Creek Content

End content chaos. Communicate clearly.

You Need a Chief Content Officer

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I’ve worked deeply embedded in several organizations during my career, always focused on content strategy. And I’ve had the pleasure of working with a lot of smart people doing great work. But I have found that seeing content strategically is yet not a common perspective in today’s business world. Fortunately, it’s growing—I find I have to educate far less about what content strategy is than I used to. But I do not find many organizations that have someone with the title of Chief Content Officer. Most of our organizations are still aligned around older models that didn’t anticipate the need for content strategy.

And that’s part of the opportunity; content strategy is a disruptive force in most organizations. We were aligned around products or services or a production team and a sales team, not around intellectual property assets.

Make no mistake—no matter what business you’re in, you have content that is an intellectual property asset.

And that content should be overseen by a chief content officer.

I love the work done by Joe Pulizzi and his team at the Content Marketing Institute, and I give them a lot of credit for beating the drum on this idea for several years now. They’ve got an updated job description for a chief content officer that’s well worth your time.

This job description only goes partway toward what I think many organizations need, however. I do most of my work on product-related content, and CMI understandably focuses on marketing specifically.

I’m an old-school marketer who thinks of marketing in the broader sense of developing products and bringing them to market, so my thinking lines up there, but I’ve seen a number of organizations that don’t use marketing mindsets in their product development work. (Fortunately, I think the digital revolution is changing that, and I give the user experience design world the props for it. Those of us in UX and related disciplines have been pushing audience understanding as the first step in our cycle for a long time, and I think it’s making a difference.)

Regardless of what we call our work, I think it’s essential for every mid-size to large organization to have someone acting as the chief content officer.

The chief content officer must speak for the content—the content as a business and IP asset, the content as the way the brand promise is delivered to the customer, the content as a well-managed operations hub.

The CCO is a strategy officer for the business and collaborates with a multidisciplinary team to determine how content fulfills the brand promise. The chief content officer influences technology choices. The CCO ensures the marketing, technology, design, product and other related teams are aligned with subject matter experts, including the legal team. The CCO finds opportunities that didn’t exist before, from engaging repair staff with content needed to do their work to reducing calls to the 800-number with genuinely helpful help content to envisioning digital apps that engage customers in new ways. The chief content officer ensures the organization speaks with one voice, by sharing brand and style information for content creation.

I’m curious: How well is your organization managing its content? Does it have a holistic view of this work, or is it handled piecemeal in different silos? (Don’t feel bad if that’s the case; you are not alone!)

I’d love to talk to organizations looking to do this work better. Today’s technology makes it possible to do content work very well, and to truly make content the asset many of us have long believed it to be. Let me know if I can help your organization think through these issues.

 

5 Ideas to Improve Your Content Governance

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In content strategy, when we talk about “governance,” we mean how you make decisions. Many organizations think about their content in a very tactical way: How much do we have? Who creates it? Where does it go? Those are all important questions. But more important are: Why? Who decides? How will they decide? What’s the impact of those decisions on the business? That’s content governance.

This topic can feel very theoretical when you’re used to day-to-day content tactics. So today I’m sharing 5 ideas to help you get to the details of content governance.

  1. Make a list of the content decisions you make. This might sound simple, but it often reveals places you may be acting on instinct instead of intentionally.

    Here are some examples of decisions:

    • Deciding to write a blog post
    • Choosing how to capitalize headlines
    • Selecting metadata for a piece of content
    • Creating an annual calendar
    • Deciding how to make your content accessible
    • Deciding what topics to cover
    • Selecting your target audience
    • Creating an approval process
    • Deciding when to review already published content
    • Deciding when to create a video instead of text
    • Choosing images to support your work

    Some of those are small, everyday decisions. Some are a bit bigger. But over time, they all add up to create your message. Is your message intentionally crafted, or is it being built by accident through hundreds of small, undesigned decisions?

  2. Create a chart that shows all the roles related to your content. Lots of people use RACI charts for this kind of work. That shows the roles that are Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for any particular decision. You are welcome to use that kind of framework, and it may be enlightening in more ways than one. In a large organization, a RACI chart can often identify unnecessary complexity that’s gumming up the inner workings of your process.

    For a more tactical perspective, I often ask people:

    • Who decides we need content?
    • Who decides what kind of content?
    • Who creates/gets content?
    • Who reviews content?
    • Who approves content?
    • Who publishes content?

    Regardless of which framework you use, try to get to the roles involved, not just the names. Sam may edit every blog post, but I want you to think about her as the “Editor,” not just Sam. In some organizations, Sam may be the Editor, the Writer, the Videographer, the Strategist, and the Product Manager. In others, there may be more than 5 people in those 5 roles.

    Often, we fall into a decision framework as a default, or almost by accident. We don’t always think of a decision-making process as something that needs to be designed. But our instincts may not always serve us well, and it’s worth being intentional about how we decide to manage our content decisions.

  3. Talk through the decisions, the roles, and the process with everyone involved. It’s very helpful if you can get everyone together at one time for this, and not just have informal one-on-one chats with members of a large team. I have never yet called this meeting and found that everyone understands the process in the same way. Never.

  4. Create a trigger calendar for your content decisions. For a few lucky folks out there, your triggers align to the actual calendar. If you’re in retail, the end of the year is big, so you can start there and walk backwards to decide when content has to be ready to support year-end planning. If you’re in healthcare, flu season happens at a predictable time each year, so you can plan accordingly.

    Some content can’t be tied to the chronological calendar, though. For this content, make a list of the triggers themselves, and see if you can create a calendar of actions that happen once the trigger occurs.

    For instance: Our organization plans a new product launch. Before that happens, we need to create a tutorial. We need to create marketing materials and plans. We need to identify the content support plan for the new product. So we can walk back a certain number of weeks from an expected product launch to plan each of those activities, including time for brainstorming, creation, editing, testing, review, and approval. We can walk forward from product launch to mark dates for A/B testing for particular content, or content review, or whatever we need.

    The idea here isn’t to make your work cumbersome or complicated. It’s to prevent you from slapping together an entire product tutorial the week of a product launch. When you work like that, you’re going to miss important details. Your development team wouldn’t dream of writing and launching a new feature in 3 days. Don’t let anyone tell you the content work can be done that way, either.

  5. Compare your content priorities to your time and your budget. Here’s a tricky one. Are you putting your money where your mouth is? Look at your annual budget. Look at how you use your time every day, week, or month. Are you spending your money and your time in a way that reflects your priorities? This is a helpful gut-check for many activities.

These 5 ideas alone won’t create a content governance plan for you, but they will help you get on the right track to ensure you are being intentional about your content.

Sure, Your Technology Is Transformative

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So why isn’t your customer experience?

There. I said it out loud. It sucks to be your customer. Why?

  • You don’t list the size information on the product page.
  • Or you do list size information, but it’s generic for any brand, and you sell multiple brands.
  • I was able to live chat with your customer support and they told me to look on the product page for the size info. When I said it wasn’t there, they told me I should Google it.
  • I swear to God, your CSR told me to Google it.
  • You spam me constantly on every social media channel telling me how great you are.
  • You haven’t taught me anything.
  • I have to Google it when I want to find out how to use your software.
  • I don’t feel smarter for using your product.
  • The ink level indicator only sort of works for your printer.
  • When I replace the ink, sometimes it works, but sometimes not.
  • When I go on your website to find out why the ink cartridge didn’t reset the ink level indicator, I can’t figure out why.
  • When I get an error message, your website doesn’t tell me why, even if I search for that error message number.
  • Your error messages don’t have numbers, so I can’t even Google them to find out what’s wrong.
  • Your website must make sense to someone (surely), but I can’t find what I’m looking for.
  • You use words that aren’t familiar to me, but I think you do offer the service I need. I just can’t figure out for sure.
  • Every piece of marketing material you have requires me to talk to a person to get any real information. I’m trying to vet you before I invest in talking to a person.
  • Every piece of valuable content on your site is a PDF. I am not downloading anything here.
  • You seem like a great marketer, but I can’t tell if you’re just as great at what you do.
  • Your design is slick and modern, but I can’t tell where to click or what to do.
  • I’ve used your app dozens of times and I still can’t remember where to click to do what.
  • Your instructions sound like they were written in another language and translated poorly into mine.

I could go on. Frankly, we’ve all been guilty of at least some of these things. So don’t think I’m speaking from on high here. In fact, many (but not all) of these things are hard to foresee if you’re part of the organization selling the product or service.

The Real Problem Is Communication

Many of your problems are actually just customer communication issues. You didn’t foresee what we needed to know. You assumed we knew something we didn’t. You assumed we called it the same thing you do. You assumed what was obvious to you would be obvious to us. You didn’t realize we’d need that piece of information to buy or use your product. You have the information but didn’t think to post it on your site. You spent so long designing your app you forgot what the first-time (or 25th-time) user experience felt like.

Content Strategy Fixes Your Customer Experience

Yep, it’s true. (I’m sure you’re not surprised at our position on this.) Whether you’re designing a product, creating a digital experience, or putting together instructional content or marketing information, defining and using a content strategy will help you ensure that your customer experience is just as transformative as your technology.

The Content Role in Your Brand Experience

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People ask me fairly often when and how content should be included in the product design process, or in a marketing campaign.

I have to admit, these questions confused me for a long time.

I finally realized that my own perspective gave me blinders to the way the rest of the world thinks about content. Once I understood that, it changed the way I talk about content and its role in the brand experience.

You see, most of us think about content as an expense: How much (money, time, resources) will it cost me to get some words/images/videos here on the website or app?

If that’s the way you think about content, I invite you to envision something different.

Imagine that your customers feel your products or services seamlessly align with their needs. You fit perfectly in their lives. They feel empowered, and they even believe they are part of your organization.

Does that sound a little crazy?

Yet it’s possible.

Here’s the trick: If you think about content as an expense, you’re treating it as a commodity. You insert words here, add images there, post a video on the other to explain your message to your customer. If that’s the way you go about it, it doesn’t matter so much what content you choose. You are pushing information at your audience.

But what about this idea? Consider the possibility that:

Content is the vehicle that delivers your brand promise. 

It’s easier to envision this if you’re in the service business, or if your product is purely digital — an app or a website. You literally are in the information business, and content is definitely information. But it’s also voice and tone and structure.

Even if your product is physical, I will still argue that content plays a central role. If you’ve bought an Apple product in the past few years, think about how the experience is fundamentally different than buying anything remotely technical 20 years ago. Most products used to ship with both a lengthy, detailed manual, and a “quick start” guide. (Many still do.) For many products, you needed that information, even if you’d owned a similar product in the past.

Even Apple’s product mix shows intense thought about what customers want and need: They offer far fewer options of almost everything they create than does any potential competitor. Their websites are geared toward two things: Making you feel smart and futuristic for wanting their products, and walking you through simple feature comparisons to decide which version to buy.

When you do buy a product, the entire experience has been designed — content included — to make it simple for you to use. So you don’t get a big manual with any Apple product anymore. You get a very minimalistic quick start type guide, but you also get an experience that walks you into your first use of the product very quickly. The training is baked into the experience.

Then There Is the Other Way

I received a nice camera for my birthday one year when I was a teenager. I learned to use it pretty quickly, and for years, I took beautiful pictures everywhere I went. Yes, I have all sorts of embarrassing pictures of my college friends. They’re all stuffed in boxes at home, waiting for perhaps our 50th reunion to come out of hiding. But I also was able to take stunning portraits of my oldest child when she was young.

And then we all started to switch over to digital cameras. When DLSRs first became a thing, I never seemed to have the extra cash on hand to shell out more than $1000 to get one. And my nearly 20-year-old film SLR still worked beautifully. But I got a digital point-and-shoot with decent zoom and stuck it in my purse. I used that camera a lot for a few years. It wasn’t as good as my SLR, but it was easy to take with me. And then my smartphone camera got to be good enough that I took most pictures with that.

I finally bought a mirrorless camera last year. Once again, I’m back in the land of fancy cameras with interchangeable lenses, but now it’s all digital, and wow, have things changed.

My new camera came with a long, detailed manual and a quick start guide. I flipped through the manual, and when I saw how dense and jargon-filled it was, I set it aside. I walked through the quick start guide (because I couldn’t even figure out how to press the shutter without it), and I’m muddling through. I figured out how to take pictures and video. I have sort of figured out how to turn the flash on and off, but it’s been awhile, so I’m fuzzy on that. I definitely figured out how to transfer the photos onto my computer. And I need a weekend to sit down and read that damn manual to learn how to do anything else.

I went to the manufacturer’s support site to see if they had anything helpful, and I found that there are 7 different manuals for this one product available for download. At this point, it won’t shock you to hear that I can’t really figure out from the manual titles which one I should start with, or which is most likely to get me up to speed on the features I’d like to use most.

What Kind of Role Should Content Play?

Could a better content strategy fix my problem of learning how to use my new camera? Probably. One of the challenges with the camera is that it has multiple menus available, and I am having trouble remembering which feature is accessible via which menu. My most significant challenge is that the shooting modes available for selection on a dial are different than I’m used to, and some are identified with icons that are unique to my camera brand.

I don’t know yet if there’s a labeling problem (which is a common issue across industries), but I definitely know there’s a decoding problem. It’s too hard for me to find the information to remind myself what the different modes are called and what they do.

If your product is complex, the role of content is critical in the customer experience.

A smartphone and a camera are different products, but the similarities are great. And I can’t help but think that Apple approaches the customer experience in a fundamentally different way than my camera manufacturer did. I just can’t imagine that the camera company said, OK, we’re getting ready to design lots of new features and incorporate new technology into our cameras. Let’s also think through the user experience of buying, owning, and using the camera to ensure that it’s as intuitive as possible for our customers. If anyone had said that, they wouldn’t have sent me what they did.

Instead, I think they went out and designed lots of new features and new technology, and it’s undoubtedly wonderful and will take superb photos, if I ever find the time to read and work through the dense user manual to explain it all.

For Products And Services, the Content Role Matters

Whether you’re creating products or services, the way you design and shape your customer’s experience is all about the content. Content isn’t just the words you slap on at the end of the creative process. Content is how your customers experience your product or service. Give content a chair at the table from the first strategy meeting forward, and it will pay off in the end.

 

In Which We Celebrate Metadata

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My essay on metadata is featured in this new book by Ray Gallon.Ray Gallon has created another great book in the Content Wrangler book series, focused on terms and ideas that are essential in technical communication. I was so pleased that Ray asked me to adapt a previous essay I’d done on metadata for this effort.

XML Press published Ray’s book, The Language of Technical Communication, a few months ago, and he’s been featuring a new term each week on the book’s site. Today, metadata is the term of the week! Take a look to see how metadata can help your technical communication efforts.

Why you should care about metadata

Quick insight: Metadata is the information about content that helps software make content even more powerful. Think about facets like the dates related to content, author, source, topics, and lots more information that you can use to structure your content work within a software framework. You can use metadata to write rules to extend the power of your content automatically.

If you haven’t seen the inner workings of a content management system before, you may not realize it, but it’s pretty easy to publish content without ever thinking about the structure of the content. You can ignore how the content relates to other content or topics. And you can place your content manually. And you may not realize it, but that is awful!

When we use computers to design experiences — websites or apps — we need to take full advantage of the efficiencies available with today’s sophisticated software. And that means thinking about how our content works together as a part of the experience. Metadata makes that possible. When we define the facets and categories and information related to our content, we can use that information to make content management and content publishing far easier.

Check out my essay on metadata, or get Ray Gallon’s book on technical communication today.