CONFAB was a first of its kind conference held in Minneapolis this week. Planners brought together leaders in the field of content strategy to discuss best practices, dispel myths, and bring thoughtful solutions to business needs for quality content. Here are my highlight notes from the first morning of the two day conference.
What is Content Strategy and Why is it Important?
Definitions, Needs, & Roles
Content is defined as everything that can be uploaded to an online site.
Content needs to be planned prior to launch dates, during, and beyond. Inconsistent content through channels is a problem. Multi-platform content development is critical. Get rid of the silos. Content needs to be nimble. Content is a business asset.
Establish a visual rhythm that is recognizable across channels.
A content strategist articulates, investigates, integrates, appreciates, and ideates. They set procedures for content creation, delivery, and governance. They ask: “How can we make content grow by applying urgency and purpose?”
SEO cannot solve the content problem. Even Google has abandoned the word “search” in favor of “knowledge”.
Content Curation
Content curators are finders who filter information. Information created up to the year 2003 totaled 5 exabytes. That amount is now being created every two days. “I can’t keep up” was expressed by 46% of survey respondents. Sleeping less was a solution for 34% of information consumers.
Humans are replacing algorithms. Ideas are replacing data. “What are people thinking?” is the question to ask; not “How do I manipulate search engines?”
Choose your endorsements, “Likes,” retweets, links, and posts carefully. That is curating the web.
Listening is more powerful than speaking. Gather, organize, and filter good stuff. Monitor for positive re-enforcement and use it as social proof.
In a noisy world, customers embrace clarity.
Questions That Support Quality Content
Where does our data live and why?
What can people do with our content?
What can they do with what they create from our content?
What is our framework for building content?
What’s working? What is not working?
What kind of place does the content create?
How is the content connected?
What forces does content resolve?
How do you keep control of your own content?
Interactions
Reactive and fragmented response is poor content delivery.
Deliver the right information at the right time to the right audience.
Recommend. Share. Be social.
Serve up content.
Business Needs
Move content from a cost center to a profit center by meeting business objectives.
Marketing focuses on new leads, not base. What does your base need and want? How satisfied are they? Existing customers may be more valuable than new customers.
Teach everyone what good content looks like.
* Thank you Kristina Halvorson, Steve Rosenbaum, Erin Kissane and Valeria Maltoni for sharing your thoughts at CONFAB.