Content Jam 2016: Making it Great: Tactics for Great Content with Ian Lurie

transcript

Making it Great: Tactics for Amazing Content

Ian Lurie

Content Creation

@portentint | #ContentJam

Facts about me

I run an agency: Portent, Inc. If you’re in Seale, look us up

I have no design skills

Took 2 hours

Our first site

First content marketing ever

I have no photography skills

My dog

I have no pography skills

I used this font on corporate web sites

I can’t spell

Philsophy

I don’t crap rainbows. I fail hard. A lot.

5-year timespan

All sales to my mom

I am not a narcissistic asshat I use my stuff because I have permission

But, I have learned:

Content’s all about the tactics.

1. Lile things can erode the experience

2. Lile things can improve it

IAN, THAT IMAGE LOOKS LIKE !@##

Owns me

HUFFINGTON POST

3. Lile things become big things

Pardon impossible, to send to Siberia Pardon, impossible to send to Siberia

Czarina Maria Fyodorovna

4. We’re responsible for the outcome of a process

“Hey, we need content!!!”

Nervous breakdownPublish

How many blog posts can write?

Sorry, the CMS is down

Actually, let’s do an infographic

Our lawyers said…

But we don’t control it

5. But we do control the tactics

Great content starts with the ideas

But amazing content happens because of tactics

@#$!@ Right

HUFFINGTON POST

IT’S NOT CONTENT. IT’S AN APP.

What probably happened

Content?

GO WORK ON YOUR BLOG POSTS

Content?

GO WORK ON YOUR BLOG POSTS

IT’S ALL CONTENT Oh my gods why is it so hard to get people to understand that it’s not just the blog

Content

These tactics apply to all content

Authoring

Write in plain text

Geekery One way or another, the characters end up meeting with Angus Bloodstone at The Brimming Tankard. The dwarf knows the PCs. They've spent time here during their training at Swords Cross. He greets them heartily, immediately putting their favorite drinks up on the bar. The Convo Once the conversation starts, Angus will motion towards a table, where they all sit down. Angus lowers his brow as only a dwarf can. He then tells the characters his suspicions about digging under the city. Depending on plots already completed, his information may send them to Plot 2, 9 or further along Plot 1. 1. If the characters are receptive, he'll buy them an ale 2. If they're sarcastic, he'll slap the biggest one 3. If one of the party is an elf, Angus regards them with grudging respect and a little suspicion.

Plain Text 100% cross-platform 100% future-proof

Plain Text Doesn’t do this shit

Plain Text

No surprises

Plain Text Editing Mode

YAY! Looks great!

Visual from MS Word

Sonofa…

Surprise!!!!

One way or another, the characters end up meeting with

Angus Bloodstone at The Brimming Tankard. The dwarf knows the PCs. They've spent time here during

their training at Swords Cross. He greets them heartily, immediately putting their favorite drinks up on the bar.

Once the conversation starts , make this

italics, underlines, and font colors

Pasted from Word to SiteCore 100% clusterf$#@

MS Word to Most CMSes

One way or another, the characters end up meeting with

Angus Bloodstone at The Brimming Tankard. The dwarf knows the PCs. They've spent time here during

Pasted from Word to SiteCore 100% clusterf$#@

LSD-Driven HTML

One way or another, the characters end up meeting with Angus Bloodstone at The Brimming Tankard. The dwarf knows the PCs. They've spent time here during their training at Swords Cross. He greets them heartily, immediately putting their favorite drinks up on the bar. Once this conversation starts, make this italics, underlines and font colors

The Metamorphosis

One way or another, the characters end up meeting with Angus

Bloodstone at The Brimming Tankard. The dwarf knows the PCs. They've spent time here during

heeelllppppmeeeeee

This became…

…this.

Instead: Write In Plain Text

Geekery One way or another, the characters end up meeting with Angus Bloodstone at The Brimming Tankard. The dwarf knows the PCs. They've spent time here during their training at Swords Cross. He greets them heartily, immediately putting their favorite drinks up on the bar. The Convo Once the conversation starts, Angus will motion towards a table, where they all sit down. Angus lowers his brow as only a dwarf can. He then tells the characters his suspicions about digging under the city. Depending on plots already completed, his information may send them to Plot 2, 9 or further along Plot 1. 1. If the characters are receptive, he'll buy them an ale 2. If they're sarcastic, he'll slap the biggest one 3. If one of the party is an elf, Angus regards them with grudging respect and a little suspicion.

Clean Easily adapted to many formats Great for use on the web

Or, Cut-And-Paste

MS Word Plain Text CMS

&endash;

&emdash;

Learn Formaing In HTML

Chill. He’s kidding.

Learn Markdown

Write in plain text + Markdown

# Heading## Heading 2### Heading 3

1. Numbered 12. Numbered 23. Numbered 3

* Bullet 1 * Bullet 2

**Bold***Emphasis*

[Link text](Link URL)

Now, you know Markdown

Write in plain text + Markdown

# GeekeryOne way or another, the characters end up meeting with Angus Bloodstone at **The Brimming Tankard**. The dwarf knows the PCs. They’ve spent time here during their training at *Swords Cross*. He greets them heartily, immediately putting their favorite drinks up on the bar.

## The ConvoOnce the conversation starts, Angus will motion towards a table, where they all sit down. Angus lowers his brow as only a dwarf can. He then tells the characters his suspicions about digging under the city. Depending on plots already completed, his information may send them to Plot 2, 9 or further along Plot 1.

1. If the characters are receptive, he'll buy them an ale2. If they're sarcastic, he'll slap the biggest one3. If one of the party is an elf, Angus regards them with grudging respect and a little suspicion. Elves helped save him during The Fall, in exchange for his help repairing their stone ships.

From [a page on the internet](http://www.gibblegibbet.com).

Heading Bold

Heading 2

Numbered

Paragraph

Copy From Preview Tool

Converts to…

<h1 id="geekery">Geekery</h1>

One way or another, the characters end up meeting with Angus Bloodstone at The Brimming Tankard. The dwarf knows the PCs. They’ve spent time here during their training at Swords Cross. He greets them heartily, immediately putting their favorite drinks up on the bar.

<h2 id="theconvo">The Convo</h2>

Once the conversation starts, Angus will motion towards a table, where they all sit down. Angus lowers his brow as only a dwarf can. He then tells the characters his suspicions about digging under the city. Depending on plots already completed, his information may send them to Plot 2, 9 or further along Plot 1.

<ol><li>If the characters are receptive, he’ll buy them an ale</li><li>If they’re sarcastic, he’ll slap the biggest one</li><li>If one of the party is an elf, Angus regards them with grudging respect and a little suspicion. Elves helped save him during The Fall, in exchange for his help repairing their stone ships.</li></ol>

From <a href="http://www.gibblegibbet.com">a page on the internet</a>.

Heading

Heading 2

Numbered

Paragraph

Converts to…

<h1 id="geekery">Geekery</h1>

One way or another, the characters end up meeting with Angus Bloodstone at The Brimming Tankard. The dwarf knows the PCs. They’ve spent time here during their training at Swords Cross. He greets them heartily, immediately putting their favorite drinks up on the bar.

<h2 id="theconvo">The Convo</h2>

Once the conversation starts, Angus will motion towards a table, where they all sit down. Angus lowers his brow as only a dwarf can. He then tells the characters his suspicions about digging under the city. Depending on plots already completed, his information may send them to Plot 2, 9 or further along Plot 1.

<ol><li>If the characters are receptive, he’ll buy them an ale</li><li>If they’re sarcastic, he’ll slap the biggest one</li><li>If one of the party is an elf, Angus regards them with grudging respect and a little suspicion. Elves helped save him during The Fall, in exchange for his help repairing their stone ships.</li></ol>

From <a href="http://www.gibblegibbet.com">a page on the internet</a>.

Smart quotes

Paste into CMS

Easy No surprises Super-clean Will adopt site formaing

Converts to…

Heading Bold

Heading 2

Numbered Link

Paragraph

Smart quotes

Some tools

dillinger.io

Browser-based editing and formaing

Marked

OS X preview tool

MarkdownPad

Windows

Sublime Text

Nerdvana

IA Writer

i am pumped

Get fast

TextExpander

.sm [tab] social media

hh2 [tab] ## | ##

TextExpander ;jewwatch [tab]

Our first step is geing links removed from sites that had no intention of helping Jew Watch rank. I've built a list of the 'unintentional boosters'. I need folks to contact these sites.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is:

Please do the following:

1. Find out who to contact to remove the link from the above page(s).

2. Contact them and ask politely if they'd remove the link. You can use this message, or write your own:

Language

Make your text more brief Use fewer words

Be concise

He was paid by the word. You are not.

Stop adverb abuse

I am emphatically opposed to painfully overusing adverbs. They make it really hard to read even the most carefully wrien text.

I oppose overusing adverbs. They make it hard to read even the most carefully wrien text.

Use active voice 99% of the time

The product is manufactured by us.

We manufacture the product.

Dump plague words

Indeed, the end result was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, success.

It was a success.

Dump plague words

Obviously, I love chocolate.

I love chocolate.

Dump plague words

end result result indeed omit regardless omit simply put omit obviously omit beyond a shadow of a doubt definitely

hp://portent.co/plague-wordz

Get to the point

We’ve all been there

“If you don’t rank, you won’t get much traffic from search engines”

“200mph is fast”

“Aster 20 years, I’ve been doing this a long time”

I’m trying to find the point, but I can’t.

Use tools to edit & proofread (because you won’t have time)

Hemingway App

Grammarly

User Experience

Don’t use lame stock images

Matching water levels Blank pads

All happy

Showing up everywhere

Lack of brand safe

What’s so funny?

Sometimes you just have to use a stock image, I know

buuuuuurppp

castle ain’t what it used to be. i’m crying in

So own it

if i look down, no one will know I’m

Images must have a purpose (they’re not white space)

Well, OK

Great sources: Pexels.com

Unsplash.com

For annotating screen caps: Snagit Skitch

Site speed = UX Images = site speed

Load time goes up Engagement goes down

if you’d listened to ian, i’d be alive right now

700kb png 64kb jpg

JPG for photos

24kb jpg 4kb png

6kb jpg

PNG for less photo-ish

4kb png

6kb jpg

Ewwww. Artifacts.

1.1 megabytes

Compress!!!

Imageoptim (mac) www.imageoptim.com

Preview (Mac)

On the PC, try Caesium

Create a cool feature image

Link with care

Will anyone click these links?

This is the best dang bicycle you’ll ever ride. It pedals itself, but somehow burns calories at the same time! And it has a built-in umbrella! We wrote about the Capybara 200 and said it was the best. But it’s not. The Pangolin wins. As reported by Bicycling Magazine.

i will kick your ass

This is the best dang bicycle you’ll ever ride. It pedals itself, but somehow burns calories at the same time! And it has a built-in umbrella! We wrote about the Capybara 200 and said it was the best. But it’s not. The Pangolin wins. As reported by Bicycling Magazine.

No more than 4-5 lines/paragraph

No more than 13-15 words/line

3-5 paragraphs between headings

Process

Stay off the format bandwagon

Stay off the bandwagon

infographics

infographicsinfographics

Instructions should not be “infographics”

Lists should not be “infographics” without a really good reason

Take the numbers. Present them graphically. Then this is a great infographic.

Longform of the longform so we can create some longform content with longform layouts and a parallax scroll so it’s really cool longform.

Use When

Infographics High information densi

Longform A long, interesting narrative

Whitepapers Audience deserves punishment

Blog posts Always, I guess

Slides A progression of ideas

Use When

Audio You have the resources

Video Same

Interactive content Same

Batch and chunk

One piece One editing run

Five posts

Fewer trips through the process Higher efficiency

Repurpose

This worked

Wait a second...

Up next

Do not duplicate! Each must build on the last.

If you used plain text, repurposing is easy

Content’s already approved

You know it works

(Yeah, ok, it’s a cheesy stock photo

Rollup (h/t Michael Martinez @seo-theory)

Write about rutabagas

Write about carrots

Write about beef

6 months later, pull relevant content from each piece and write about stew

well, crap.

A less sick example

10 scary food additives

5 ways to keep your food nutritious

Industrial farming: Pros and cons

(traffic dies down)

The Guide to The American Food Chain

Piggy-back

LinkedIn Quora Reddit

Medium SlideShare

My audience

Their audience

They’ve done the formaing

They’ve done the formaing They’ve built the tools

The summary

IT’S ALL CONTENT Oh my gods why is it so hard to get people to understand that it’s not just the blog

Authoring

Work in plain text

Use Markdown to generate HTML

Get fast

Language

Less passive voice

No plague words

Get to the point

Systematically edit & proofread

User experience

No crappy stock photos

Use the right image format

Compress images

Link when it’s helpful

13-15 words/line

3-5 lines/paragraph

3-5 paragraphs per heading

Process

Stay off the format bandwagon

Batch and chunk

Rollup

Repurpose

Amazing content happens (or doesn’t happen) because of tactics

The links: hp://portent.co/amazecontent

Thank you! Ian Lurie

@portentint | #ContentJam

Content Jam 2016: Making it Great: Tactics for Great Content with Ian Lurie

Marketing