Creek Content

End content chaos. Communicate clearly.

World IA Day Coming to Nashville in 2013

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Y’all — we can hardly stand it, we’re so excited!

On Feb. 9, 2013, Nashville joins 14 other cities worldwide in celebrating World Information Architecture Day. This second annual event of the IA Institute promises to be a great day for Nashville and for IA as well.

A committee’s being formed now to make this event a great day for Nashville and our tech community. Please contact us if you’re interested in helping.

And we’ll have updates soon on how you can speak, participate and attend the fun on February 9!

Barcamp 2012: The Fruitiest Fruit

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Have you ever had this kind of conversation with a customer?

Customer: I have this huge problem. I’m looking for a widgeterator to solve the problem and I’m having a lot of trouble finding one!
You: A widgeterator? OMG! We sell those! You have been our customer for years — I can’t believe you didn’t know that.
Customer: Wow — I can’t believe it. I even looked on your website, too! I can’t believe I didn’t see it!
You: Hold on, let me show you. See, right here: The Supertasticator 5400.
Customer: [Head explodes in frustration.]

The fact is, many of us figure out somewhere along the way that we’re not speaking the same language as our customers. We talk inside baseball. We have our own terminology. Someone from marketing decides that products will be more valuable if we re-brand them with different names.

Similar issues also crop up when you are categorizing content for your website. Often, there are many ways to organize things. It’s tempting to simply create the most logical structure and be done with it.

It’s just that what seems logical to you may seem pretty stupid to your customer.

If you’ve ever had this happen — or if you just want to prevent future customer head explosions — join me on Oct. 20, 2012, at Nashville’s Barcamp, when I explore issues related to naming and categorization. My session is titled The Fruitiest Fruit: Creating Categories Your Customers Understand. My librarian friends probably already know why — but it will be fun to share the meaning behind the title with the rest of you.

 

Content Strategy 101: A Workshop With Creek Content

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Reigster now for Content Strategy 101 • A Creek Content WorkshopWe are really excited to announce that we’re teaching an in-person content strategy workshop on Tuesday, Nov. 13, here in Nashville.

Early registration is available now through Oct. 19, and it’s just $99 for a jam-packed morning of learning!

We have taught workshops in conjunction with conferences in other cities, and we’ve spoken about how important we think content strategy is here, but we’ve never taught a workshop in Nashville before. Nashville’s becoming well known as a growing tech center, and we know what that means — there are a lot of people here dealing with the complexities that content brings.

Every organization deals with content. Are you managing your content as effectively as you can? Do you even know what content you have out there? Does your content send the right message?

Your content sends a message to your customers, prospects, members, and employees — make sure it’s the right message.

Creek Content specializes in content strategy, a discipline that examines organization goals, creates appropriate content, establishes governing structures and operations procedures, and manages the process for effective results.

In this half-day workshop, we’ll share some of our inside tips and tricks with you. You will be on your way to more effectively managing your content when you leave!
Reigster now for Content Strategy 101 • A Creek Content Workshop
Who Should Attend:

  • Copywriters
  • Account executives
  • Marketers
  • Designers
  • Product managers
  • Anyone responsible for communicating with your customers

Agenda:

 8:00a Arrive, network. We’ll provide bagels and coffee, or bring your own breakfast to join us! The workshop starts on the dot at 9a.
 9:00a Content strategy background
 9:30a Audience, message, goals
10:15a Break
10:30a Content inventories and audits
11:30a Next steps
12:00p The workshop wraps up on the dot!
Creek Content staff will stay to answer individual questions.

Key Takeaways:

  • Understand how content strategy can improve your organization’s efforts
  • Know when and how to inventory and audit your content
  • Create a message architecture to drive all content creation efforts
  • Know where to go for more help

Reigster now for Content Strategy 101 • A Creek Content WorkshopWe hope you can join us!

Creek Content at Content Marketing World

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Next month, I’m honored to be presenting two sessions on content strategy at Content Marketing World:

If you haven’t already signed up, get your Content Marketing World ticket today before it sells out. This conference has great speakers and fun events — and even better, you’ll leave ready to start or improve your content marketing plan right away.

Use the code SPEAKER to get $100 off your registration!

Content Audits and Inventories: Why We Start With What You’ve Got

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With almost every new client, Creek Content recommends a content audit or content inventory as the first project. Sometimes, we have to explain the methodology behind that, though. When you know your stuff is bad, it’s awfully tempting just to throw it all out and start again without a second thought.

Perhaps our viewpoint is inspired by the Santayana quote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We’ve found that content is rarely broken arbitrarily. There’s often a reason why your stuff is bad. We want to figure that out to prevent it from happening to your shiny new content, too.

If you’re working on a content project and analyzing what you have, here are some things to look for as you evaluate your existing content:

Content-Design Mismatch: Sometimes we see problems that stem from a design that doesn’t work with current content needs. Many organizations find it’s difficult with systems or budgets to continually adapt their site designs, and as a result, content creators figure out ways to shoehorn content into old templates. The end result isn’t pretty or very useful for your customers, unfortunately. The fix usually involves both design and content — everyone has to agree on the goal and on how to get there. Ideally, you also figure out how to make incremental updates part of your process, to prevent this from happening again.

Training and Staff Orientation: We don’t mean orientation in the sense of new employee orientation; we mean, is your staff all oriented in the same direction? Often, organizations make great decisions about new initiatives and operations, but they fail to communicate them well [or often enough] to everyone who needs to know. Organizations that communicate well with large teams internally have a better shot at doing so externally, too. If your website reads like 10 different people wrote it, and everyone does things a little differently, you just look sloppy to your customers. This is preventable.

Poorly Handled Complexity: This is the most intractable, but it’s still possible to fix. An inventory and audit can often reveal the places where you don’t have the right metadata on the back end, or where you’re conversely over-organizing, and making it too hard for customers to find the stuff they want.