Maximizing Your Return on ContentHow to make your content more successful

Hilary Marsh, Chief Strategist & President

Content Company, Inc.

1

What is content strategy?

The right content

To the right person

At the right time

For the right action

Put another way….

Content strategy is the practice of planning for the

creation, delivery, and governance of

useful, usable content.

Three faces

Multiple parts

1. A strategic statement tying content to business goals

2. Guidelines and policies: Who, what, when, where, why, and how of publishing content

3. The people, power, and processes to execute #1 and #2

Audience-centric

Business-sensitive

Content

The ultimate vision

Foundational tenets

1. Content creators & SMEs have a common understanding of what key audiences want, and how their content helps deliver that.

2. Content creators & SMEs have a common understanding of the org’s goals are and how their content contributes to them.

3. Content creators & SMEs share their content in a consistent, effective way

Principles

• The organization creates content that its audiences want

• The organization creates content that helps it meet its goals

• Content has success metrics and is measured against those

• Content that is no longer relevant is no longer available

• Content is promoted, surfaced, and cross-linked based on its topic, not its source

• Content is created in the organization’s voice

• The organization manages content platforms, tools, and channels in a way that ensures their effectiveness

The end game…

https://www2.calstate.edu/csu-system/why-the-csu-matters

Content

is

political

Content is…Event

Product

Class

Program

Research

Content is…My Event

My Product

My Class

My Program

My Research

15

Departmen

t

Message

Audience

Departmen

t

Message

Audience

Departmen

t

Message

Audience

Departmen

t

Message

Audience

Old thinking

17

Silos

Different views of the audience

19

http://www.amazon.com/Have-Always-Done-That-Way/dp/184728857X/

Consequences

Difficulty prioritizing

Diluted impact

22

Lack of understanding of your value

Organization: Programs, offerings

Audience

Messages

Audience Audience Audience

New thinking

Higher ed institutions publish a LOT of content

What don’t we publish??

• Course details

• Program info

• Academic research

• News stories

• Alumni stories

• Faculty bios

• Press releases

• Financial aid details

• Event information

• Student health information

• Policies

• FAQs

• Mission statement

• Job listings

27https://preservingdtharchives2011.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/im-back/

Content is the way our work is manifested in the world

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Just because…..

Because we did the research

Because the dean asked us to

Because the faculty member told us to

Because we have this program

Because we do this thing

Because we created the information

Because we have no way to say “no” to the request

Because we think we have to

Because everyone else is

Because

Because

If you don’t know what you’re going for, how will you know whether you’re succeeding?

34

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding

What I heard from higher ed folks

Lots of challenges

• We don’t know our business goals

• Our content isn’t mapped to our business goals

• Folks who give us content don’t have goals

• Even if we do know, what can we do to increase success?

• How do we help content owners succeed?

Setting goals is challenging!

“There’s a lot of cool stuff happening at the university that no one knows about”

• Who would love to know about it?

• What would they do as a result of knowing it?

• Why don’t they know about it?

• How could you change that today?

Technology is not our friend

•“IT is backed up, so we can only do things we can implement ourselves for free”

•“There’s a lot of content on our public site for current students because the student portal is a mess”

Ratio of effort to results

•Size of potential audience

•Priority of potential audience

•What we want the audience to DO

•Resources to create the content

•Results

Return on Content

3 pieces of information

1. Goal

2. KPI

3. Measuring & learning

Identifying the GoalWhy are we publishing this?

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Effective content has a goal

• It’s published

•Lots of people look at it

What is a true goal?

•Meets a business goal

•Satisfies a user need

• Ideally, both

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Users meet

their needs

Organization

meets its goals

Balancinggoals & needs

45

Audience

focus

Organization

focus

Audience

focus

Organization focus

http://queerideas.co.uk/2015/10/the-fundraising-paradox.html

http://xkcd.com/773/

Remember the content landscape

• Course details

• Program info

• Academic research

• News stories

• Alumni stories

• Faculty bios

• Press releases

• Financial aid details

• Event information

• Student health information

• Policies

• FAQs

• Mission statement

• Job listings

Content goals

Each piece of content needs a clear, explicit reason to exist

Page views are not the goal – the goal is the goal.

--Mike Powers

@mjpowers

High-level higher ed goals

1. Get students

2. Help students, faculty, alumni succeed

3. Get money to keep doing 1 and 2

Translated to content…

Content

Get students • Appeals to high school students

• Provides correct, useful

information

Help students and

faculty

• Helps students register, add/drop,

etc.

• Markets the school

Get money • Shows the value of the school

• Gets donors

Some sample goals• Attract more qualified students

• Encourage applications

• Raise awareness and perception of our university

• Help admitted students stay

• Inspire more alumni to donate

• Reassure people about the institution’s stability

• Raise the quality of job applicants

Others? What about for other programs & schools?

--Michael Andrews

Photo c/o Beth Kanter, downloaded from https://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/3085209738/

Content is specific, so goals need to be specific too

Conversely,

content with a common goal might benefit from being created differently

https://www2.calstate.edu/csu-system/why-the-csu-matters

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5 Whys

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/86483255319117458/

Keep asking “why”

• Why are you publishing this content?

• Why have you/we invested the resources to create the program that the content is about?

• Why would the audience want to know this information/about this program?

• Why…?

• Why...?

62http://gadling.com/2008/05/01/cash-and-treasures-the-antique-bottle-dig/

The real goal is in there somewhere

Wrong

time to ask

“why”

The

reason is

clear here

https://www.kent.edu/publicsafety/annual-security-reports

http://triton.edu/NewsAndEvents_detail.aspx?id=31215

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/departments/marketing.aspx

Making the goal measurable

How will you know it’s successful?

• Reached the audience in the channel that matched their expectations

• The audience took the action you wanted them to take

• Users took the next step you wanted them to make

• They were more satisfied with your institution

• They called customer service less

• Donations went up

• They talked you up to their friends/family/colleagues

Answers may be on the page or not…

• Google Analytics measurement – unique page views, referrals, etc.

• Content audit

• User testing

• Surveys

• Social shares

• Measuring the results themselves: more qualified applicants, event registrations, etc.

Answer the right questions

•Executives

•Site management

•Content owners

•Users

Efficiency≠

Effectiveness

•Content doesn’t exist in a vaccuum

•Better content in one area may support a goal in another

A case study

• Site redesign required a news article for each update on the home page

• Volume of news articles overwhelmed the site management staff

• Viewership to each article was relatively low

• Would fewer articles mean fewer views?

Turning goals into KPIs

1. Benchmark where you are now

• Content performance

• Pain points

• Tie back to business

2. What will constitute success?

• Envision the desired goal

• Make it measurable!

Some considerations

• Make sure your KPIs cover both organizational goals and user needs

• Think about them from multiple perspectives

Download this worksheet:

http://bit.ly/return-on-content-sheet

Business objective Content goals

Goals of thiscontent

Ideal process

What happened

What we can learn

What to do differently next

time

Reality

Time for a meaningful

conversation with

content owners

Doing the measuring, communicating the results

Measure, tweak, repeat

• Who needs to know?

• How do they need to know it?

• How to tweak it?

What to do with the info

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Next steps

1. Learn what works

2. Use that information to develop goals

3. Create an editorial calendar and templates for review time, roles, and processes

4. Share all with staff

5. Track/measure and communicate the results

6. Use the results to improve future content

Change the conversation!

• Partnership

• “We will help your program shine” and help you tell your story better

• Before a long-term commitment to something new, try a pilot for a specific subset and then refine based on their feedback

• Foster connections between content areas for the benefit of all offerings connect back up to business goals

Resources

• My article and worksheet http://www.contentcompany.biz/2016/04/27/return-on-content/

• Aligning Business Goals with User Goals in Content by Michael Andrews http://storyneedle.com/aligning-business-goals-with-user-goals-in-content/

• Making Content Measurable by Jess Huttonhttp://www.uxbooth.com/articles/making-content-measurable/

• Why Attempting to Establish the ROI of Content Is a Fool’s Errand by Ronell Smithhttps://medium.com/dissenting-opinion/why-attempting-to-establish-the-roi-of-content-is-a-fools-errand-d8b4fdfd3a6c#.39kpxyxzs

Return on Content

Thank you!

Hilary Marsh

President & Chief Strategist

Content Company, Inc.

hilary@contentcompany.biz

@hilarymarsh