Creek Content

End content chaos. Communicate clearly.

Register Now for Content Structure Workshop at Now What? Workshops, April 25-26, 2018

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I’m thrilled to announce I’ll facilitate a workshop on creating content structure at the Now What? Workshops, hosted by Blend Interactive.

Register today for the Now What? Workshops and you’ll be able to improve your content skills in several areas:

Creating content structure: This is the workshop I’ll be teaching. We’ll talk about how to find and build in structure to your content, for a more reliable user experience, to simplify content operations, to give you more insights into what your audience needs, and to improve opportunities for analytics.

Digital writing: Brain Traffic senior content strategist Scott Kubie shares tools, apps, tricks, and best practices to improve your digital writing workflow and results.

Accessibility: I love this topic so much. Blend Interactive user experience architect Corey Vilhauer shares his insights into how content creators can improve accessibility for all members of your digital audience.

Customer data and journeys: Here’s a topic we could all spend more time on: Using analytics for insights instead of just numbers. Looking forward to this one from Cossette strategy director Jon Crowley.

These kinds of in-depth workshops have been pivotal to my professional development over the years, and I think they will make a big impact for you if you are responsible for content, marketing, or the customer experience in your organization.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Join Me at the Summit on Content Marketing

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I’m excited to speak at the Summit on Content Marketing on May 31. I think you’ll be amazed at the great speakers on the agenda:

Laura Creekmore is speaking at the Summit on Content Marketing

  • Andy Crestodina
  • Rand Fishkin
  • Carrie Hane
  • Colleen Jones
  • Ahava Leibtag
  • Neil Patel
  • David Meerman Scott
  • Jon Wuebben

and lots more! Best of all, everyone can go to this event, because it’s all happening online. That’s right—wherever you are, you can get the latest insights on content marketing from May 22-June 2.

My session focuses on creating a strategy for your content marketing efforts. We’ll talk about:

  • Understanding your audience and their needs
  • Setting business goals
  • Selecting tactics to reach your goals
  • Iterating on your work

Register Today for the Summit on Content Marketing

No matter where you’re going to be May 22-June 2, you can take advantage of this great opportunity. Register for the Summit on Content Marketing today, and you can watch my session on May 31, as well as dozens of others from fantastic content marketers.

 

Hear Laura Creekmore on the Enterprise Marketer Podcast

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I taught a workshop at Content Marketing World this year, called Content Strategy 101. About 40 of us spent the afternoon walking through the elements of content strategy, thinking about audience, strategy, operations, governance and analytics. I’ve got some tips from that workshop I’ll share with you soon, but first I wanted to just give you a peek into those ideas. I was a guest on the Enterprise Marketer podcast while I was at CMW, and I think you’ll enjoy this podcast and gain some insights into using content marketing effectively.

 

How to Fix Communication — Learn From My Mistakes

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How are you at communications? Chances are, if you read this blog, communication is a critical part of your job. But we’re all overwhelmed and too busy these days — and if you’re like me, that leads to lots of communication problems. For years, I’ve worked on strategies to help myself avoid snafus that pop up when I don’t pay attention to the details. I hadn’t thought about sharing my ideas with anyone else — they were just principles I used to manage my own life.

Earlier this week, I spoke at the Rutherford Cable organization’s breakfast meeting. Cable focuses on women’s leadership and professional advancement. (And full disclosure, I’m the chair-elect of the Board of Directors of the Nashville Cable chapter—but that was actually unrelated to my speaking at Rutherford Cable!)

I speak a fair amount, usually at industry conferences around the country, but this was a general business and civic audience, so I figured they were unlikely to all want to hear about the nuts and bolts of content strategy. However, I know we all face communications challenges, so I put together my thoughts on how to manage those details that trip us up.

In some recent conversations on Twitter, I’ve begun to realize there’s probably a bigger audience for these kinds of ideas. We all struggle with information overload, being pressed for time, and managing multiple streams of communication.

Here are my tips — what’s your best secret for effective communication?

Join Us at IA Summit in May

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This year’s IA Summit is coming up May 4 – 8 in Atlanta. The IA Summit is a gathering of information architects, user experience designers, content strategists, and all those who work to create and manage information spaces. The theme is “A Broader Panorama,” which seeks to address the change in digital spaces from page-based models to cross-channel, data-dependent, multi-platform, context-aware content presented in ways that benefit users. Everyone who contributes to content needs to understand information architecture so that sites are optimized for findability, understanding, and adaptability. For more information, visit the IA Summit website. As a guest of Creek Content, you can get $50 off the cost of attending the conference (use code CREEKMORE50 when you register here).

Also, be sure to join Laura at her pre-conference workshop about structured content. “Seeing the Trees Despite the Forest—Discerning Content Structure from a Blobby Website” is just half a day on Thursday, May 5 starting at 1:30 p.m. It will take you through the step-by-step process of structuring your content with exercises and presentations that will help:

  • See the overall structure of your content
  • See the micro-level structure
  • Define the potential positive impact of increased structure for your content
  • Understand when metadata can help
  • Understand when chunking content into semantically rich fields can help
  • Research and evaluate existing metadata schemas for use on your projects

Why learn about crafting a structured content model? Structured content is extensible content. After this workshop, you’ll be able to analyze your content and see its potential, know where to go for information on external metadata schemas that can help you, and even understand whether the payoff of structuring your content is worth the effort.

It is not necessary to register and attend the full conference to attend a pre-conference workshop. If you are in or near Atlanta, you can register to attend this workshop separately from the conference at the bottom of the form on the website.