos should never replace webpage text. Don’t rely on video to communicate key patient information, because not everyone watches videos or finishes them. In health care, the best videos provide a personal connection. Take a look at this video introducing the chief radiologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. It adds value by allowing viewers to hear him talk about how he works with patients. It should not, however, replace any text page about him (listing his title, degrees, contact info, etc.) or about the radiation department.

3. Keep it short: Aim for videos that last 2-3 minutes, quick and to the point. Videos any longer don’t hold the viewer’s attention.

4. Brand the video: Don’t forget your hospital’s name and logo! Viewers who arrive at the video via Google or YouTube should know right away this is your video. Keep your logo at the bottom of the screen throughout, or display it prominently in both opening and closing credits.

5. Remember SEO: Those same search-engine optimization rules governing text titles and keywords still apply to videos. How you name and tag everything matters. Be clear and concise in your descriptions: creative and catchy won’t work on Google.

6. Share videos on YouTube: Posting your video on YouTube makes it highly visible to your audience and allows the video to be easily shared by viewers. Create a YouTube channel for your hospital’s videos and include clear titles, descriptions and tags to make yours videos easy to locate in search. In addition, include a link back to your hospital URL (i.e. “Learn more at [your hospital URL].”) in the description. These links allow the viewer to find your website, and also add authority to your video so that Google ranks it higher in search results.

7. Remind users to take action. Think "Lights, Camera, Take Action." You want the video to tell you where to go after you've watched it, so users can continue to engage with your brand.

How you found an effective video strategy? If so, please share in the comments below or give us examples of other hospital videos you've enjoyed.

What we cry about when we cry about Whitney Houston

2012-02-13T01:08:00.001-05:00

I found out about Whitney Houston's passing from this world under the same circumstances she entered mine: sitting in a car with girlfriends. Things were obviously different; one of my friends was driving--not her mother--and I was able to do a search on my phone to find out about her death, not pray for her song to come on the radio again in the next hour.

At first I accepted it mildly. We all knew she has been on the edge for years. Why was I surprised she had fallen off today? And yet, as I watched her videos and performances, I grew increasingly more despondent, so much so that my 9-year old had to comfort me. And through all the tears, I asked myself why? Why did I find her death so affecting?

Having experienced Michael Jackson's death, I knew that when we mourn a celebrity we are grieving our own mortality, as well as our youth. And what a prominent role she played in my youth! She's always been there--as the girl with the crush, as the glamorous movie star, as the one that promised me that I, as a child, was the future.

But there was more than that about Whitney. She was the everygirl--the one who sang about boys, and love and breakups. She was worried about the same things we were worried about. How will we know if he really loves us, Whitney? She was asking us, because we know about these things! (Hint: He will not hand you a crack pipe.)

Beyond her joyous pop songs and made for dancing around your room with your hairbrush as a mike music, she had a voice that made you believe in a God who handed those voices out once every generation. Though she had peers, there was an effortless, magical, joyous quality to her singing. She commanded the stage, the angels in Heaven and all of us when she sang.

After explaining her marriage and her drug use to my daughter (the most organic just say no parental lecture, ever), my insightful child asked me "If she had so much, why didn't she love herself on the inside?" In other words, why didn't she have the greatest love of all?

While I can't answer her question, I do think she answered mine. We cry about Whitney Houston because we don't understand why someone gifted with so much would also have so many demons. When we saw Whitney perform, she seemed to have everything, but clearly there were dark shadows tormenting her dreams.

Now when we watch Whitney sing, we know the tragedy of her death. We glimpse what should have been, what could have been. And for that we mourn and cry, like we mourn and cry when anything is tragic: it so easily could have been different, should have been different and yet, is exactly the opposite of the way we wanted it to be.

3 Tools You Need for Better Usability Testing

2012-02-06T21:40:00.000-05:00

If you ever perform usability testing on the quick and dirty, then you probably already have some tried and true tricks you use to make it more efficient.

Quick and dirty usability testing is a type of usability testing where you assemble small groups of users at each iteration (usually no more than 7-9) to ascertain that you’re moving in the right direction with your designs and content.

How to Perform Quick and Dirty Usability Testing

You can pull a couple of people into a room and ask them a short script of tasks. I’ve done this type of usability testing often, as well as the more formal larger studies and I’ve found that these 3 tools are must haves:

1. Have both a MAC and a PC: Nothing drives users crazier than not feeling comfortable on a computer. While most users adapt quickly, especially younger users, it can take too much time to develop coping strategies during a test. When performing quick and dirty studies, you might be halfway through the test before your users have accommodated. So have both machines available.

2. Have a mouse on the ready: Users hate to navigate using touchpad mouses. So have a mouse handy—and a standard mouse. Don’t use a fancy ergonomic one—it will cause adaptability issues.

3. Use a scoring grid: This is so helpful, especially if you’re not running usability software in the background, like Silverback, which helps you capture what’s going on for the user on screen. I’ve attached a picture of a sample scoring grid I use below—it just makes it so much easier to calcluate your results when you write your report. Remember to set your scoring metrics before you start scoring and make sure all scorers are in agreement if you're conducting usability testing with more than one scorer.

Scoring grid for usability testing

WWhat are some of the tools you use for quick and dirty usability studies?

Content Strategy: 3 Lessons from Moneyball

2012-01-17T22:41:00.000-05:00

I won’t even pretend to explain the plot of Moneyball because what I know about baseball is this: you need a ball, a bat and four bases.

What I can tell you is Moneyball is a movie about a man who tried to do something different within an industry that thought he was all wrong. In the film, Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics implements a system called Moneyball—introduced to him by a squishy Yale graduate named Peter, played by Jonah Hill.

The system is designed to pick players based on the number of runs they are able to accumulate, and therefore the wins.

Everyone thought it was crazy. Then the team won 20 games in a row, never before accomplished in Major League Baseball.

There are 3 major lessons content strategists can learn from Moneyball and they have nothing to do with batting averages:

1. Ask the right questions.
In at least 2 scenes, Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) listens to a group of people arguing and responds to them, “You’re asking the wrong questions.” Then he boils down their problem to a question that better defines the challenge at hand.

If you’re a good content strategist, this happens to you on every project. Because your clients, or your boss, or someone on the executive team brings you a problem they think you can solve digitally. But very often, the problem as they have it defined is not the problem. Or, the problem does not have a digital solution.

Ask the right questions. Make sure you’re trying to solve the right puzzle.

2. The first one through a glass wall is the bloodiest.
At one point in the movie, the owner of the RedSox offers Billy Beane a job. Even though the team Billy managed didn’t make it to the World Series, the RedSox owner believes in what he’s trying to do.

The owner says to him “Any time you try to change things, people feel threatened and they knock you in the teeth for it. The first one through the glass wall gets the bloodiest.”

Content strategy is not really new. In fact, it’s the oldest job in the world—how do you get one group of people to march in one line on the same beat? Yet, very often, we’re seen as trying to do something radical, something that can’t be done, something that is worthless or impossible.

Epilogue to the movie? After applying these newfangled principles that everyone in baseball dismissed, the Boston RedSox won the World Series 2 years later.

3. Check to see if you’ve hit a home run.
When Billy Beane feels defeated after not advancing to the World Series, Pete shows him a video of one of their players who was terrified to run to second base at the start of the season. In the video, the player hits the ball 60 feet over the fence. The irony? The guy was so scared of running to second base that he falls on the turn and crawls back to first base. The other team has to tell him to look up and see the home run.

Effective content strategy is hard work. It’s a lot of heavy lifting and decisions. You don’t always know if you’re making the right ones. Change management is almost always involved.

Every once in a while look up and see that you’ve knocked it out of the park.

Maybe the baseball players were the ones who said if first: You have to celebrate the wins.

Content Strategy and Content Marketing: 12 Ways to Start 2012 Right

2012-01-03T11:54:00.001-05:00

We all make goals around this time of the year. The classic list—how do we make our new year more productive?

It’s only natural—beginnings feel so fresh.

However, for many of us, it’s hard to meet those goals. And, we are constantly adding new information to the blender of our imaginations. This causes many businesses to go off course, following strategies that months later look foolish.

So what are some tried and true things you can do to start 2012 off right?

1. Review your content marketing and content strategies. Look for holes. Talk to colleagues. Brainstorm. Set a meeting once a month to review again.

2. Imagine where you want to be a year from now. Real leaders invent the future. Where do you want to be? Set goals for the rest of the year that will get you to that point.

3. Look for new blood. Maybe your blog needs some guest posts. Or your content marketing agency is coming up with nothing innovative. Whatever, you do, look for things that spice up what you’re doing, not alter course.

4. Set aside once a week to read the experts. My daily influx of email and Twitter updates is overwhelming, but I set aside time every week to read those things that interest me. The rest I file into a folder for Read Later. You never know where the good ideas may come from and when you may need them.

5. Target one customer you really want to reach. Identify this person with a user persona or profile. Make sure something you’re doing in your content marketing mix will target that customer in 2012.

6. Pay attention to your analytics. Say goodbye to the days when you could pretend to ignore them. We’re moving toward a much more metric-driven industry. But…

7. Set the right indication measurements. It may be more than just interactions, followers and mentions. Every industry and company is different. Find a way to measure the things you REALLY need to know about how your customers are responding to you in cyberspace.

8. Take a beginner class again. Whatever it is that you do, you think you know the basics. You’re probably right. But this year, I took a refresher writing class and I learned so much. It opened my eyes to writing (something I do all day, every day) in a completely different way. And, even more importantly, it ignited my passion for writing again.

9. Schedule regular socialization time with your team. I don’t care if you schedule time everyTuesday at 4pm or once a month happy hours. Just make sure you change the scenery with the people you think with on a daily basis.

10. Try something crazy innovative once a quarter. We learn much more from our failures than our successes. Even more so, if we’re not OUT THERE, we’re not trying. Don’t be afraid of something outlandish; just don’t walk the fine line of offensive. You never know what you might learn and what new avenues might open up.

11. Pay attention to advances in design. Those affect content the way a bad economy affects presidential popularity. With mobile and content delivery platforms changing rapidly, you cannot afford to be clueless about the latest advances in design delivery.

12. Trust your instincts. This might not be a check off for your “What to Do in 2012” but it’s an important rule to remember. If something in you says it’s not right, listen to that instinct.
I’d love to hear if you have something you plan to focus on in 2012.

Happy New Year!

Hospitals: 8 Ways to Increase Social Engagement with Content

2011-12-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

From the below post, "Make Google Panda Work For You", we all know how important social media and sharing content is to your search engine results. This means you must create and publish relevant, effective content on a regular basis.

With this strategy the challenge is clear: how do you create a workflow that works within your hospital's busy marketing/Web strategy department? How can you maximize the content you already have or that you are in the middle of creating?

This article, "8 Ways to Repurpose Your Hospital's Content," may help you learn some common, useful tricks to repurposing articles for social media outlets. Different distribution vehicles that all lead back to a landing page where you track your ROI will zero in on what works your target audience.

Please let me know if you have any success with some of the ideas in this article.

Content Strategy: Make Google Panda Work For You

2011-11-21T10:55:00.000-05:00

In the world of Web design, everyone is clamoring to get an invite to Google’s party. Landing on the first page of Google’s search returns is the holy grail of SEO. If your pages show up higher in the rankings, the more likely potential customers and clients will jump to your pages, leading to new business opportunities.

It used to be that you could get those sought-after Google rankings by using strategies like keyword stuffing and link building. This led to a lot of advertising sites, content farms and other low-quality Web sites leading the rankings.

But Google Panda has changed the searching landscape. Google Panda, the changes Google recently implemented in their search algorithm, seeks to improve the quality of the returns, providing the user with original, quality content and pushing those imposters lower down in the rankings.

The Key to Excellent Web Design

Real estate agents tell their clients there are three important factors when selling a home: location, location, location. In Web content, there are also three important factors to keep in mind: quality, quality, quality.

Now more than ever, you need someone professional handling your content and your content strategy. A Web content professional understands the two equally important components of Web content creation:

The front end, the user, who is pulled in by high-quality content and an attractive, readable Web page.
The back end, or the technical side. A deep understanding of SEO is critical, using h1 tags where needed and keyword-rich content (used judiciously, not stuffed).

Make Social Media Work for You

Now it’s time to share your content with the world. Social media channels are the most popular and effective way to get people reading and sharing your content. But you can’t just barrage the world with your website. Create a careful, well thought out plan to distribute your content using social media.

How can you harness the power of social media to work for you? Your Web content professional can help you with that as well:

Blog posts. Regular blog posts are a great way to enrich your content. The blog should be updated regularly, targeted to your user base and include popular key words. A wealth of rich content pushes your pages higher on Google. Keep posts short and relevant, and encourage comments. The blogosphere loves reciprocity—if you comment on other blogs and share their sites, those authors will come and do the same for you, thereby growing your audience base. And make sure you integrate relevant blog posts with static content. A strong taxonomy comes into play here.
Twitter feed. Keeping it short isn’t a problem on Twitter, but make sure your tweets are relevant and useful. Don’t bombard your followers with self-promotion tactics. Provide them with links, tips, advice and news they will use and appreciate.
Facebook fan page. Nothing says “I am a social media dud” more than a neglected Facebook fan page. Keep it robust—include information about who you are and what you do, and update the page with pictures and interesting links on a regular basis.

You can also reward your Facebook fans and Twitter followers with special discounts and promotions they won’t find on your regular site, encouraging them to keep coming back for more.

We also recommend the use of the Creative Valuable Content™ checklist to help businesses manage their content and grow their user base.

Our Checklist ensures that your content is:

• Findable: Can the user find the content?
• Readable: Can the user read the content?
• Understandable: Can the user understand the content?
• Actionable: Will the user want to take action?
• Shareable: Will the user share the content?

These steps are the foundation for exceptional Web content. Focus on quality, originality and relevance. We encourage our clients to be diligent about using the checklist to create a successful, content-driven Web site.

For more information:

Visit Aha Media Group, LLC.
Like our Facebook page and get the latest updates and useful tips on Web content strategy.
Follow us on Twitter @ahaval

Robotic Surgery: 5 Marketing Ideas for your Hospital's Website

2011-10-26T16:24:00.004-04:00

Robotic surgery is one of the most exciting developments in surgery in recent years. If your hospital uses a da Vinci® Si™ Surgical System or other robotic surgery system, you want to let patients know. Whether it's pelvic prolapse, mitral valve repair or robotic prostatectomy, the more your patients know and understand about surgical procedures that can be performed using robotic surgery, the better chance you have of capturing that market.

Minimally invasive surgeries hold the promise of better precision for surgical procedures, access to areas previously thought unreachable and a shorter recovery. Further, there are fewer complications like blood loss and infection. Robotic surgery is a type of minimally invasive surgical procedure and it is changing patient’s lives. Touting your hospital’s da Vinci Surgical System or minimally invasive robotic surgery program can give your hospital the edge.

While marketing robotic surgery, however, keep in mind that while it has changed the surgical experience, this surgical procedure is not available for every condition, and it’s not right for every patient. You want to reassure patients that you have the expertise and experience to use every surgical approach: traditional, minimally invasive or robotic.

Here are five important tips for marketing robotic surgery and your da Vinci surgical system:

Get your name out there. In addition to marketing the robotics on your own hospital’s website, find out if there is a regional website or organization of robotic surgery. Become affiliated with that site to make it easier for patients to find you. For example, when patients in the Florida region search for robotic surgery, Robotic Surgery of Florida comes up. The website, in addition to offering a wealth of information on robotic surgery, lists different hospitals in Florida and surrounding states that offer robotic surgical procedures. Patients can easily click on a nearby hospital to find out more. If your hospital is not listed, no one can find you.
Show what you know. Create a robust section on your website describing robotic surgery. The technology is new and some patients may be wary. Just advertising “robotic surgery” isn’t enough. Physicians' training is critical to patients, and they’re also interested in how a robotic procedure works. The website of North Florida Regional Medical Center includes a detailed history of the technology, procedures available and patient information. Go the extra step with an explanatory video explaining the different surgical procedures. A video provides a visual guide so patients can understand the procedure even better. Videos also demonstrate your expertise and depth of knowledge in this field. Hartford Hospital offers a detailed video of a robotic prostatectomy.
Is this for me? Patients want to know if their condition can be treated using robotic surgical procedures. Children’s Hospital Boston lists the procedures they treat robotically, so patients can know immediately if they are a potential candidate. To sharpen your information even further, be focused. Often, a patient who is researching treatment options understands their condition, so don’t spend too much time discussing the disease. Offer, specific, detailed information about the robotic procedure for the particular conditions you treat.
Be a valuable source of information. Patients are looking for informative content before undergoing a surgical procedure, especially when the procedure is something cutting-edge and new. Offer them information, in the form of patient testimonials or links to outside articles detailing robotic surgery and its benefits.
Let the doctors speak. A robotic surgery is not just advantageous for the patients—doctors find it beneficial as well. Through either an article or video, have your doctors discuss why they like using a robotic procedure: the enhanced visualization, greater dexterity, superior precision. Hearing a doctor’s opinion provides a personal yet professional element to the discussion.

Patients are eager for information on robotic surgery, and want to find hospitals performing these cutting-edge procedures. Provide that information and prove your expertise. By showing patients you understand their questions and have the answers they need, you become their first choice for minimally invasive surgical care.

Do you have any thoughts or tips about robotic surgery or minimally invasive surgery marketing?

Promoting Hospital Doctors: 8 Creative Ideas for your Website

2011-10-10T16:10:00.000-04:00

Your doctors are a critical part of your hospital’s reputation. Their credentials, expertise and experience are what draw patients to your institution. So it makes sense to showcase your physicians’ expertise prominently on your website.

Here are eight creative ideas for featuring your doctors on your site:

1. Pictures: Nothing says reassuring, confident and experienced like pictures of your doctors interacting with patients and each other. Feature them on many pages of your website—especially clinical care pages. Even without a quote or a name, that picture tells your visitors, “I will take care of you.” I like to post photographs of physicians talking to patients—I find this demonstrates patient education is an important part of the clinical program.

2. Scrolling marquis: What a great way to show off your doctors and their expertise or personality. A picture of a doctor combined with his or her name, credentials and a quote gives your visitors a glimpse about who will be caring for them. Mix up the kinds of quotes you use—some should be about patient care, while others highlight your hospital’s research and technology strengths. See how University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center combines pictures and quotes from doctors, volunteers and patients right on their home page. Your eye is drawn immediately to the changing display, and there is a “read more” option on each picture.

3. “Find a Doctor”: Display this box prominently. Your visitors want to know what your doctors specialize in, and how they can access their expertise. Include a quick search box on your homepage, and make it easy to search your physician directory.

Include search options by:
• Physician name
• By diagnoses/procedures
• By departments, services or specialties
• Location, if your hospital includes satellite offices
• Language, if you have bilingual doctors

4. Showcase Expertise: The nice picture may interest your visitors, but it’s the impressive resume that makes them pick up the phone for an appointment (or better yet, use your online scheduling system). Each physician should have a page with their credentials and a phone number, but also a short bio that tells the visitor a little more about them—different schools, fields of interest, important publications. Write the bio in third person, or in first, like the ones at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Consider using tabs to divide the bio into areas that different user audiences may find interesting. For example, researchers might want to see a long listing of publications, while patients may just want to know research interests. See Mass General’s doctor lists, for an example. For many of their doctors, you can quickly scan the tabs and then jump to your area of interest right away.

5. Highlight different roles: Your physicians are scientists and researchers, experts in their field and above all, compassionate human beings. On your homepage, include a few intriguing snippets about your physicians that invite your visitors to click and learn more. For example, pediatric specialists who have children can talk about how being a parent influences the type of care they give.

6. Take advantage of free press: If a physician at your hospital was featured on a talk show, radio show, or made any sort of public appearance, link to that appearance on your website’s homepage. A doctor at the University of Washington Medical Center appeared on Dr. Oz’s talk show—that is definitely something you would want to let your visitors know about! It makes the impression that this doctor is an expert—an impression you want to cultivate.

7. Use video to demonstrate personality: Include a short video clip of a physician explaining a diagnostic procedure or what to expect before surgery. Talking head videos are important for a patient to get to know a doctor, but aren’t necessarily the best for explaining a particular disease. Make sure your doctor feels comfortable—it won’t help you if the doctor seems fidgety in front of the camera.

8. Engage physicians as content contributors: Cleveland Clinic boasts an informative “Ask the Doctor” feature. Doctors answer frequently asked questions, and each question and answer is followed by the name of the doctor who answered, along with a brief bio. This immediately demonstrates the doctors’ expertise and their ability to explain complex medical information in a patient-friendly manner. Or, you can blog it: Have your doctor pen short articles related to medical areas of interest, such as Emory Healthcare’s Advancing Your Health Blog. A blog is an opportunity for you to share your physicians’ medical expertise in a way that’s relatable and patient-friendly.

To summarize, show off your most impressive feature—your physicians. Your sophisticated technology and state-of-the-art surgical devices are critical to your marketing efforts. But it starts with a doctor, for almost every single patient. So start with your major draw—you’ll be sure to see the benefits quickly.

Content Strategy: Testing Mobile Content

2011-08-08T13:57:00.000-04:00

There's so much to say on this topic. Here's a great new post from Jakob Nielsen on Defer Secondary Content When Writing for Mobile Users.

A lot of what he says in this post backs up some of the things I talked about in my presentation at Web Content Chicago, this past June on Testing Mobile Content.

Watch the presentation "Testing Mobile Content."

The 3 Hats of a Content Strategist: What We Really Do

2011-08-01T10:14:00.000-04:00

In my practice as a content strategist, I have come to realize that I actually do three different things that in actuality separate from each other and yet still inform my practice of each.

I think most content strategists feel that the definitions of content strategy are still milling about in the air like many uncaught fireflies on a summer night. For the purpose of bringing some added clarity (and not further confusion), I will seek to summarize what it is in fact, I think we do.

As content strategists, we create or help to create:

1. Messaging Strategies—the specific and targeted messages about the overall brand as well as the detailed nuances of how that is played out in cyberspace

2. Content Strategy—a digital publishing strategy that will include four phases: plan, create, publish, govern

3. Content Design—this combines both the messaging strategy and editorial guidelines to create supportive content and linguistic cues that support the users in all of their tasks

Now, you may only do one of the above, or maybe even part of one of the above as a content strategist. But what I find, from my readings of others’ blogs and talking to other content strategists, is that we all kind of do a little bit from each section. It’s essential for us to know this as an operating community because when we sell our capabilities, we can delineate where we can be most effective for a client.

So if you’re a writer, or a content marketer, or a content strategist, or a UX professional, or even a client, I’m interested to hear if you agree.

The 3 Unbreakable Rules of Content Strategy

2011-06-23T09:45:00.001-04:00

At this point there are 3 to 4 well-known and accepted definitions of content strategy. To me it is a two-fold process: an overall plan to plan, create, publish and execute different content types and a way of thinking about your organization as a publishing entity.

After practicing content strategy, or some form of it, for more than 10 years, I’ve come to the following 3 unbreakable rules that are true no matter the size of the project, the enthusiasm of the client or the teeth-grinding tedium of the content audit.

1. Follow the Benjamins.
While Jack Welch’s name may be an anathema in some circles, he ran one of the world’s most successful companies, General Electric, for more than 20 years. Mr. Welch introduced a fascinating management style into the corporate culture; he actually rewarded top performers by moving them around the company. Why? Wouldn’t it make sense to sharpen these rising stars’ skill set in one environment? But Mr. Welch understood that in order to be truly successful for GE, you needed to understand how the company made money.

The same is true for content strategists. Our job, more than any other, is to understand our clients' business model, so we can apply what we know about how the numbers at the bottom grow fat and green to the planning and publishing of content.
2. Respect other UX Professionals.
We can argue about definitions. We can play tug of war over whose role it really is. At the end of the day, multidisciplinary user engagement teams have more success than those that are made of UX professionals with the exact same ideology and mindset.

We all have clients—both internal and external. At the end of the day, however, we are all working for one person (no, not the man)—the end user. And our job is to make their engagement experience one that is truly easy, intuitive and maybe, perhaps, maybe even joyous.

3. Don’t cut corners.
I assigned a content audit to one of my writers this week. Man, she hated that assignment. She moaned and cried the whole way through it, even doing it differently than I suggested. I told her, “You must trust this process. If you want to get truly great at doing content projects, you have to understand why due diligence in all areas of the process are truly important.” This morning I got an email with the subject line: “ok, I get it.”

In talking to other content strategists, I find that each brings her or his own creativity and experience to each step in the overall process. But they know that the hard work of digging into the weeds, getting dirty with the details, challenging assumptions, asking “Why do you do that?” over and over again is critical to success.

I’ve thought about these rules for a long time and I’m interested to hear if you find that there are others.

Content Strategy: Creating a Website in 8 Steps

2011-04-14T21:58:00.003-04:00

Recently someone asked me what the steps were to create a website from a content strategy perspective. Always a fan of “boiling it down”, the below list are my thoughts in brief. Obviously, I’ve skipped many many sub-steps. Obviously, I’ve over simplified. But this is a repeatable cycle that MUST happen for every site. And, preferably in this order.

1. Business strategy alignment: You must align your business strategy with the content you are creating or preserving for this new site, or site redesign. DELIVERABLE: Creative Brief

2. Content Audit: if you have an existing site, this step is critical. You must capture the content that is viable, as well as what is out of date. If your site is thousands and thousands of pages, you may need to figure out a technical solution to this problem, but there's nothing like actually "touching" each and every page. DELIVERABLE: Content Audit

3. User Task Analysis: Gerry McGovern talks about this just brilliantly in this podcast with Randall Snare. We need to stop thinking about pages as units of content, but rather tasks as units of content. Therefore, users come to websites (or applications) to accomplish tasks, and the content should support them in completing those tasks. DELIVERABLE: A List of Tasks

4. Page Specs: Different than wireframes, page specs exist to list for IA’s what types of content should be available from each template. DELIVERABLE: Page Spec

5. Information Architecture: IA is really web design, or so says Dan Brown. But it’s not visual design—it’s the guts of the website, the spine. Information flow, as well as how users will interact with the website are where those very important, handy IA’s come in. DELIVERABLES: Wireframes and Page Templates

6. Visual Design: Visual designers decorate and cue the user with visuals. They should be using the Creative Brief, as well as any other valuable research about the company, goals, etc. that they need to match the tone and messaging to a visual feel. DELIVERABLE: Visual Design Comps

7. Content Creation: This comes in many forms—text, video, audio, slideshows, PDFs, etc. DELIVERABLES: Copy Decks, Scripts, Whitepapers, etc.

8. Production: This is where templates are built, content is slid into place and quality assurance is performed. DELIVERABLE: The Finished Product

So, what did I miss? Go ahead, boil it down for me.

POST EDIT:
Kristina pointed out below that content governance is a critical part of this process. Since I say in my introduction that it needs to be a repeatable process, then I do think we need to add that 9th ongoing step. So whether you think of it as a step, or a process that completes itself AS a cycle, you must make sure that there are steps in place to ensure that someone is taking care and feeding your content.

Content Strategy: Recent Thoughts

2011-04-11T11:38:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy month at Aha Media Group, LLC. Here are some posts I've recently written:

Creating Valuable Content: An Essential Checklist
Using the Valuable Content Checklist
Best Practices for Web Projects: A Panel Approach from Leaders in Fields of Content Strategy, Visual Design and IA

Enjoy!

Content Strategy Rant: Here's what we REALLY do

2011-03-03T13:38:00.001-05:00

Ok, I need to rant, but maybe once I'm done, I'll feel better.

A content strategist is not a "clever Internet marketer." Nor are they an "excellent Web copywriter." Or any of the other bizarre labels we seem to be getting.

There are, on my last count, 4 types of content strategists:

1. Technical documentation specialists who can help you with an enterprise content strategy that makes use of a content documentation tool. They like things like meta data, workflow guidelines and governance issues.

2. Content marketing geniuses can help you in your planning and creation of content. They also will help you think of ways to deliver and publish your content, and can give you advice about governance and archiving. But they are focused on creating relationships with customers through the content itself--the words, pictures, videos, etc. They are former journalists, copywriters, digital communication specialists and marketing experts.

3. Editorial experts who will help you think through a news desk, editorial team and guidelines for how, when, what and who to publish to and for. They usually have backgrounds in journalism, writing, communications and the like.

4. Marketers who don't necessarily create content strategies, but implement them and follow them, adding to the particulars of their own team. They probably bring in content marketers so they can round out an excellent content team.

Content Strategies are Repeatable Cycles
Content strategies are supposed to be repeatable cycles for planning, creating, publishing and governing your content. That means they function like a washing machine; for each content type you run through the strategy, you should be able to follow the same steps and framework that work to get you to your goals, which are:

1. Aligning your business strategy with your content
2. Helping your customers accomplish their goals

So stop calling us "sophisticated Internet marketings" or "Web-savvy writers." We are rock stars and we've got our own moves.

5 Content Strategy Tools Your Hospital Should Be Using Now

2011-02-23T09:01:00.000-05:00

As the healthcare market becomes increasingly competitive, hospitals and healthcare organizations will become increasingly more sophisticated in how they manage their digital communications strategy. Typically, in a hospital, content is the most valuable marketing asset: information about conditions, treatments, doctors and research are a core part of any hospital's marketing strategy.

With the introduction of content strategy, a formalized method for planning, creating, executing and governing your content, hospitals can now turn to some easy and worthwhile tools to manage their content better. Here is a short list of some content strategy tools you should start implementing immediately:

1. Content Audits
Typically, when hospital Web teams or marketing managers get ready to redesign a clinical service line website, or other part of the hospital's Web site, they neglect to do a thorough content audit. A content audit is usually a typical spreadsheet, with lists of what pages exist, page titles, types of interactive tools and how outdated the content might be. I would recommend doing a qualitative content audit as well as a 3-D content snapshot. Telling a story about how the content is performing in cyberspace will give everyone involved in the project critical pieces of information that are lost in your standard content audit.

2. Editorial Calendars
I was on the phone with a client yesterday, and she wanted me to get started on rewriting a clinical service line. The reason? A major print and radio campaign launches in the fall. This lead time was remarkable to me; rarely are clients so prepared. Rewriting and redesigning a great section of a hospital website can take up to an entire year so it's important for marketing teams to plan ahead. Therefore, looking at a year-long plan and creating an editorial calendar around daily, weekly, monthly and project-based content projects will help everyone manage better: budgets, time management, production schedules and last-minute client requests to "just change this one page."

3. Content Value Matrix
How much content really exists on your site? And how effective is most of it? If your analytics show that your users are spending most of their time on your logistics pages (maps, parking, cafeteria), then you're not leveraging your content. Testing the effectiveness of healthcare content is going to become critical, as consumers become more sophisticated about healthcare choices. Maybe we don't need to spend time developing these huge 60 page sites about all the different types of breast cancer, when this information already exists on five other reputable sites. Or, maybe we do. Testing content and asking users what they really want will become the next best practice.

Below is a content value matrix that I think all Web and marketing teams should start asking about their content's value. If readers can't sucessfully perform all five of those actions around the content, then you need to change it. Now.

4. Workflow Guidelines
Most hospitals manage their content through Content Management Systems. These allow for workflow guidelines and enforcement of publishing rights. (For example, you can set who is allowed to actually press "go live" and who is allowed to edit within the CMS.) Having ordered workflow guidelines gives everyone on the team a sense of responsibility for their part of the content lifecycle. It should also avoid content rot (where content just sits and doesn't change for years).

5. Style Guides
Style guides are important for establishing tone and brand. They are also critical in a hospital organization for knowing how to refer to certain diseases with different spellings and how to refer to departments and divisions. If you don't have a style guide for your healthcare organization, start one today. It's easy--just open up a Google Document or some other file sharing program and start typing commonly used phrases and names, according to the alphabet . Make it a living, breathing document. And, if you are responsible for branding at a hospital, please stop putting your full name on every page. Trust me, patients know where they are, and repeating your name 1,000 times doesn't really send the message that it's all about them.

What content strategy tools are you using at your healthcare organization? Have a sucess story? I'd love to hear about it.

10 Questions you MUST Ask your Clients before Starting any Content Strategy Project

2011-01-24T17:54:00.002-05:00

Obviously there are hundreds of questions you need to ask a client during a content strategy project. But, I think this list encompasses the ones you need to know before you even start.

1. Can you describe your current content creation process?

2. What process do you use to create content?

3. How are goals about content and revenue communicated to staff?

4. Do you have a direct formula for how content creation is linked to revenue?

5. How often do you look at user analytics? Do you distribute to staff?

6. What type of CMS do you use? Can you describe how the content staff interfaces and uses the CMS?

7. Do you have any of the following?

Editorial Guidelines
Editorial Calendar
Style Guide
SEO Guidelines
Copy Decks or Templates

8. Does your social media strategy directly relate to your content creation process?

9. Do you have a plan or guideline for how you manage outdated content?

10. DON’T FORGET THIS ONE: Can you give me three measurable goals you would like to achieve at the end of this project?

How about you? What do you think you need to ask clients before starting a project?

Content Strategy: What my 2 year old knows about Relationships and Classification

2010-12-23T15:54:00.002-05:00

I have a two year old who is learning his colors. Today he identified a yellow block, a red block and then he pointed to a light blue block and said, “What’s that called?”

Later today, I had lunch with Dan Brown, the author of Communicating Design, and a well-known Information Architect. I related this story to him as we spoke about how children learn to classify information (His son is four and a half). Our minds are primed to group and organize things, to find relationships that will help us make connections and generalizations.

My son knows dark blue and blue, but he didn’t have a name for light blue. Because he’s learning to speak, he asked the name of the color. How often do we, as adults, ask for labels for things? Rarely—as we think we already have them. What we don’t realize is that our labels may not be the same as everyone else’s.

Ginny Redish says, “We all speak a different language. It’s amazing that we communicate at all.” Classification is an unbelievably tricky part of communication, particularly in digital communications, where information and content already has an enforced organization because of the delivery vehicle (Think 140 characters on Twitter vs. as long as I want blog post).

We all try to enforce our own order on things—our own way of seeing the world. Finding the right relationships that exist within and outside of information is key to helping our users find the content they need.

We see this in healthcare all the time. How many times have you heard the term “spectrum disorder”? Cancer is 192 diseases the scientific community has lumped together as cancer. Multiple sclerosis is another disease where doctors give many different presentations the same diagnosis of MS. In 100-200 years from now, science will know more--enough to separate out the different diseases. Lumping them together now is convenient. But it doesn’t make treatment accurate.

Content strategy—relationship therapy
As content strategists, our job is to find the right content to express the relationships between things. Here are some methods we should use to do that:

1. Identifying patterns in content and expressing it in different ways.
For example—when you create a “Drink Milk” campaign, you may have one section of a website that is just for children. Their content has games, quizzes and video. For their parents, the content present facts, tips for getting kids to drink milk and enjoy it; for healthcare providers, content that addresses how to evaluate kids for calcium deficiencies. Same theme, but different types and presentations of content.

2. Consolidation of content.
Very often content is messy and all over the place. For example—when you tell patients what to expect during a treatment process that lasts over a period of time, you may break that up into pages. But some patients may want to read about it from beginning to end. How about creating a PDF that consolidates all that information? Or one Web page with multiple anchor tags? Same information, just presented in one convenient place.

3. Precise tagging.
I’m not going to wax all Semantic on you now. But I do think that content strategists need to think long and hard about labels. Again, like I said about my son, using labels is difficult because not everyone thinks about things the same way. But to most people, if it’s on two orange legs, has webbed feet, with greenish feathers and quacks, it’s a duck. It may be a certain species of duck, but it’s still a duck.

Recently I was looking for art, and I wanted something in the purple family. The website had a "select by color" option, and yet as I looked through it, I realized certain purple pieces of art I had already viewed were missing. Two conclusions: Content lacked tagging and I no longer trusted their database sort. I don’t think I need to say this, but it’s an example of what not to do.

4. Use timelines, processes and steps.
People like to break things down. If you’re planning to send a kid to college, you want information for the time period you’re in. I have a two year old. Clearly it’s not imminent. When I go to College Answer though, the main sections go in order of process: Preparing, Selecting, Applying, Paying, Deciding, Financing. Use timelines and steps to get people to content they need and want.

It's my last blog post of 2010. It's been a great year and I appreciate your warm support.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Content Strategy: Why it's like therapy

2010-12-08T20:24:00.000-05:00

My good friend Virginia Hill Condon (@ginnyhill) used to be a social worker.

She has a great line. She says that content strategy has a lot in common with therapy. She explains, that in social work, you:

1. Meet the client where they are. Which is the same as trying to plan a website that answers a user's questions and anticipates their needs.

2. Travel with them on their journey. Again, great content strategists think about the entire user experience--navigation, searching, types of content, tone, style, literacy level, etc...And, we're also thinking about the business strategy, and how that aligns with users' goals.

More than anything else, this is where best practices from user experience design and usability come in. Great therapists try to understand:

Where you came from
Where you want to go
How to help you get there

And great content strategists are thinking the same thing. Our couches are just so much cooler.

Content Strategy for Print, Part II: Changing course in digital communications

2010-11-23T14:26:00.000-05:00

Why do clients reject the need for a content strategy? Have you ever asked them how they would manage their Web content if all those Web pages were actual documents that needed to be printed, stored and managed?

In Part 1 of Content Strategy for Print, we talked to Charlene Haykel, a print content strategist about simplified communications, the importance of governance on any system of content, and Macrosimplification™. Today, we learn her thoughts on:

• What makes a great content strategist
• The future of content strategy for both print and Web
• Why the entire field of communications needs to change course

What makes a great content strategist?
According to Charlene, great content strategists are:
• Smart analytical thinkers, from a variety of intellectual disciplines, including history, journalism, languages, philosophy, etc.
• They can come up to speed quickly on massive amounts of unfamiliar content
• They can overlay conceptual frameworks on unorganized and disparate information
• And they can ask the right questions on behalf of any audience

How does this compare to Five Traits to Look for when Hiring a Content Strategist?

The future of content strategy for both print and Web
While Charlene is delighted by the fact that the Web has forced content awareness on Web practitioners, she’s concerned that other communication consultants in traditional marketing and advertising practices still lead with design rather than content. This imbalance, she thinks, continues to create less than optimum communications on Websites, in Web applications and in printed materials.

Why the entire field of communications needs to change course
According to Charlene, companies are going to have to change some basic business practices in order to create clear communications for the consumer. All of an organization’s communications functions need to become more centrally organized than is currently the case —no more IT departments managing the Website far far away from marketing. No more bills and correspondence solely controlled by operations and IT. “If companies don’t speak with one voice, they can’t control their message,” she comments.

Charlene also thinks distinctions between ad writers and Web writers, health writers and finance writers are useless. “The only attribute I look for in a writer’s portfolio,” she says, “Is clarity. If they can communicate the right information in the right amount on any topic to any audience — clearly and efficiently — then they’re hired.”

To conclude
Someone at the National Institutes of Cancer once said that all humans think they are at the end of history. While content strategists may think they are practicing a brand new discipline, it is important to know that writers, editors, graphic designers and marketers have practiced content strategy in the realm of print for a long time. What print content strategists know should inform the future digital content strategists of tomorrow, so we can learn the most efficient, practical approaches to creating clear, solid communications that align business objectives and help customers find what they need.

What is content strategy?

2010-11-19T09:08:00.000-05:00

Content Strategy for Print: Always start with the content

2010-11-17T12:37:00.003-05:00

Charlene Haykel

With all the focus on content strategy for the Web, it’s a wonder we haven’t focused on a similar approach to content for printed materials. The very medium of the Web calls for content strategy—the technology, seemingly endless storage and worldwide access to digital content—create challenges that demand a system with concrete rules. But print operates within an entirely different physical universe, begging the question: Does an organization also need a system to plan, create and govern the content of its printed materials?

Recently, I had the great pleasure to meet Charlene J. Haykel, Managing Principal of The Haykel Group, a print content strategy organization based in New York, NY. Her approach to content strategy both informs and illuminates the discipline of content strategy for the Web. In Part 1 of this series, I talk to Charlene about:

• Defining simplified communications
• Why content strategy is so important to any type of content
• Macrosimplification™: Charlene’s approach to print content strategy

Defining simplified communications
Get ready, because you’re about to hear something familiar. Charlene says, “Simplified communications was the approach I took over the years when I developed brochures and reports for companies—I always started with the content. My team would assess content for whether it was the right amount and the right value for its audience (useful, relevant) and, finally, whether it was properly written. Everything would stem from the content.”

Why content strategy is so important to any type of content
Charlene believes that corporate communications and marketing firms are limited in their effectiveness and service to clients because they lack a strong content focus. When Charlene moved to New York 25 years ago and started working at a graphic communications agency, she says she was shocked to find out that her colleagues thought communications were 75 percent design and 25 percent content. “The first firm I founded had a tagline, ‘We lead with our writing’, and it was true.” Content is the substance of a communication piece and design is its structure, she concludes, and adds: “Design elements should be used primarily to clarify content, not just to beautify it.”

Macrosimplification™: Charlene’s approach to print content strategy
Macrosimplification™ is both a concept and a process and Charlene feels it is her most important contribution to the field of simplified communications. It was born out of her experience analyzing, writing and redesigning single documents within larger communication systems.

She describes its origins this way: “I began to notice that every time two companies merged and created a new brand, they had to reprint every piece of paper that came out of the place. With Macrosimplification™, I took the techniques I had used to simplify single documents and applied them to hundreds and thousands of printed pieces across a company.”

Case study in Macrosimplification™
At a major financial services firm, Charlene and her team applied the Macrosimplification process — content analysis, reduction, and reorganization — to hundreds of retail brochures , piece by piece, through a total of 750 pieces. In the end, they were able to reduce the number of documents produced by the client by a whopping 60 percent. Think of all the trees they saved!

Here’s at the process the Haykel team used in this project. Notice how many points in her process line up very nicely with content strategy for the Web. In this project, the Macrosimplification™ team:

1. Conducted a very thorough content analysis to find excessive, useless, redundant, missing, poorly written, and mislabeled content (Content Audit)
2. Thoroughly documented the content recommended for elimination, or for a move from print to the Web. (Deployment)
3. Identified bloat and inefficiencies in the current system, as well as opportunities to save time and money. (Planning)
4. Created a financial impact statement for the executive team to document all costs currently associated with printed materials, including printing, fulfillment, storage and handling (Planning)
5. Created an architecture for the core information remaining after the Content Audit.
6. Illustrated how content could be better organized from the consumers’ point of view (Grids and guidelines for creating and managing content)
7. Rewrote all content in plain language and applied best practices in information design for maximum clarity and functionality.

The process was a win-win for both the company and its clients: the company could produce fewer printed materials, and the materials they created were clearer, more concise and more useful for customers.

In Part 2, we’ll talk about what makes a great content strategist, what the future of content strategy for both print and Web should be, and why the entire field of communications needs to change course.

How hospitals can use Facebook Places, Foursquare and QR codes

2010-11-11T21:18:00.003-05:00

During an episode of Sex and the City, the four main characters converse over a conference line to discuss their Saturday night plans. Charlotte, confused by the number of voices on the line, says, “Is everyone on the phone?” To which Carrie replies, “It’s the future.”

Now the idea of a party line seems five minutes ago. But when it was first introduced, it was revolutionary. And we're watching the same types of changes in the way we communicate and interact with brands change as well.

For hospitals it is the future. Now is the time to think about how to use and capture the mobile audience. And it's not all about the information hospitals send to a user’s phone, like health texts or appointment reminders; it's also about how users might use their phones to interface with you.

Some quick ideas:

Use Foursquare to make them feel welcome. When patients or family members check in, give them a dollar off something in the cafeteria. Or a parking coupon if your parking prices are high. Something nominal that gives you the chance to capture a loyal customer.
Use QR codes. QR, shorthand for “quick response,” are bar codes applied to physical objects in the world and decoded quickly using a smart phone. Embed parking information, cafeteria menus, an interactive map of the hospital…anything you can think of that will make your patients and family members feel as though you trying to help them navigate the often confusing space of a hospital. Learn more about QR codes.
Use Facebook Charity Deals. When a user checks in to Facebook Places using their phone, send them the option to give a dollar donation immediately to any department or doctor of their choice.

Establishing a long-term relationship with your customers is so critical to hospitals—these patients or family members might come every day for months. Start thinking about how to give them needed information easily through their mobile device. In return, they will reward your efforts with positive word of mouth about their fantastic experience receiving treatment and care at your hospital.

Have other ideas about how hospitals can use mobile? I'm interested to hear.

Content Strategy: How to make your content jump like Michael Jordan

2010-11-09T16:50:00.005-05:00

During the content creation phase of working with clients, how many times have you heard these questions?
1. Do you think we should have a video made?
2. How do you feel about pictures?
3. Should we upload that brochure alongside our text content?

If you’re like me, and work as a content strategist and web writer, you are asked these questions—a lot. It makes sense—our jobs as content strategists are to define meaningful content and make sure our users can find and use it.

What is core content on a page?
Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Washington Capitals and Wizards, was on the radio today, discussing the future of both teams. When talking about tracking great championship NBA teams he commented:

“If you look at a majority of the teams that have won championships...they all were built around their high draft choices and they used free agency to compliment the Kobe Byrants, Michael Jordans, Tim Duncans."

The core content on a page is the Kobes, Michael and Tims--it's your high draft player that gets your results. Your core content needs to answer the questions users have when they engage. Defining those questions is incredibly important and often ignored by organizations, who use brochure-ware type websites as a way of communicating to their constituents. However, only if you answer these questions, can you make the sale; or in our terminology, make sure the call to action if fulfilled.

Understanding the traditional sales model
During a traditional sales call, the sales representative opens up the conversation with the potential buyer. “I have a product that will help you do this better, etc…” Online, and in new media, potential buyers have already started the conversation with you, just by virtue of the fact that they are engaging with your content! How you create your core content is dependent on who started the conversation, because of the one natural thing that always gets in the way of the sale.

Natural reluctance to fail
Most buyers don’t buy because they’ve had bad experiences in the past—the curling iron that didn’t curl, the youth moisturizer that didn’t fade wrinkles, the sneakers that didn’t make their jumps sky-high. The most important thing to address at the point-of-sale is natural reluctance. How do we do this? By making sure your core content addresses major concerns.

So, who are the free agents in content?
Look, I know very little about basketball, which is kind of pathetic because my dad was a basketball coach (He was in sales though, so at least I paid attention to something). But even though my bball skills may be lacking, I do know that complimentary content on a website is critical; it reinforces a user’s decision to purchase. When you are deciding what types of complimentary content to use, follow these guidelines:

Video
Remember, people will only watch if your core content has answered their questions. If they are waffling about the sale, or still have further questions, they may watch a video to gather more information. Make sure the video addresses major issues up front and provides value by illustrating what textual content cannot. For example, a video of a sky dive may prompt a user to sign up for lessons more than a written description of a sky dive.

Photos
For some sites, like ecommerce sites, photos are the core content. I write mainly for the healthcare space, and photos help reinforce major messages within the core content, like doctor/patient relationships and the comfort and accessibility of hospital services. However, if the core content on the page doesn’t answer how long it will take to have surgery, or what recovery is like, the photos won’t reinforce the decision to call and make an appointment.

Brochures
This depends on who wrote the brochure, when, and if it just repeats core content, or actually adds value. Think carefully when uploading a brochure in PDF, or other formats; it might make the most sense to adapt the content to a digital platform. One caveat: if the information on your site is takeaway, because the buying decision is made later, it makes sense to have some sort of printed takeaway for downloading.

User-generated content
Again, this can be core content for many sites. It can also be a landmine for other websites. Decide carefully where to make room for it, and make sure you watch carefully.

Any other forms of content you can’t decide about including? How do you determine your core content vs. your complimentary content? In the mood for a game of basketball? Let us know in the comments section; I’ve changed them so you don’t have to register a profile.

Content Strategy: Would lorem ipsum be better?

2010-11-02T09:32:00.002-04:00

This just got sent to me. I have to "add" in the words. Is this better or worse than lorem ipsum? I just can't tell.