He gave the group some insights as to how social is “poking at search.” I much more enjoyed the emphasis that he placed upon provisioning resources for great content that “does the right thing for the user.”

To do the right thing for the user, Forrester recommends his own little hierarchy of web content optimization needs. It basically went something like this:

“Content > Social > UX > Link Building > SEO”

Yes, a successful SEO guy ranks everything else before SEO.

Forrester demystified search engine roles and what the user is actually doing as also great way to hammer in some points about SEO that even a newbie like me could understand.

Making the most out of “sessions.”

Forrester points out that one in four search queries ends in success. The other three fail and become search sessions, where the user starts to refine what they’re looking for. This leads them to content that either causes them to continue refining the search, or content that gives the user some answers.

Some of these search sessions can be anywhere from that quick search during your lunch hour, to extensive sessions that last for days. Forrester reports that 44% of search sessions last as long as a day or more. That’s a lot of shopping.

As content strategists and creators, it should be our mission to create content that makes these sessions worthwhile. Or, to create quality content that lets search engines increase their success rate of fulfilling queries.

The search engines are doing their job, as are the users.

Users are looking for something. Search engines are trying to find them that stuff in the most efficient manner possible. The search engines can’t help us if we have terrible web content on our sites. The users can help us, however.

Doing what’s best for the user in terms of SEO isn’t too far from the content strategist’s goal of optimizing web content to be experienced fully by our users. Even if a business objective may not be to be “found on the web with SEO,” doing what’s best for the user is still a key principle.

A few other “ohh” moments:

The changing web of objects is expanding. Search engines are trying to pick out the best objects for user’s queries (their searches). Web professionals need to acknowledge this and create, manage, and optimize content to be considered “the best,” aka what’s best for the user.

Humanity is leaving crazy amounts of traces on the web. They’re liking stuff all over the place, plussing things, retweeting stuff– it’s nuts. Search engines are beginning to take these traces very seriously. Traces means relevancy, and relevancy solves most search-based problems, right?

It’s a little scary though– web content that’s not worth socially touching may get left behind.

This was definitely food for thought coming from a small business mindset. It makes me, and perhaps any other small content budget people out there, wonder how to make the most of our dollars. Of course, with the right people and intent, we can always make something remarkable.

Big thanks to Duane Forrester and the SEMpdx crew for holding the event. It was great and a nice refresher on what’s going on in the world of search.

Small businesses want these things too! These stories seem a little harder to come by though unless you dig hard. It could also be because small businesses aren’t necessarily looking for content strategists. For those of us who enjoy the discipline and are a part of in-house teams, there are always opportunities to demonstrate the strengths and merits of practicing great content strategy.

Here’s a short story about the application of content strategy to small business problem solving. The principles of our growing discipline helps form foundations for the creation, maintenance, and care for lasting, beneficial web content, even in a small business environment.

I hope this story demonstrates that content strategy can influence small business. Many examples of work seen across the web tend to be with larger projects. I believe the principles are quite beneficial for businesses of any size. Revisiting this project hopefully inspires other web professionals who are in similar shoes as mine.

The challenge.

An employer’s recent challenge was to create a method to collect the most market data from incoming leads. While we knew that things were going well for the company, we weren’t quite sure what our market was exactly thinking about our service, how they felt about us, or even how they found out about us outside of one-of interactions from time to time. This was mainly because there was no set method to collect this incoming data, other than the occasional chat with an advocate of the business.

This isn’t a multiple-page website, or a massive product catalog, or anything like that. It’s one page. One tool. However, we can use principles of content strategy to ensure that this tool is as effective and useful as it can be.

The objective: create a sustainable way to collect this data that won’t hinder workflow.

Implementing and iterating in small business is quick and agile. It sometimes feels like efforts and processes are forgotten due to attention shifting to the next item of urgency. This is where principles of content strategy kick in.

Principles of content strategy involve paying much more attention to the source of content, how it affects work flow, and how it works towards achieving company goals and objectives. Erin Kissane’s book The Elements of Content Strategy is a great overview of how content strategy can add maintenance and sustenance of content to any project by any web professional. Kissane hopes that her book can act as a guiding light into any new project, and in this case, it definitely does.

The challenge was part market research and part information science. As a practice that borrows and bridges web professions together, content strategy isn’t a panacea to all content problems and challenges– it’s a toolkit used by web professionals who want content to bring sustainable value over time.

An audit and a recommendation.

The content auditing and workflow recommendation could quite possibly be two tools that every small business can use. Having someone take a look at processes and come up with new ways to improve them with the use of web content is beneficial for smaller organizations with people wearing multiple hats that aren’t always operations or content development.

Auditing the current system involved asking the users, which were the staff, about their methods in collecting data from potential clients was the first step.

In this all-hands-on-deck environment, everyone has the opportunity to speak with a potential client. Everyone has their own ways of speaking to these customers. So, creating a uniform method of collecting data is key.

It reminded me of a story about beer trucks. Basically, each truck has a crew and every member knows how to operate every function on the truck. This way, if someone needs to fill in for another person, they can do so confidently.

I wanted to apply the beer truck theory to our data collection.

After taking all anecdotes and stories into consideration, we came up with different methods and recommendations that add this data collection to the staff workload. Since everyone’s work flow involved the company intranet, we decided to use that as the medium.

The recommendation: to create a web form that allowed the entire staff to easily collect market data and opinions about the service.

Collecting data to build user research for future content.

After months of testing, we came up with a web form that fit the company intranet allowing us to capture much more market data than we’d ever been able to. With an increased understanding of our users, we can now influence and improve upcoming content with this user research.

“Now that this web form is up and running, we can forget about it and move on.”

Just kidding. We have to give a damn about this piece if we want it to continue doing good. That said, there’s a development path involved with this web form now, even though it’s doing its job very well. Alongside development, the form will undergo frequent quality assurance testing, and it will be tuned quarterly to ensure that our data is being properly collected and stored.

I know the story is a little vague because it would be unprofessional and impolite to describe a private project in detail, but consider the obscure tale a win for content strategy in the small business sector. It’s an internal win, but that means more confidence in applying similar principles and practices to external content onto the web. Improving the quality of lasting people-facing content is the real goal, regardless of where you come from in the web profession spectrum.

Principles of content strategy can be applied and should be emphasized in touch-and-go environments like small business. Creating methods that help sustain and nurture valuable content not only helps businesses attain objectives, but can also act as an internal testament to how a business solves its market challenges using sustainable web solutions and practices.

You know, stuff to be proud of at the end of the day.

(I’m really good at goofy photos.)

“Our content sucks because no one’s taking care of it,” Halvorson said, imitating a client, stakeholder, peer, colleague– someone who we’ve all probably had a conversation with about the state of content on the web.

Fortunately, there are talks all over the world, just like the one here in Portland tonight, about how to bridge different web practices together on a mission for better content.

Halvorson spoke a bit about the second edition of her book, Content Strategy for the Web, and how its latest iteration is an accessible methodology for other content-related disciplines. She answered questions from a good portion of the attendees. There were some questions that she crowdsourced to the audience for a few group insights and laughs.

Some of the things that stuck out to me:

“Content is an easy sell, but the maintenance and sustenance of it is the challenge.”

I think I paraphrased this from a combination of someone asking a question and Halvorson’s answer, but still. Quite true. Playing off of making a decision maker look good can sell content. However, the governance, upkeep, and resource gathering for the content is the big hill to climb. Hope we all wear our hiking shoes when we get to that challenge.

“Create a style guide, create a core team of writers (or creators), rely on a skilled editor.”

This was her suggestion to an attendee who asked about how to get content writers to use the same voice and tone. I was surprised that no one brought up borrowing from the ad agencies and implementing principles of the creative brief. That’s a method that seems to work to keep creative output “on-brand.” Maybe I should have asked…

“Useful content should be somewhere between findable and being of quality.”

Something was said along these lines when content and SEO were brought up in a question. The audience generally agreed that if content is too optimized to be found, there’s a very high chance that no one really cares about it. Instead, we should seek usefulness and generally making people feel smart that they found our content that helped them do whatever they were trying to do.

“Look for the quick wins.”

This one tugged at my heartstrings. Working in a smaller business, it’s the little discoveries and victories that can keep the ball rolling, eliminate doubt, reduce project creep, and basically make everyone smile as we all continue the good fight.

Halvorson touched upon how to sell content “up the food chain,” meeting user needs (though this topic always seems like it could use its own presentation all together), the subjectiveness of content value and quality, as well as how to wrangle content alongside colleagues outside of the craft, like legal teams. I think the group even set foot into responsive design territory, stretching the fireside chat across large swaths of web content design and strategy.

It was nice to see a sampling of Portland’s content strategist crowd, and other web developer, writers, strategists, and communicators from all walks of life. Hearing other people’s concerns and beliefs helped me know that everyone’s in the fight for better content across the web. Now when I head back to work on Monday, I’m reminded that I’m not alone on the quest for better web content.

Big thanks to the Content Strategy PDX crew for holding the event and for Kristina Halvorson for flying into the Northwest deluge to spend an evening with all of us.

Oh yeah… the most important nugget of truth from Halvorson– don’t forget to wear comfy shoes.

He presented his 50-point plan to “ruin yer careers,” but much more like 50 reasons to enjoy what’s going on and just be true to ourselves and everyone around us. You know, the stuff that’s easy forgotten as we’re all busy working on things here and there.

Draplin is a believer in hard work, getting dirty, experiencing the wilderness (whatever that may be in 2012), and just being thankful for everything around us as professionals, makers, doers, creatives, whomever we are. Here are the points that stuck to me the most.

“Love where you’re from.”

Embracing the pride and joy of where you’re from and embodying it in our work. While Draplin digs on his own hometown jokingly throughout the talk, his work ethic and pride stems from his beginnings.

As a member of the small, local business, I love the opportunity to really pour myself into work. We don’t follow some kind of corporate protocol or course at Stephouse– we basically make stuff up as we go with a particular local Portland flavor. Where will it take us? Who knows. But, I love the work and representing Portland.

“Work hard, and love this shit.”

Draplin spoke from a design standpoint, but it basically applies to anyone sitting in that room during both shows. Whatever we’re doing, just work hard and love it from end-to-end. Reminds me of a mantra from Lynette Xanders, a branding and momentum strategist here in Portland, “Why do it if it’s not fun?”

Draplin tugged at my heartstrings when he mentioned working for free for friends. I can’t tell you how many hours and evenings I’ve given away to friends to work on stuff just for the hell of it. Most of the time, these are the most entertaining nights ever. The camaraderie, the food, the booze, the collaboration– nothing beats it, even to the tune of free-ninety-nine.

Not to mention any project you can get your hands on is just time to sharpen yourself. Razor-sharp. Ninja-quick.

“Be thankful for everything.”

It is a rough economy out there lately, and this point makes a lot of sense. That small business didn’t have to give you that starter project that led to your current gig. They didn’t have to pull you into that design meeting or let you write that copy that eventually brought some wind into your professional sails.

No matter what comes our way, just be damn thankful. Draplin shouldn’t have to tell us to do that.

Also, if you have a spouse, significant other, or people who are watching your back, feeding you, pulling you out of fires– thank the shit out of them from time to time for having to deal with your busy-ness.

Fifty points to ruin yer career. If ruining it is living the kind of feeling that Draplin brings to the table during his talk, then I’m going to bulldozer mine.

Please go to Creative Mornings PDX if you get the chance, everyone. The talks are amazing.