Bloomstein is principal at Appropriate, Inc., and author of Content Strategy at Work. Jones is principal at Content Science and author of Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content (Amazon affiliate links).

How content strategy can benefit higher education

[ Direct link to video on YouTube ]

How higher ed can make content strategy work

[ Direct link to video on YouTube ]

Implementing content strategy with limited time and resources

[ Direct link to video on YouTube ]

Achieving effective web governance

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Planning for content to be published across multiple contexts and devices

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Making the argument for content as a means of achieving organizational goals

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Thanks so much to Margot and Colleen for sharing their time and perspectives. And thanks to mStoner, who hosted the Higher Ed Lounge at Confab where we conducted this interview.

More Confab 2012 coverage

• Recap: Takeaways for Higher Ed
• Higher Ed Rocks Confab: Engaging Content at Indiana University
• Higher Ed Rocks Confab: Web Governance at Normandale

We interviewed Knudson and Salerno about their effort:

Below is our Storify of tweets from the session:

Creating Emotionally Relevant Content for Higher Education Audiences

Erika Knudson and Rebecca Salerno from Indiana University presented on this topic at Confab 2012 on May 15.

Storified by Meet Content · Tue, May 15 2012 14:56:18

P.S. Thanks, mStoner, for hosting the Higher Ed Lounge at Confab, where we conducted this video interview.

More Confab 2012 coverage

• Recap: Takeaways for Higher Ed
• Interview: Margot Bloomstein and Colleen Jones on Higher Ed Content Strategy
• Higher Ed Rocks Confab: Web Governance at Normandale

We interviewed Figg and colleagues Mary Krugerud and Matthew Crawford about the project:

Below is our Storify of tweets from the session:

Normandale Community College Case Study: How governance changed our website

Lynne Figg, Web Architect, Normandale College, presented on this topic at Confab 2012 on May 16.

Storified by Meet Content · Wed, May 16 2012 17:03:01

Thanks, Gigi Griffis, for being our unwitting ace correspondent at this session!

More Confab 2012 coverage

• Recap: Takeaways for Higher Ed
• Interview: Margot Bloomstein and Colleen Jones on Higher Ed Content Strategy
• Higher Ed Rocks Confab: Engaging Content at Indiana University

Another layer of Confab cake.

Last week, Meet Content attended the second annual meeting of Confab: The Content Strategy Conference. It was another three sweet days of killer content and cake. Yep, still plenty of cake (and related puns).

Higher ed had an even larger stake in the conference than it did last year (check out our higher ed Confab 2012 Twitter list). Plus, there were two great higher ed talks which we’ll cover in-depth tomorrow (stay tuned!). Our friends at mStoner also hosted a higher ed lounge for folks to learn, share and network. Indeed, higher ed was well represented.

Several key themes emerged from the sessions that help paint a picture of new lessons learned and content ideas to consider for the coming. Like many of our new and old Confab friends, we’re already planning. Here are some of our favorite takeaways from Confab 2012:

Ideas Are Cloudy, Communication Is Clear

"What would your words look like if you drew them out?"

Dan Roam, author of Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work kicked off the conference with a keynote talking about the power of VIVID (visual verbal interdependent) thinking in support of clear, effective communication. “We are in the business of clarifying ideas,” he said, explaining that often words are not the best content type for the job.

Ideas are messy and complex. Images can simplify complex ideas and bridge culture and language barriers. Roam cited an example from The Boeing Company which uses visual guides to communicate with numerous international companies that build airline parts. "When we want to make our content vivid,” said Roam, “we need to make our content visual."

In his talk "The Myth of the Perfect Methodology," User Experience Strategist Corey Vilhauer talked about the need for content strategists to have a defined methodology — a "formal documentation of a set of processes." More than a list of tasks and deliverables, a methodology describes your process for developing and executing a content strategy, filling in the gaps between tasks. This helps to ensure that processes you put in place are easily repeatable and clear to both the stakeholders who execute them and those whom you’re trying to sell the processes to.

Shelly Bowen revealed "The Magic Layer: The Secret to Every Successful Content Strategy." In order to quantify value, content strategy is often described as a series of deliverables — audits, style guides, editorial calendars, governance plans — but what makes a content strategy actually work are the ideas that bring those things together.

"The Magic Layer happens at the intersection of company and audience needs, where people come together and discover and share innovative solutions," said Bowen. "When the right people come together and when they collaborate in the right way, what happens often can feel like magic."

Anyone who has been part of a successful project knows what Bowen means. The results feel special. But it takes a lot of work to get there. Content strategy is relationship management — building working partnerships and communicating goals and priorities effectively to support collaboration and planning.

In her slides, Shelly identifies hurdles for developing a content strategy and offers practical advice for addressing them and setting priorities. Check it out.

While leading a panel on content curation (with panelists Margot Bloomstein, Aaron Lammer and Mia Quagliarello, Erin Kissane, author of Elements of Content Strategy, asked, "What’s the potential for content curation to not just serve new content, but ‘bring the back-catalog of awesome’ back to the surface?" This is a pertinent question for higher ed which has a seemingly endless amount of institutional and user-generated content.

Before investing in new content, let’s first ask, How can we make better use of the content we already have? As Lammer noted, curating old content can generate just as much new traffic as new content. Also, curation can be cheaper and less time-consuming to create. Double-win.

The Importance of a Content Culture

Accessibility is a solution, not a problem. Content strategist Irene Walker challenged Confab attendees to think differently about accessibility. It’s not a just a nice-to-have extra — rather, it has tremendous business value in addition to user value.

Aside from inherently supporting both future friendly, responsive web principles and elegant, standards-based design, accessibility practices can also improve findability and usability, expose your content to new audiences, and reduce legal risk.

Still think accessibility is a "nice-to-have"? In 2004, 2.3 million undergrad and graduate students reported disabilities — more than double the 1.1 million reported in 1996 (Disability Funders Network). Those with disabilities represent the largest minority group in the United States at 20% of the population, according to Walker

Like a ship needs an anchor, communications strategy needs content strategy to ground it, says Diana Railton of DRCC. With all the silos and turf wars that can inhibit an organization from achieving its goals, strategy provides direction and structure.

Railton provided a convenient (and tasty) acronym for thinking about strategy: PASTA — purpose, aims, strategy, tactics, activities. With the composition of a healthy communications team we can place the proper emphasis on integrated communications and fully embrace a meaningful multichannel user experience.

Content strategist Ahava Leibtag compared redesigns to a crash diet. A short-term approach to healthy living will not work in the long run. On the other hand, content governance is a lifestyle choice. We need support systems, documentation (kind of like a food log or meal diary), schedules and accountability to make it work. Right on!

Juli Smith of Fidelity Investments talked about content strategy from an anthropological perspective. This mindset makes it imperative to observe the landscape, embrace your organization’s values, and understand the context in which your organization operates. From change agents to content sympathizers to the various relationships that ensure good work gets done, people are always at the heart of content strategy.

Matt Thompson, editorial product manager for NPR, talked about the importance of quest narratives. Drawing inspiration from Joseph Campbell’s concept of the “monomyth” and invoking everything from Harry Potter to Super Mario Brothers, Thompson reminded us that great journalism begins with a great question. The subsequent quest sprawls out from that initial inquiry, hooking the reader with an engrossing story that keeps you wanting more. Our goal with a quest narrative, said Thompson, should be to sell the mission, not the product. One of the most important tools in doing this is to create an empathetic protagonist. Another key is to establish authority.

An effective quest thrives on two things: transparency (being honest about struggle and setbacks) and participation (e.g., fan-fiction around shows like Game of Thrones). But while quest narratives can be powerful, not everything needs to be a quest (e.g., WebMD). Some of the pitfalls of a quest narrative include excessive self-interest at the expense of user experience and ineffective audience targeting.

Content Authors Are Users Too

Adjusting voice and tone is not a quick copyedit fix. Voice-and-tone style guidelines need to inform content creation from the beginning, says Kate Kiefer Lee. At MailChimp, Kiefer Lee helped make their voice and tone style guide useful and relevant to encourage adoption within the organization.

Why is a voice-and-tone style guide important? Because, says Kiefer Lee, "[c]ontent doesn’t just make people do things, it makes people feel things.” Ask yourself, "If my brand were a person, what would I be like?"

When crafting tone, it’s important to keep in mind various sensitivities of user experience. When reading your content, is the user feeling confused, stressed, angry or scared? (Think about help text, FAQs, policies, financial aid information, deadlines, and disciplinary procedures.) How do we craft our tone to suit these experiences appropriately?

Cleve Gibbons of Cognifide also discussed problems relating to content authors and how workflow is a huge and overlooked part of the CMS process. Authors, said Gibbons, often don’t see the value of tagging content because it takes time and is boring. We need to do a better job of not only explaining the value of supporting structured content, but to make better CMS workflows and authoring experiences that don’t make people hate using the CMS.

In addition, Gibbons made the important point that a bad authoring experience will lead to an even worse customer experience.

In her accessibility talk, Irene Walker discussed creating and governing accessible content by educating and training content authors. Align accessibility requirements and best practices in your editorial style guides.

Educate content contributors on the importance and value of accessibility. Instead of treating it as a special consideration, integrate accessibility guidelines into all elements of the publishing process — because that’s where it belongs.

Snappy web copywriter and content strategist Sally Bagshaw said goodbye to the WYSIWYG and saying hello to structured content. The theme of supporting content authors came up again — after all, they’re the ones doing the work. We need to explain the value of structured content, ensuring both that author needs are met with proper workflows and governance and that their skills are up to the task.

Marketing specialist Katie Del Angel of ISITE Design, a self-proclaimed newbie to the field, discussed creating “Team Content” within the first 100 days on the job at her agency. In Del Angel’s case, investment and buy-in needed to come before strategy. She brought people together (with pizza, of course), got them involved in her company’s blogging efforts by lowering the barriers to participation, and is now beginning to parlay that investment into support for a content strategy.

Be Structured, Be Agile

Erin Kissane wowed the audience with an overview of content practices drawn from other disciplines. To innovate intelligently, we need to look for inspiration beyond our everyday scope of work. The boundaries between fields are dissolving, which can be scary but it should really be perceived as an opportunity.

Kissane talked about the concept of active reading and how technology is changing what that means — annotating, highlighting, sharing, note-taking, time-shifting. Formats are evolving. What counts as a book, nowadays? Standard units of publishing as we know them are nearing the end of their dominance. Instead, we find ourselves in the business of creating packages of ideas that are then spread across appropriate channels. (Hello, structured content! Hello, modular writing!) We need new tools to support these changes.

It’s important for us to know about new publishing tools because they change our perception of what’s possible, expressed Kissane.

Gibbons talked about how to make content management not suck. A CMS is not just a tool. A CMS comprises content, people, process and technology, but we often perceive (and fund) it only as technology.

"Unstructured content is stupid and old fashioned. It’s costly, complex and does not generate a competitive advantage," said Xerox CEO Ann Mulch.

Daniel Eizans, director of enablement strategy at Team Detroit discussed "Conquering The Context Conundrum" in support of contextually relevant content strategy. Tough stuff. If our users were zombies, things would be much easier. But they’re not. "Humans have brains and brains are tricky."

Content is made relevant by the context in which it’s perceived. So how do we plan for context considering what users aredoing, how they’re feeling, and what they’re learning?

To understand context Eizens recommends spending time with your users. Indeed, this is where quantitative analysis falls terribly short. In order to plan for context we need to interview users. "Inquiry leads to empathy," says Eizens, who offers these guiding principles:

1. Users must be interviewed in the context the content or system would be used
2. Users are partners in the design/strategy process
3. Strategists must interpret behavior, environment and user provided data to inform system design and strategy
4. Interviews must be focused without need for questionnaires

Still, you may want to plan for zombies too. Just in case.

Sydney Markle of IBM discussed content strategy and distributed systems, as well as how the principles of agile development — iteration, collaboration, autonomy, transparency, measurement, pacing, generalists and simplicity — apply to content strategy. When you approach things from an agile perspective, content, code, IA and design are forced to work together, resulting in a more functional process and product.

Karen McGrane of Bond Art + Science closed out Confab with her call to action on adaptive content. Knitting together many threads of discussion from the preceding sessions, she reinforced the importance of structured content and APIs as the future of effective content publishing.

McGrane walked us through the case study of NPR’s COPE (create once, publish everywhere) approach. It’s more than a philosophy; it’s a workflow that is baked into the fields and metadata of NPR’s CMS, making content available to APIs independent of presentation. Why are news organizations the innovators in adaptive content? “Because they’ve been writing structured content all along," said McGrane.

Our CMS, McGrane continued, was built to publish to the desktop web, and that primary platform is quickly becoming outmoded. In fact, the whole idea of a primary platform is outmoded. (It’s certainly not print.) As Kissane says, the page is dead. Now, the primary platform is content — those packages of ideas that Kissane described.

But, wait. There’s more!

There’s a lot, we know. But it’s hard to hold back when you’re high on cake (we’ve developed a bit of a sweet tooth). That’s why we have more Confab coverage coming this week. The diet will have to wait!

Tomorrow, we’re sharing insights from our chats with Confab speakers Erika Knudson and Rebecca Salerno of Indiana University and Lynne Figg of Normandale Community College as they talk about putting content strategy into action at their institutions.

Plus, later this week, we’ll be posting more speaker interviews, as well as sharing recap posts from our peers.

Were you at Confab or following #confab12 on Twitter? If so, what were your takeaways?

More Confab 2012 coverage

• Interview: Margot Bloomstein and Colleen Jones on Higher Ed Content Strategy
• Higher Ed Rocks Confab: Web Governance at Normandale
• Higher Ed Rocks Confab: Engaging Content at Indiana University

Photo by Jess and Colin / Flickr Creative Commons

Tim Jones

Learning the principles behind creating and sustaining effective web content is important, but it’s always helpful to see how someone else has put them into practice. With that in mind, we reached out to Tim Jones, executive creative director at North Carolina State University, to talk about how he is using content strategy at his institution.

Jones came to content strategy through journalism, working as a newspaper reporter for almost a year after college. In 2001, he took a job as an information officer at the College of William and Mary in 2001, arriving just as the college began transitioning many print publications to the web.

In 2007, Jones came to North Carolina State University as the director of web communications, leading a new group created to support a recent redesign. Last year, he spent seven months as interim chief communications office before assuming his current role, where he oversees web, print, digital, photography and video.

“We do a lot of marketing and communications, which is a really great vantage for content strategy, because you are looking at how all of these things fit together,” Jones says of his current role.

In a wide-ranging discussion, Jones touched on editorial process, mobile, multichannel publishing, institutional buy-in for content strategy, advocating for content, embracing a strategic approach and much more. (Please note: audio transcripts are available by clicking through to the SoundCloud page for each audio clip.)

Establishing an Editorial Process

MC: You mentioned that you came on in ‘07 to take the reins after this redesign project. And so, obviously your background in content came to shape the direction that communications at NC State took. Can you talk a little bit about how that came to be?

Jones: N.C. State had a pretty understated web presence before they went through the redesign process, and a big focus for the redesign that I inherited was improving the value of the homepage real estate.

It was a content-heavy design. So, we took advantage of that and really tried hard to define clearly what we were doing from an editorial perspective, spending a lot of time outlining the kinds of stories that we were using, why we were choosing those stories, and what we hoped we could influence as a result of those decisions.

When you manage the central homepage there is a lot of interest in the way that you make decisions about what content you choose and what you choose not to use. We learned early on that consistency in editorial judgment is really critical, and to do that we needed to put it in writing at least internally. So we had a guidebook on how we made decisions about what kind of content we were going to promote, what we were going to use where and also providing those outlets for content that wasn’t going to make the homepage cut. And that process is enlightening. You learn what your university values are, you learn what people find important, who your audiences are, and you really have to spend some time and commit to those kinds of decisions.

We spent a good bit of time on that, and using that as a real educational opportunity. Just sitting down with the communications folks and talking through what works in the digital space, what’s not going to work, what we’re trying to do at the university level in terms of recruitment or fundraising or general support and awareness efforts and how we were going to go about that. And then really trying to work with folks to bring them along and get them engaged and helping contribute to that process.

The Mobile Impact

MC: Tell me a little bit about how N.C. State’s focus on content has evolved with the emergence of mobile and the emergence of location-based services, and what new considerations you’ve had for content in the context of these new platforms.

Jones: We started working on a location-based services tool sort of at the height of the Foursquare and Gowalla check-in [craze], really trying to get in on that identity. We got the check-in working, we got the geolocation stuff working, and we got all that working, but we had nothing in the tool or no real reason to have it outside of it being a nifty tech trick.

We came to the realization that we needed a content first approach there. Once we took a step back and moved in that direction, we spent a lot more time deconstructing our existing content, looking for sources of content that might populate and feed this tool, things that might make the most sense in the mobile context. And that process alone was therapeutic in a lot of ways and really enlightening. We were able to evaluate what we have, what works and what doesn’t in certain contexts, how to structure better, what technologies we needed to put in place to improve that process. The calendaring system that we had wasn’t producing the kind of code that would work in this context, so we had to make some adjustments.

That whole process, just evaluating it from a content first perspective, changed the entire project. It’s been a long process. It’s delayed it quite a bit, but I think for the right reasons. Now we have a tool where it’s a lot clearer what we’re trying to do with it—we’re trying to get people to contribute content, but also the opportunity to deliver content in the mobile space. We focused a lot on events early on, because of talking to students about what would be most useful in the mobile context: “I just want to know what’s going on around campus.” It’s a big, sprawling, 2,000-acre campus, and so if I’m in the library and I want to take a study break, I need to find something to do. And mobile context is perfect for that, but not all event-driven content is perfect for the mobile context.

There is this moment where you look at this thing and say, hey, we’ve done some awesome work with this content. We can use this in our social space, we can use this in our homepage, and we provide this to the other colleges and units, and we can do it all because we spent the time analyzing and structuring our content to be effective across the platforms. And that really sort of shaped the direction we moved with the location-based services, with mobile and ultimately with our broader web strategy.

Content Strategy for Communications

MC: Can you talk a about communications—news, media relations, social media—and how the content first approach has influenced those communications channels and how you’re telling N.C. State’s story to a range of audiences?

Hear Tim Jones’ response:

Multichannel Management

MC: Can you go a little more in-depth about planning for multi-channel content and how that is managed on a day to day basis?

Jones: As we’ve improved and increased the number of properties we manage—Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, central web presence, media stuff, all across the board—we look for places where we have the highest potential for reuse and impact. I think it is important, when you don’t have a lot of resources, to take a hard look at what you do have, figure out what works and then do more of that. Just do that better and do it more often and more frequently and not focus so much on the holes you have.

Hear more from Jones about this process:

The other thing that has been really helpful in terms of reuse of content is a well-defined messaging architecture. I cannot say enough about that part of content strategy. Identifying your key messages, prioritizing them, and then figuring out how to tell the story of those objectives is a really key piece of content strategy. So we’ll sit down with our writing team and say, “Here is the messaging architecture in an actual document. Here is what we’re looking to do. We need some stories that fit this. Come back with ideas for stories and give me a headline, give me a short headline. Give me a Facebook teaser, and give me a question that goes with Facebook and give me an interactive element.” That’s part of our story brainstorming.

And when we keep an editorial calendar, we require all of our contributors to identify which business outcome or which bottom-line action their stories or their content is going to support. We require them to identify if it is apply, support, or contribute, and they have to identify the audiences and the targets in order for it to be included in our editorial calendar.

Getting Buy-in for Content Strategy

MC: You mention how there are a lot of people across N.C. State that have some communications role, whether it’s their full time job or it is part of their job, and you talked about how educating people is a huge part of that. Can you talk a little bit more about how you do that? How do you get people invested and involved with the content efforts?

Jones: We do a lot of work leading by example. And what I mean by that is, we develop things internally that we can point to as we talk to our constituents and our groups around campus to say, “See, we had this story and we took it here. And then we did this with it and this is how it is influencing our ‘apply, support, contribute’ [model]? Do you have anything that can do the same kind of thing?” And really putting them in a position to inform, advise and contribute and help advance the university’s broad messaging initiatives and the outcomes we’re looking for and turning to them for their expertise and empowering them to contribute.

Hear more about how N.C. State’s 125th anniversary has provided a platform for getting campus content contributors aligned with university messaging and goals:

Outcomes from Content Strategy

MC: You talked about this “apply, support, contribute” model to which all content should tie back in one way or another. So, I was wondering if you have any examples of ways that has come to fruition—tangible outcomes from this great content strategy approach.

Hear Jones’ response:

Overcoming Challenges

MC: We talked about the success you’ve had in getting people on the same page and really creating and managing content in a way that’s driven by those three core goals, and tying that back and driving action. I was wondering if you could talk about some of the challenges that you’ve encountered in getting this across.

Jones: When you simplify something to three words, there is a lot of disagreement about which three words you choose. So, agreeing on “apply, support, contribute” has been a challenge, but as you talk about it and realize how broad those objectives are, particularly “support,” you can bring people along.

I think decision-making is always a challenge. Just committing to a consistent approach that fits neatly with the university strategy can be a pretty big challenge, and we’re lucky that we have very strong leadership at N.C. State. We have a really good, solid strategic plan, and people laugh at me when I say we read and rely on the strategic plan to guide decisions, but man, we actually do. And I think from a communications perspective there’s no safer thing to do than use the university’s strategic plan, but it also provides a lot of interesting insight into where the university is headed and gives you some creative freedom to advance those goals in ways that you see fit.

I think our challenge is getting people to think strategically. To think about university objectives first. Really trying to bridge that gap and provide the opportunities for mutual benefit.

Hear more about Jones’ approach to being strategic:

Advocating for Content

MC: You have been lucky in being able to advocate for content for a leadership role. How would you advise people at other institutions who may not have had as much success in advocating for content or maybe want to do all of the things you’ve talked about but don’t have that leadership role or maybe need to find a way to get a seat at the table?

Jones: Stop thinking about it as property of the web or property of the print or property of marketing. Content strategy is an institutional thing. The best content strategy is institutional and it’s multiplatform. So, whatever it is that you can control and whatever it is that you can influence, be strategic about how you do that and build a case over time.

Hear more from Jones about how to advocate for content:

Content strategy should always be a work in progress. It should always be evolving and always be a goal to improve it. I think that’s important. I encourage people to not lose hope if it doesn’t seem like it’s going quickly. Every time your content becomes more strategic, the better your university gets.

Make web accessibility a priority

Our top concerns in planning web content should be our goals, message and audience. What are we saying, who are we saying it to, and why?

But with regard to our audience, we also need to consider the “how.” What devices are they using the view the content? Do they have limitations in perceiving certain content, such as visual or rich media? How do we publish content in a way that makes it available to the full range of our audience?

When we talk about web accessibility, we’re referring to the pursuit of giving users equal access to website information and functionality. If we want to communicate effectively, we have to publish web content in a way that prioritizes accessibility to as many audiences as possible. However, despite legal obligations and other pressing considerations, our organizations are often not structured to accomplish this. But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to pursue—or have additional benefits that we may not initially perceive.

With these concerns in mind, how can we best plan for accessible web content? Meet Content reached out to four higher ed web professionals trying to make accessibility work at their institutions and asked them to share their perspectives.

A Tough Road to Hoe

1. What are some of the major obstacles and challenges for publishers in creating accessible content?

Chris Nixon, Director, Digital Design & Development, University Relations, University of Arkansas: The first step is really understanding what ‘accessible content’ means. The historical definition revolves around visually and hearing impaired, but I think we need to rethink the definition to include machines, those with rudimentary education and non-native speakers. The easy part is getting content on to a webpage. The hard part is training, or retraining, content authors to think about their content in a different way such that it makes sense to more people.

Terrill Thompson, Technology Accessibility Specialist, Information Technology University of Washington: The greatest challenge is that accessibility doesn’t happen automatically. Anyone who publishes content on the web needs to be familiar with accessibility principles and techniques. Otherwise, even if they choose a highly accessible delivery format such as HTML, their product isn’t necessarily accessible.

To meet this challenge we need to work diligently to build up an infrastructure that supports accessible publishing. We need to choose and use tools, including authoring tools, that support accessibility; we need to provide accessibility training to everyone involved in the publication workflow from authors to designers to developers; and we need to designate specific individuals or groups to acquire a relatively high level of accessibility expertise so they can provide support to the rest of the community.

Making Content Accessible

2. When planning web content projects and developing a content strategy, what accessibility issues should be taken into consideration and at what phase?

Nixon: Issues such as topic complexity, language and length are good starting places. If these areas are identified up front, then drafting and editing can be tailored to these considerations. Some content, like a research piece, needs to be somewhat complex, and typically includes videos and diagrams. Incorporating the gist of these multimedia components into the content can help readers get the full context without needing access to the multi-media components.

Thompson: Very early in the process of developing a content strategy (from the
moment an idea is born), we should already be asking: Who is the audience for this content? As soon as we ask this question, we need to consider the diverse characteristics of that audience. We might be able to make certain assumptions about their interest in the topic and their expected level of preexisting knowledge, but we can’t assume they all interact with content in the same way that we do, using the same devices and configurations.

• Our audience might be using a desktop or laptop computer, a tablet, or a phone; they might be using any of a huge variety of screen resolutions, default font sizes, and custom color configurations.
• They might be operating their device with keyboard, mouse, stylus, touch screen, speech input, or using various other “assistive” input technologies.
• They might be perceiving the output visually, audibly using screen readers or text-to-speech software, or through touch using a Braille output device.
• If there’s multimedia content they may or may no be able to hear the audio, either because they’re deaf or hard of hearing or because they didn’t bring their headset.

If we don’t consider diversity early on, it is typically much harder, and more costly, to change course and correct the problems later.

Rich Media Content: Thinking Beyond the Transcript

3. What accessibility considerations should we have in mind when planning rich media content (video, audio, etc.)?

Nixon: We need to think about alternative languages. This needs to be addressed based on who we expect our viewers to be beyond the obvious. We need to also think about the content that accompanies the video, thinking about SEO or any metadata that might help us related like media together. If we are publish music, what benefits might come from also publishing lyrics and sheet music?

Thompson: Another consideration is that video content needs to be accessible to people who can’t see it. Often they can get most of the content just by listening to the audio or reading the transcript, but if there’s important visual content that non-visual users are missing, that needs to be provided to the user in some way. There are various techniques for delivering that. It could be described within the transcript, but ideally a separate narration track will be produced that overlays the program audio and describes key visual information. This is called audio description, and there are media players out there that support it, but not all do.

Susan Ragland, Manager of Web Communications, Tarrant County College: I often remind our clients that accessibility is not only about visual impairments. Users may have dexterity disabilities, or need other assistive devices. Providing a transcript may legally keep us in compliance, but I think we need to be able to provide rich experiences on our site whenever possible. I think we’re currently limited by tools, resources and client understanding.

Stephani Roberts, Web Accessibility Consultant, Information Services and Technology, MIT: Transcripts are great for audio but video should have full captions. And if you’re starting with a transcript, creating captions is a lot easier to implement. They benefit a wide audience serving non-native speakers in addition to deaf and hearing-impaired people. They also reinforce key learning concepts by tying together aural and visual understanding and give students the opportunity to stop and review the content.

Here, departments who’ve added captions to their videos have found that people are staying and watching the captioned videos longer than their uncaptioned video. As a bonus, search engines can index the full content of videos rather than just their titles or key words; so, rich media that’s captioned is more likely to be found via search.

Case Studies

4. Can you share an example of a successful effort to increase web content accessibility and how that was achieved?

Thompson: The example that comes to mind isn’t an individual website, rather
it’s our overall effort to increase web accessibility at the University of Washington. We still have a long way to go before we’re fully accessible, and 100 percent accessibility is probably an unrealistic goal for any large decentralized institution like ours. Nonetheless, I do consider our efforts to be successful so far in that we’re making progress, and more and more people are getting involved in the effort.

In 2003 we launched an email-based discussion list called AccessibleWeb, which provided a channel for discussing web accessibility. That was a small niche group at first, but now there are over 160 people subscribed to that list from across the university. There’s also a face-to-face university-wide meetup once a month to discuss accessibility topics, share ideas and techniques, brainstorm and collaborate. For a while we were using that venue to host “Access Hack” sessions, where people would submit their website and the community would provide friendly but constructive feedback on the site’s accessibility, including code-level solutions.

I think for an organization to integrate accessibility into everything it produces, universal design has to be part of the culture, and supported by the community.

Roberts: We had an international non-profit site that contained important statistical
information in the form of graphs and pie charts. Donations hinged on understanding this information, but it wasn’t very clear due to color issues and labeling. We were able to come up with a color scheme that worked for people with color blindness and we added better labels to help clarify and give context to the data presented. This reduced email questions about the site’s content and allowed for improved translation to other languages.

Ragland: We’re often required to publish PDF forms and other documents, especially regarding our Board of Trustees. When I was told we would have to begin publishing all supporting documents prior to a Board meeting, I met with the vice chancellor in charge of organizing the materials, and we set into place a process whereby the various administrators would not simply supply me with scanned PDFs of documents wholesale; if it was an internally created document, I wanted the original Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. so I could convert them myself, ensuring better accessibility.

–

What else should we do to plan for accessible content? What are other concerns should we keep in mind? We hope to dig deeper into this topic over time and would love to hear your ideas about what merits further discussion. In the meantime, here are some helpful resources:

• This year’s HighEdWeb Arkansas regional conference (July 26-27 in Little Rock, Ark.) features a half-day workshop on accessibility, presented by Glenda Sims.
• In November 2010, Eric Stoller appeared on Higher Ed Live to discuss web accessibility in higher education. The post includes several helpful accessibility links.
• The W3C offers a great introduction to web accessibility.

Photo by sunraven0 / Flickr Creative Commons

Content with purpose inspires action.

What defines quality content? Does it communicate clearly? Does it attract new users? Does it engage current users? It can and should do all those things, but to what end? Ultimately, content should inspire action.

On Meet Content, we talk a lot about purposeful content — goal-driven content for users and publishers alike. I think that’s an idea most people can buy into. However, when you start talking about user actions, content contributors often get stumped.

"My content is informative. I’m not trying to get people sign up for anything."

“This is just for brand awareness. There’s nothing specific I want people to do.”

You may not have an "Apply Now" or "Contact Us" button on your page, but your content should still support your website goals. If your content has purpose, it supports action. Even if your content is informational, most likely you don’t want someone to simply read it and forget it. More likely, you want them to read it and take some kind of action.

Not all actions are immediate. Consider how many times a prospective student (or parent) browses your website before contacting you. Whether users act now or later, the purpose of your content is the same: to inspire action.

Every piece of content on your website should guide action. That action could be completing an inquiry form, signing up for an event, spreading the word about your brand or subscribing to a blog (hint, hint). Content that doesn’t support action is ROT.

No Content Stands Alone

One of the reasons I often talk about communication goals is because they help content contributors understand that their content supports more than just their department goals — their content ultimately supports their entire organization.

We all need to understand how our content fits together. Student Life may cater to current students, but it also supports the information needs of prospective students. Admissions blogs may cater to prospective students, but they also support internal community building.

This same idea — the need to recognize how our content fits together — applies to creating purposeful content. Even if the content you create doesn’t have a clear department action, it ultimately contributes to broader website and institutional goals.

Understanding the purpose of your content means being able to relate your message to content goals and actions.

Not All Actions Take Place Online

We often discuss website actions in the context of web analytics. Indeed, you need to identify actions to establish and measure analytics goals. But within this context, it’s easy to form a narrow view of user actions. Web analytics measures actions online, but not all actions take place online. Sometimes people contact you by phone rather than email. Sometimes people complete your feedback form on paper.

However, just because an action isn’t completed by a “click” doesn’t mean it can’t be measured. Ask phone receptionists to take note of incoming calls and to find out where the caller found your number. Ask event organizers to record attendee sign-ins and take note of people who showed up without RSVPing online. Where did they learn about the event? Tie these numbers back to your website content goals to better understand their performance.

Measure goals both online and offline.

You Can’t Measure Inaction

Measurement is essential for content governance. How do you know if your website goals are being met if you don’t have defined actions to measure? If you can’t determine whether content goals are being met, how do you know if content is useful and relevant?

Key performance indicator (KPI) is the jargony-yet-important term for describing success metrics. KPIs are quantitative measurements that show whether you are meeting or failing to meet your defined goals.

For example, a web content KPI might be registering for an admission event, submitting a feedback form or viewing a policy page. Using KPIs is much more effective than evaluating content on a vague scale of good, better, best.

Numbers allow you to track performance and trends, helping to isolate problems and recognize success. But you can’t succeed in these accomplishments without first understanding the actions you want users to take. In other words, you have to define specific actions in order to determine relevant KPIs.

All content should inspire action that you can measure.

Ready, Set, Action!

Is your content taking a leading role as a call to action or a supporting role as information? Either way, you need to determine the actions you want your content to initiate to make sure it has a clear purpose.

Ask yourself, "What am I trying to accomplish with the content I create?" To keep your eyes on the prize, consider this simple framework for creating purposeful content:

How do you evaluate purposeful content? What are the top user actions you plan for on your website?

So we decided that we wanted to look past the jargon and help people better understand the things we talk about on Meet Content. To that end, we would like to introduce the What The… Files (also known as WTF). Using a visual format with a more informal tone, we want to cut away the industry babble and level with you about the best ways to communicate on the web.

For our first edition, we decided to tackle nothing less than content and content strategy. Is “content” a word that you say so often you forget what it really means? And what the heck is content strategy anyway? Hopefully, this explanation will help.

Let us know what you think! Also, what term should we tackle next?

Homepage photo by Gundars.Str / Flickr Creative Commons

Meat is critical to the nutrition of your brand.

Over the past year, we’ve talked a lot about web content and ways to improve it in higher ed. And while those conversations have been great, we think we’ve identified a more pressing topic deserving of our attention. And that topic is meat.

A highly advanced analysis of popular topics among the higher ed web community showed that bacon is among the most discussed topics. However, upon closer evaluation, we came to understand that bacon was only part of it — the juicy object, if you will. We realized that, holistically speaking, the real issue was all meat.

All meat deserves our attention, and higher ed is doing a woefully poor job of attending to this core business function. With that in mind, we are refocusing Meet Content around the subject of meat. Lamb, pork, chicken, beef — all meat is critical to the nutrition of our brand.

Here are some of the core tenets we believe should guide higher ed in creating and sustaining effective meat content.

Goals Before Tools

We’re tired of seeing people focus on the tool. Yes, bacon is great and can do many things. Same for hamburgers and steaks and bratwurst. But why bacon? Why brats? Are we not hitting our protein numbers? Is this the type of meat the promotes that most engagement? And which meat is best for which audience? There are several pressing questions such as these that we feel have not been adequately addressed, which is why we are recommitting our mission to answering them.

"Meat Content First!"

In some projects, meat planning is often put off until the very end (or, in some cases, ignored completely). This leads to an urgent, last-minute scramble for meat, resulting in highly unsatisfactory brown ‘n serve sausage procured at the corner store, or (if you’re lucky) some hickory-cured beef jerky.

We advocate a “Meat Content First” approach. When planning meals, place meat at the top of your list.

Develop a Meat Content Strategy

There are several components to an effective meat content strategy:

• Conduct regular refrigerator audits to assess the state and quality of your meat. (How can you know what to prepare for dinner if you don’t know what you have in the freezer?)
• Use a calendar to ensure you are consistently preparing relevant meat products for all meals—breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, supper, midnight snack and elevenses.
• Measure the effectiveness of your meat, but don’t take numbers like temperature at face value. Dig deeper and consider taste, tenderness and juiciness, as well.
• An effective meat content strategy will employ a variety of meat content types. With beef, for instance, consider rib eye, T-bone, top round, porterhouse and chuck. Is your meat salted, brined, barbecued, marinated, cured or roasted?

Meat Is a Process, Not a Project

After careful review of meat practices across higher ed, we have a radical theory to propose. There is a widely held belief that meat needs to be done, sometimes even well done. But meat is never done. Meat is a process; not a project.

We need to create a governance plan that ensures our meat stays fresh over time. That said, we must also keep in mind that undercooked meat can be extremely damaging — not just to your brand but to your life. How do we balance these objectives? A successful meat content strategy will address this.

The Steakholder Gap

One of the biggest problems in higher ed is a gap between practitioners and steakholders. The practitioners often do not understand the needs and motivations of the steakholders, and the steakholders often do not understand the concerns of the practitioners (or why they are so hungry).

We need to close this gap and foster understanding between the practitioners and the steakholders in higher ed. Also, spelling is important.

Well, Actually…

So, truth be told, we like meat, but not that much. (And what about our valued vegetarian and vegan readers?) We hope you enjoyed this April 1 diversion. We’ll resume our regularly scheduled programming with our next post.

Photo by sanctumsolitude/Flickr Creative Commons.

Dress your content in layers, and it will be ready for anything.

When we create content—whether it’s a tweet, a blog post or a program description—we can no longer anticipate the default experience to be the desktop web browser. Our content is going places—sometimes places we can’t predict. It could be an iPhone, a Kindle, even a Nintendo Wii.

As it is dispatched to digital corners far and wide, is it equipped to do its job, no matter the context? Will content goals and user needs remain well served?

Here’s the landscape we’re facing:

• According to a July 2011 Pew study, 35 percent of Americans own a smartphone, with a quarter of those using it as their primary internet device. Update: In a webinar today, mStoner’s Doug Gapinski shared updated Pew data (as of February 2012) indicating that 46 percent of Americans now own a smartphone. Yikes!
• According to Comscore, in August 2011, nearly seven percent of internet traffic came from smartphones, tablets and other non-computer devices.
• The 2012 State of the News Media study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 34 percent of those who consume news content on a desktop or laptop also get news on a smartphone, with 17 percent also getting it on a tablet. Twenty-seven percent of smartphone news consumers also get news on a tablet, and five percent get news from all three devices.

But lest we use these statistics to justify a wholly separate mobile web content initiative, heed the advice of higher ed mobile sage Dave Olsen, who boldly declared last November that there is no mobile web—there is only content:

Unpredictable device contexts. Users demanding content when and how they want it. This new landscape may seem harsh and unforgiving. But as we say up here in New England, just put on a sweater and you’ll be fine.

It’s up to us to prepare our content to freely, ably encounter unpredictable contexts. And freedom like that requires a little structure.

A Little Structure Will Do You Good

We may think that when we publish content on a webpage, we are freeing it to be consumed by world at large. But increasingly, planning content solely for the context of a webpage is like trapping it in amber, effectively immobilizing it.

We need to atomize our content into data, liberating it from the webpage and equipping it to be called to duty in whatever context is appropriate for the need. Laptop? iPad? Google TV? Instapaper? No problem, if your content is structured appropriately.

What does it mean to structure your content? I like to think of the concept of structured content as dressing in layers. When it’s cold, we have a sweater and a hat handy. When it’s warm, we can tie that sweater around our waist and be comfortable in a t-shirt. Sudden shower? No problem. We’ve got one of those foldable rain parkas right here.

How do we define structured content? In 2010, Rachel Lovinger of Razorfish published an important overview of structured content called “Nimble.”

“Simply put, digital content needs to be free – to go where and when people want it most,” she wrote. “The more structure you put into content the freer it will become.“

Lovinger argued for publishers to make their content more nimble, meaning it can:

• Travel freely: via social and mobile, available on demand
• Retain context and meaning: across various sources, usage and relationships
• Create new products: thanks to reusable content, finding new (and quicker-to-market) ways to engage people with a message

To become nimble, Lovinger says content needs to be three things: well-structured; well-defined; and well-described. This is accomplished through effective application of metadata standards. We already understand the importance of separating content from design through the use of cascading style sheets. Metadata is another, even more critical level of empowering content outside the context of a design, giving it definition and description that allows it to navigate meaningfully through a variety of contexts.

(To learn more about these standards and Lovinger’s three criteria for nimble content, dive into Lovinger’s Slideshare deck overview of the concepts behind “Nimble” or get acquainted with the entire manifesto. You should also explore Sara Wachter-Boettcher’s excellent primer from A List Apart, “Future-Ready Content.”)

Content as Data as Content

In our HighEdWeb 2011 wrap-up, we mentioned the presentations by Doug Beck and Roger Wolf from the University of Central Florida as one of our favorites (go listen, view the deck and read the transcript), because it got at the importance of structuring our content to turn it into a “legendary” data source, able to be pulled into a range of applications and services. News, blogs, events, photos, emergency information and campus maps (with their attendant RSS feeds and APIs) are all valuable data sources.

Be a content Batman, say UCF's Beck and Wolf. Turn your content into a "legendary" data source.

“You don’t need to do mobile,” they said. “You need to mobilize your content and data.”

We also loved hearing from Notre Dame’s Erik Runyon and Jeremy Friesen about how they are using APIs (application programming interface, which Runyon and Friesen define simply as “any interface that allows for easy manipulation of data) to de-silo content and make it reusable across a range of applications.

NPR is the king of this approach. The Create Once, Publish Everywhere philosophy embraced by NPR (and baked into their homegrown CMS) is similar to what Notre Dame does with their own applications—from their homegrown CMS, Conductor, to their events calendar and campus map application—which pull and render content from multiple databases with the help of APIs.

“Building API’s allows content producers to be much more nimble in deploying the content to multiple platforms,” Zach Brand, senior director of technology at NPR, wrote for Programmable Web in April 2011.

(As an aside, it’s worth noting that the smarter content management systems going forward are going to embrace structured content, content reuse and a semantic, COPE approach. Karen McGrane shares some insights on this matter in her slide deck on adaptive content.)

Olsen also wrote last fall about the Future Friendly web development movement, which calls on us to

1. Acknowledge and embrace unpredictability
2. Think and behave in a future-friendly way
3. Help others do the same.

In sketching his vision of the future-friendly campus, Olsen observed that “traditional silos of content and data need to come crumbling down” and “APIs are the bedrock upon which all of our solutions are going to be built on in the future.” In this respect, it seems that Notre Dame and UCF are ahead of the curve.

Notre Dame’s Runyon and Friesen made another valuable point in their presentation—open data goes hand in hand with collaborative relationships. The folks who run the CMS may be in a different group than the folks who run the events calendar, but if both sets of developers are working together and sharing data—particularly in consultation with someone from the communications group—they can make each other’s applications even more robust and effective, ultimately providing a better content experience for their audience.

Making the Case for Structured Content

From a technical perspective, this all makes sense. If we increase the informational surface area of our content with the appropriate metadata and treat it like data that can be utilized by multiple applications via APIs, we can empower our content to succeed on any device. Huzzah!

But, so what? Let’s face it: Metadata isn’t exactly shiny, or even that easy to explain. (Even I elect to defer to Lovinger’s much more informed explanation. Where my librarians at?!) How do we argue for building the systems and creating the culture where structured content shapes the backend of our digital publishing efforts?

Do it once. Do it right.

Let’s make the case in a language we in higher ed can easily understand: thrift. We don’t have the time or resources to build separate mobile sites and mobile apps, nor to re-create instances of content to accommodate different pages or sites. We have one website. Let’s dress it in layers. Let’s make our content ready to be reused in any context it may encounter. We cannot afford to do otherwise.

Here’s another language in which we can make the argument for structured content: branding. If we create multiple instances of content, we introduce the possibility of inconsistent content delivery across devices and experiences, and inconsistent messaging is frustrating for our users and damaging to our brand. Not to mention, duplicate content is going to give us all sorts of SEO headaches.

As we know, multichannel marketing succeeds on the strength of the continuity of our message. Our technology and content delivery should support these efforts. By building our publishing efforts around one core of content, ready to be dispatched to any device with meaning and message intact, we will ensure the effectiveness of our communication and marketing efforts. So put on a sweater and get to it!

Are you using a structured content approach to inform content publishing on your campus? What’s your process?

Update: Olsen and Wachter-Boettcher shared some good insights stemming from this topic on Twitter. We Storified their dialogue here.

Top/homepage photo by vatobob/Flickr Creative Commons. Bottom photo by WarmSleepy/Flickr Creative Commons