Publishers, Know Thy Content

Having someone in the content publishing process or workflow familiar with the content itself is more important than many realize.

Content Creation: Roles to Fill

Lots of roles need to be filled to create useful, usable content. Business and customer needs must be assessed. An audit of current content should be completed to avoid unnecessary duplication. Capacities and resources need to be gauged. Firm decisions are required on questions like:

• Do we need to outsource its creation? 
• Who will review it?
• Who will format and publish it? 
• Who will look after it once it has been published?

This list is far from comprehensive. But, a gap in any one of these can have catastrophic effects. Redundancies. Overstretched budgets and staff. Ultimately, poor quality content.

One question in the process often gets overlooked: Are there people that know the content filling roles in the content creation workflow? Or are are they merely capable of completing the physical tasks of publishing?

This became abundantly clear to me just the other day.

Drumroll Please: An Example

I recently purchased a CD [yes, I am still buying CDs] by the jazz tenor sax titan Sonny Rollins, titled "The Freedom Suite."

This is an important, landmark album.

In the late 00s, the company that owns the rights to "The Freedom Suite" changed hands again.  As is often the case, new ownership brings new strategy.  The new company decided to re-master and re-release the 1958 masterpiece.

Some new packaging was created, and it was unleashed onto the marketplace. I bought it. For full retail price. In 2010.

I was excited, until I saw this:



WHAT? Max Roach on TRUMPET? Oh no you didn't.

I don't wish bore you with hyperbole, but Max Roach was only one of the most important drummers of the 20th century.

The company with the business rights to sell the recording did not put a person familiar with the content in their content workflow.

The Aftermath

A misspelling of Max Roach's name might be a more pardonable crime.  But playing the trumpet? The product has become the laughing stock of the community that purchases the product. And, the company has lost credibility and consumer confidence as a result.

Oversights with online content are just as easy, if not easier to make. Your content is important. Treat it with care. Give it priority. At the very least, doing so will help you avoid turning into the laughing stock of the community you serve.

Oh, and here is a clip of Max Roach TOTALLY NOT PLAYING THE TRUMPET:

Prince, The Internets, and Content Strategy

Last week, the Artist Formerly Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince made some provocative and telling statements in an interview with “The Mirror” in the UK.

 "The internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it.

"The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.

"They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

Much has changed in the past few years in the music industry.  New avenues of digital distribution have popped up, physical music sales overall have fallen to dismal levels, and an entire generation is living music-filled lives without buying a single CD, cassette, or LP.

Prince still wants people to hear his music.  He is simply unwilling to give it to them in the way that they devour it.  That is Prince’s strategy.  He is an artist, and he can do as he pleases, however ill-advised it may be.

The reality of Prince's strategy

Based on his statements, here is a rough distillation of Prince's strategy:

Who: Prince
What: Releasing music
When: Whenever, suckers
Where: Where he deems suitable, rather than where people already are
How: Not on the internet, as it is "completely over"
Why: The internet and digital gadgets are no good

And, in direct conflict, the reality of the situation:

Who: Prince fans
What: They want to buy the latest album
When: ASAP
Where: From the comforts of their keyboards
How: Digitally, in a space they trust, like iTunes
Why: This is how they buy and listen to all of their music

What is wrong with this picture?  Looks more like a contrary strategy than a content strategy.

Success, reality, and a content strategy

Prince has always been a bit of a populist, looking to get his music in the hands of as many folks as possible. Hi newest album, "20TEN", was available for free with the purchase of a newspaper, "The Mirror," in the UK. When I saw him in concert a few years ago, he handed out free CDs of his most recent album to each ticket holder.  It is clear that he wants people to hear his music.

Prince is an established artist, and his past successes grant him the freedom to engage in contrary behavior.  What if that attitude were not from Prince but from an incorporated business?  What would stakeholders say if they were to examine a similar content strategy:

• Don't sell our product where millions and millions of products have been sold (iTunes)
• Avoid the largest communication phenomenon of the last 25 years (the internet)
• Give the product away with another, masking any true measure of performance
• Proclaim that the newest product will be in a format on the decline stuffed in another format in decline (CDs in newspapers)

Content strategy has been described as "the planning, creation, delivery and governance of useful, usable content" by Kristina Halvorson.  That is quite the opposite of the above strategy on nearly every point.

Prince has his Prince-osity to get him by.  Businesses do not.  Focus on what sets you apart, craft it sustainably with realistic goals, and measure to gauge success.  Do that, and you shan't have a need for Purple Superpowers.




For more on Prince's technological confusion, watch for his phrase at 4:48 into the "Batdance" video:

Hey Duckie
Let's Stick the 7" in the computer
Ha ha ha ha ha ha

(The 7" refers to the old 45rpm record singles, of course. You can 't put those into computers.Silly Prince.)

["Prince @ Coachella 2008" image courtesy of Flickr user Mick 0 (cc: by-nc)]

Attack of the Rotten Content

Your content is rotten.

Okay, maybe it's not.

When did you last check it?  It won't turn green and fuzzy or smell funky.  But it can still "go bad."

The New York Times recently featured a story about Emory University's efforts to preserve for posterity the works of noted author Salman Rushdie. While content like Rushdie's notes have a long lifespan, a great deal of content on the web has a much more limited life cycle. Neither the creators nor the consumers wish to have certain content live past its expiration date.

When Good Content Goes Bad

The acronym used to describe content's redundancy, outdated-ness, or triviality is ROT. Cheeky!

ROT happens without anyone even realizing it.  There is no content on your website that is completely immune to ROT.  Certain kinds of content are more prone to it than others:

• News items
• Political items
• Events
• Press releases
• Product descriptions

We've all witnessed particularly egregious examples of it in the past.  Maybe it was a press release from two years ago on the homepage.  Or an invitation to an "upcoming event" that took place two weeks ago.  Or a banner for a new product from two updates ago.  They are often painfully clear and a pain to deal with from a user perspective.

Outside factors can also have a major impact on the currency of your content.  You can plan for internal changes, but some things will force your content into a world of ROT:

• Product recalls
• News stories / current events
• Competitor's activities and advances

What is the worst than can happen?

So what if the content is a little moldy?

People visit website to accomplish tasks. Do things.  Buy stuff.  With content that is redundant, outdated, or trivial, your site will become hard-to-use.  Tedious.  Visitors will have to decide on their own what may or may not be accurate.  Or, even worse, the content becomes an active liability. Lawsuits!  Unmet business obligations! Other concerns:

• Negatively impacts brand
• Bad experience overall for the user
• Causes doubts about your content's veracity
• Endangers relationships with partners and third parties involved
• Legal liability
• It just looks bad 

Customers can be misinformed.  They can realize that your website, and by extension, the experience and information you are providing for them is not a priority. Worse yet, they can go elsewhere.

Content Strategy Can Help

A solid content strategy has a clearly defined governance plan.  Once content is created, it cannot be neglected.

The content creation workflows in a content strategy will take into account the life cycle of the material created.  That life expectancy can be incorporated into the metadata to facilitate a certain degree of automation.  Even a modest CMS can lend a hand with managing content with a set expiration date.

Since outside factors are not on a set timetable, another approach may help.  Properly tagging content with keywords will grant you the option to search.  As current events warrant, these keyword searches may prove very valuable.  [Think "oil" or "spill," for example.]

Regular, scheduled reviews of tagged content will ensure that the end result is content that is non-duplicative, up-to-date, and relevant.

Gross, dude

You wouldn't intentionally serve your dinner guests rotten food as pictured above, right?  Neither should you serve content suffering from ROT to the lovely folks coming to your website.  Fresh content, like fresh food, will delight those that get to enjoy it.

["rotten apples" image via Flickr upload from maceolepage (cc: by-nc)]

Content Strategy, or, Let’s Make a Mixtape

While digging through my box of cassettes the other day, I had a minor epiphany. Content strategy and the creation of mixtapes are shockingly similar.

As it has been said, content strategy plans for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content. For a website, certainly. But for the creation of a mixtape?
For those unfamiliar, a mixtape:

• Is a compilation of songs (just as websites are collections of content)
• Created for a specific someone (consider your audience)
• Communicates a specific message (in service of business objectives)
• Should elicit a particular response (meet user needs/assist in task completion)

Although they can now be a collection of downloads, “mixtape” is a throwback to their heyday in the 1980s when they were cassettes. Later, they took the form of burned CDs, then mp3 playlists.
For those unfamiliar, a review of some basic tenets of content strategy:

• Analysis: Objectives defined, assumptions and risks noted, success metrics established. Account for internal and external forces that might influence them.
• Audit: A quantitative or qualitative review of your current content landscape.
• Strategy: Actionable, achievable recommendations. Includes editorial workflows, calendars, messaging hierarchy, content types, formats, plus much more!

First is analysis. "What do I want to do with this website (or mixtape)?" Surely you've a recipient in mind. Otherwise, you wouldn't be making a website (or mixtape), right? This goes hand in hand with the objectives and message. All websites (and mixtapes) need clear objectives. They can both do many, many things, but a focused approach will make their creation and delivery much easier.

The objective of creating a mixtape might be to musically convince the recipient that you are indeed cool, or in love, or sorry, or over them (or in rare cases, all of the above). Focus on a theme and/or purpose for the mixtape, give it a title, and dig in.

To put together a website (or mixtape), you'll need source content (songs, in this case). Now would be a good time to perform a qualitative content audit. The audit should note what content (here, your music collection) is currently available, and if it is usable.

Websites brimming with content that is redundant, outdated, and trivial are frustrating and often impossible to use. Broken links, five year old “news” articles, and duplicative pages get in the way of achieving objectives. An audit helps to determine what can stay and what gets the boot.

The same applies for the content for your mixtape. For example, your Bee Gees 8-tracks won't make it onto a mixtape if you don't have an 8-track player. Is that vinyl LP copy of "Thriller" too scratched to use? Did the tape deck in your friend's Camaro eat your copy of Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet," rendering "Wanted Dead or Alive" more dead than alive? Perhaps your computer hard drive crashed, corrupting all of your Justin Bieber downloads.

On this mixtape, you might choose to include some content (songs) you don’t actually have in your collection. How will you decide where to get it? The provider of that content will be selected on the basis of what best suits your needs. For instance, you may already have an ongoing relationship with a content provider. Is it the funny-smelling record store down the street? Amazon.com or iTunes? You might also pick a place all your friends are raving about. Or you might avoid one your parents happen to frequent.

With source content in hand, selecting the songs from the pool begins the mixtape editorial workflow. These questions will help you get started:

• Does this content (or song) support the overall message?
• Does it make sense in this context? (Not everyone will “get” your raga references.)
• Does its place next to other selections make for a pleasing experience?
• Will it fit in the remaining time on side B of the cassette?

Make sure that the content (song selection) is relevant to the lucky recipient/user. Putting punk songs and opera and hip-hop tracks one right after the next might be jarring for some, but not for others.
Remember: Stay true to the focus of the theme, consider the recipient, and assert your coolness.
A few additional tips:

• Create your mix with the end user in mind (be aware of their pop culture knowledge).
• Clearly state the title.
• Write the title and track list in a language they can read (as opposed to Esperanto. Or Klingon.)
• If you are making a cassette, make sure they have a cassette player.

The associated “metadata” (in this case, title, track list, and any totally sweet, custom artwork) completes the package. The tone and voice of the title and artwork are all additional opportunities to continue the theme and message of the mixtape. The track list rounds out the experience by providing a reference to the greatness you've compiled. If you follow these important rules, your final product will be so much more than the consumable tape or CD alone.

Just like creating a mixtape is more than slapping a couple of songs together haphazardly on a cassette, creating websites with useful, usable content is more than just slapping words on a page. Taking the time and effort to carefully go through these processes will produce an end result that will make your website users happy (or your mixtape listeners happy).

This post originally appeared on the Brain Traffic blog.

["media" image from Flickr user zendritic (cc: by-nc-sa)]

Content Acquisition, Miles Davis, and a Motherf*cker of a Content Strategy

[left to right: Pete Cosey, Miles Davis, Michael Henderson]

Jazz icon Miles Davis is known for lots of things.  Playing the trumpet. Cantankerousness.  A mouth like a SAILOR.

I'll bet that you didn't know that he was pretty motherf*cking savvy when it comes to content strategy.  Really!

While he wasn't known for his razor-sharp technical prowess on his instrument, he was a great bandleader.  He assembled some of the greatest bands, ever, in fact.

And he knew it.

In 1969, when he had assembled the band that suited his fancy, he stated that it was “really a bad motherf*cker.”

In 1970, his bass player left.  Miles needed someone able to produce the content he couldn't create on his own.  Miles played trumpet.  And some keyboards.  But he wasn't a bass player.  A content gap analysis would show that a band as funky as Miles' in the 70s could not be without a bass player.

Allegedly, Miles walked up to Stevie Wonder after seeing him in concert and said, "I'm stealing your f*ckin' bass player."  And he did.  Poor Stevie Wonder had Michael Henderson, his bass player, acquired.

Many companies produce some content, but have a need for other content to complete their online presence.  It may be only a small portion of the content on the site.  In some cases, almost all of the content is created by third parties.

There are times when the economies of scale make content acquisition a smart choice. There are lots of good reasons to do it:

• Properly accredited content is not cheap.
• A full-time content production staff or position might not be feasible.
• It puts content creation into the hands of a dedicated specialist.
• Frees up the staff to do what they do best.

This is something not to be taken on lightly.  Miles didn't acquire just anyone's bass player.  He acquired Stevie Wonder's bass player.  He hired a content creator.

Many content acquisition relationships include a pre-produced set of content, plus options to publish future content created. Delightful!

It can also lead unwitting contract signers down apocalyptic paths of frustration and insanity.  Not delightful! This is important to note for several reasons:

• Can the creators maintain their output level? Do they have a solid content strategy?
• Does the content match the tone and voice of your website?
• Do they provide the content in an easily-published format?
• Do they provide the appropriate metadata?
• Are your competitors using them, or a similar service?

The most important consideration when evaluating third-party content acquisition is this: The content still needs to meet your business needs/customer needs.

Miles didn't hire two or three bass players.  He hired one.  He only hired a bass player because he had a need for a bass player.  He didn't hire a bagpiper.  That brings up another point: don't consider content acquisition only to take up space on your website.

Though it will be delivered to your figurative door, the content will still need attention It will need to be finessed and published. Curated. It will need to be incorporated into workflows and editorial calendars.  The governance portion of your content strategy will still apply.

Finally, put a plan in place in case the relationship ends.  The content producer may go belly up, the contract may expire, or you simply might choose to stop using them.

If there is a gap in your content, acquiring it from a third party is a proven method of creating a more complete online experience.  Don't fear it.  Your website may work so well that Miles Davis himself may have praised it as, “really a bad motherf*cker.”

Miles in Vienna, Austria on November 3, 1973.  And yes, that is Michael Henderson on bass.

Content: Cut the Crap

Has anyone ever gone to a website, or a park, and said, "This place would be even more awesome if it had way more crap on it."?

Probably not.

People slog through their online experiences everyday battling cluttered content.  It stands between them and the thing they want to get done.  Tasks are barely completed, with frustration.  Even worse, they may throw their hands up in disgust and go somewhere else.  That somewhere else might be a 1-800 help desk or order center (more expensive than the web). Or, they may go to a competitor (even more expensive). 

Content ends up on websites for lots of reasons.

• Some are noble (This is core to our message on all platforms.)
• Some are not (Lady Gaga outfit picture widget.)
• Some are forced (Put this on the online internets. Or else.)

Websites are funny things.  You can fill them with content until they are OVER 23,000 PIXELS LONG.  Just because you can doesn't mean that your should.

The impulse may be pure.  Serve the people. SUPER-SERVE the people.  Give them everything they ever wanted to know about your product/service.  Show them the Facebook widget.  Give them all of the images of all of the products on the homepage.  The people coming to the site will find what they need that way...right? 

This is neither an effective nor sustainable content strategy.

For every piece of content destined for the website, ask these questions:

• Does this content help to achieve our business aims or support our primary message?
• Does it really?
• No, REALLY?

The criteria thereafter will vary from situation to situation.  This sentiment is universal. Here it is, again. In bold.  Does this content help to achieve our business aims or support our primary message?

There is room for secondary content that fills out an experience, or deepens engagement with a brand.  It can make the difference between a dull visit and an experience that creates lifelong devotees.

Secondary content must be vetted, examined, tested, and cautiously implemented.  Keep governance in mind, too.  Will the content ROT (suffer from redundancy, outdated-ness, and triviality)?  While the content may serve a secondary purpose, it requires the same diligence as any other content. 

Weigh any potential benefit of the secondary, additive content against the possible cost it may incur:

• Unintentional dominance of overall site messaging
• Additional noise and clutter added to the user experience
• Distraction from business aims and message
• Resources and attention required to acquire and maintain it

Go ahead.  Take that pooper scooper to your content inventory.  Everyone will be happier in the end with a little less crap around.

[No Pooping! image via Flickr user crowbert (cc: by-nc-sa)]

Content, Scalability, and Making More Pie

In the world of content, as in pies, more isn't always better.

My mother is a good example of this; she is often charged with the task of making food for church events.  This works well, as she is fond of cooking and baking.  However, when the situation calls for 40 pounds of potato salad or pies baked at a two-per-week pace, things start to suffer.  She begins to enjoy it less than cooking for family.  She cuts some corners by buying pre-made pie crusts from the store just to keep up.  Both the process and end result are affected.

What was once sustainable in pie-making becomes unmanageable as the environment changes.  The same happens with the making of content.  In a terrific blog post titled, "Content Strategy Is About Publishing," Erin Kissane writes:

"...the internet is made of publishing, and its new and often anarchic publishing models are messing with older models in all kinds of ways."

This became clear in the content strategies of two major content producers: the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).

The BBC announced last week some significant budget cuts; the web budget would be cut by 25%.  As a part of this, "The Guardian" reports "The BBC's internet operation will see the number of web pages it publishes halve by 2013." (emphasis mine)

Cutting back on projects/initiatives is something that the BBC has done many times in the past. In 2001, they ceased shortwave broadcasts to North America and Australasia.  They trimmed or cut entirely some of their language services in certain markets/regions later in the same decade.

The budget cuts will mean changes in the web staffing and managerial structure of the BBC.  It also means that there will be considerable changes in their content strategy in the next few years.

For a bit of history:  broadcasters once enjoyed the luxury of creating content in an environment that had great built-in features.  Content could be created in a much different way. This is no longer the case.  It is almost hard to image now:

• Little or no public facing archive
• Automatic context provided via linear broadcast timeline
• Massive reach in an uncrowded landscape

Capacity to produce raw content is only one part of the equation.  To be successful, the rest of the editorial workflow must be given the proper attention.  Getting the story on-air is no longer the sole aim. Editors, publishers, and those governing the long-term life cycle of the content share an equal seat at the table.  These positions need not be separate people, but each duty requires time, resources, and diligence.

As newsrooms and broadcasters look to make their content available on all platforms, additional hours are required (once people are trained) to translate the content into appropriate formats.  Translation in this case means that some things will need to be added or subtracted from the formerly-finished product in order to remain in-context and relevant to its surroundings:

• Text version of audio content
• Video to accompany audio content
• Images to populate slideshows
• Text transcripts of video content
• Interactive/casual gaming features
• Platform-specific metadata
• Branding, rights management, and editing all of the above

Online video, for example, has been viable and mainstream for years.  Many content producers are only now beginning to incorporate it into their content production and editorial workflows.  The chorus has often been "all content to all platforms."  The CBC recently stated this on their "Inside the CBC" blog post titled "The CBC's Digital Content Strategy."

“We don’t know what will work,” (Richard Stursberg, the executive vice president of English programming) said, “One of the big outstanding questions is how long content will live on various platforms.” But he reiterated his commitment to pushing content onto new platforms regardless, “We’re gonna have to absolutely be there,” he said, if we don’t move to these new platforms, “we just lost all our viewers.”

This brings about a question that the BBC may have asked themselves: If it takes longer to create content that is viable on a multitude of platforms, could the current page counts on the web be unsustainable?  The answer was a budget cut and subsequent planned page count reduction.

Is publishing a story in audio form, with an image slideshow and text version plus an interactive/gaming feature causing a change in focus?  Are the raw number of pages published no longer the benchmark?

A change of this magnitude allows for an alternative to the "content farm" model by offering an in-depth, robust slate of content--neither the BBC nor the CBC are strangers to that.  As Erin Kissane writes, creation of content that fits the new modes of consumption is "...largely made up of new applications for old skills."  That is good news for the news.  What is left is this: content producers must now reconcile the amount of time and resources required with changes in output volume.

If it means baking fewer (but better) pies (or content), then I am all for it.

["Pie Chart" image via Flickr user net_efekt (cc: by)]