Confessions of a Content Strategist: Sarah Maxell Crosby

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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

OIAM: Tell me about your background and how you got started in content strategy.

SMC: My background is basically a patchwork of communications jobs, ranging from PR to marketing to film and video production, as well as some freelance project management and editing. About five years ago, I joined the office of the President at Dartmouth [College] as a writer and communications specialist. In that role, I had to be a master of voice--I was constantly writing as someone else--and I ended up training about 60 people across campus to write in the president’s preferred style. So much of our focus was on interpersonal communication on a micro level, and I became very interested in how we could better communicate with our audiences on a broader scale and online. The last project I completed for the President’s Office was a site celebrating 40 years of coeducation, which featured profiles of Dartmouth community members who had made an impact on the campus during that time. When Web Services wanted to add a content strategist to their team, they felt that my communications experience, my deep knowledge of Dartmouth and my enthusiasm for finding better ways to communicate made me a good fit. I’ve been in the role for just over a year now.

OIAM: What is a major challenge you just experienced with content and what solutions did you use to solve it?

SMC: We’re in the midst of a major migration of our 200+ sites to a new design and new CMS (Drupal). We’re nearly finished migrating the academic departments, and we’ve started to work on centers, which are much more complicated beasts. The first center site, in particular, is complex in that it is made up of a number of smaller institutes and groups, each with a very different focus, that fall under a global umbrella. We needed to devise an information architecture for the site that would be clear and easy to navigate for the very diverse audiences. It had to allow the diverse subgroups to share information when necessary to avoid content duplication while letting each stake their own claim in the online space. We ended up creating a top-level navigation focusing on subgroup-spanning tasks (such as curriculum, funding and opportunities for involvement), and we are building the site so that every page is taggable. We are using tags to dynamically create microsites for each of the five subgroups. For example, details on a global health fellowship for students will appear not only under “Funding Opportunities” in the main site architecture but also on the global health microsite. This allows us to meet the users where they are without duplicating content. It’s one of many small ways in which we are exploring sharing structured content. We have big plans for a broader shared content repository that would span sites and counteract some of the siloing that is so common in higher ed. For now, we’re in the brainstorming stage of that project while we continue to build sites for stage one of the migration process.

 

OIAM: What, in your opinion, is the biggest challenge for content professionals currently in the marketplace?

SMC: I think the biggest challenge is getting people who are not content professionals to see the value in investing in content. Creating and maintaining excellent content requires time and expertise, and with increasingly limited resources, people want to cut corners. I think the solution is to arm yourself with data, using analytics and user testing to show how much more effective well-crafted content can be. The other thing that we are doing is to provide additional training to our site editors. We have nearly 500 site editors making updates to our sites, and most don’t consider themselves to be content professionals. If we can get most of those site editors to learn even two or three tricks to improve their content, we’re raising the base level of what we expect from our content. That frees me up, as the sole content strategist for over 200 sites, to focus on higher-level improvements.

OIAM: What do you think the next “big” thing in content will be?

SMC: I think streamlined content is key. People are consuming and sharing content in ever-smaller bites. We’re absolutely flooded with media and our attention spans are shorter than ever. As we move forward, being able to make an impact with the absolute minimum of content is essential, and this is where visual literacy is so important, too. Content professionals need to be fluent in visual expression as well as mastering verbal economy.

OIAM: Anything else you’d like to add?

SMC: My title is web content strategist, and I work for Dartmouth's Web Services department. You can find me on Twitter at @choiceofpies.

HOW TO SPARK AND SCALE ENTERPRISE CONTENT STRATEGY

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Colleen Jones Talks with Content Visionaries at Dell

POSTED BY
COLLEEN JONES

JUL 17 2013

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Smart companies recognize the importance of smart content.

Diane Bunton, Marketing Director for Global Online Content Operations at Dell Inc., explains

“Dell has a practical, no-nonsense approach to helping customers do more. We want our content to be relevant for the decisions our customers are making.”

But how do you ensure a strategic approach for each and every piece of content across your entire organization, especially if it’s large? In other words, how do you make enterprise content strategy work? It’s a question facing enterprises across industries and around the world.

At the Fortune 50 technology leader Dell, the company’s portfolio of end-to-end  solutions demands compelling content for products, services and markets worldwide—from marketing all the way through technical support. Getting all of that content right is a massive, complex challenge.

So Dell’s leadership tackled the question head on. Their answer? Build a content strategy that scales.

Let’s take a closer look at the content challenges Dell faces and how content visionaries such as Diane are overcoming them by forging a united vision for content strategy and enabling global teams to implement that vision.

THE CHALLENGES THAT SPARKED A CONTENT STRATEGY SOLUTION

Because it covers an extensive range of products, services and markets, content creation at Dell involves hundreds of employees and takes place all over the world, from the company’s Round Rock, Texas, headquarters to the UK, Japan and beyond.

Until recently, operations had been segmented around business units, with content following as an extension of that segmentation. As is often the case in large enterprises, content at Dell was being produced in decentralized silos that didn’t always coordinate. What makes Dell different from many large companies? Thought leaders realized there had to be a better approach—and that approach involved content strategy.

Brennan Dell, the company’s Director of Marketing Education, explains that he and others came together and discussed a different philosophy…

“Let’s rein this back in, and not only decrease the number of people with the ability to create content, but sync up our approach and get more consistent about our strategy for content creation and maintenance.”

Of course, taking a content-first approach means more people have to collaborate across different teams. Aaron Burgess, Dell’s Senior Manager for Content Strategy, explains

“If we are building an interface that is just one company collecting content from all these different silos into one presentation layer, then holy cow, we need a plan for how we work together.”

Dell started to do things differently on key projects—with much success. One big win was the content strategy to support the launch of Dell’s 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers. The right promotional content in campaigns, through social media, and on the Dell.com home page drove people to in-depth content about the new PowerEdge launch on Dell.com.

This sample flow shows how Dell strategically planned the PowerEdge content that customers needed. Dell sought to repeat successes like this by scaling content strategy.

Why did this success happen? Because of content strategy. Instead of operating in silos, teams collaborated and coordinated with one another from start to finish.

“We realized this is the way we should be doing it in the future,” Brennan notes.

That realization raised a new question and a challenge: How do you scale a strategic approach for each and every content project or effort at a global enterprise? With so many people involved in the planning, creating, and building / publishing phases of content, the challenge is not small. That’s where my team and I collaborated with Aaron, Brennan, and Diane.

Let’s take a closer look at the approach and insights from our recent collaboration with Dell that might help your organization adopt content strategy.

TRAINING AND TOOLS: SECRETS TO SCALING CONTENT STRATEGY

After talking with stakeholders from several different Dell content teams, we realized that scaling content strategy would take alignment around two things:

• A core vision for content strategy.
• A practical framework and supporting tools for implementing content strategy.

As Diane notes

“We have multiple marketing organizations—search, video, product, and more—but we need our customers to have a similar experience, no matter where content is coming from. We wanted to get all of our content teams aligned on the basic goals.”

So, together, that’s what we did. The key? A two-part system of training and tools.

1. In-Person and Remote Training

We developed an in-person and remote training course for Dell’s headquarters and key global markets. The goals included articulating the value of content strategy, offering a unique vision for it at Dell, and empowering people to apply it. Brennan confirms,

“It was a good level-set across Dell’s online division on the importance of content strategy, why we need to have a content strategy brief, and what goes into creating a good content environment and user experience.”

A few elements of the training made it work well: relevance, credibility, and case studies.

Relevance

At Dell, “content” often translates to “marketing,” so the training focused on content strategy from the perspective of marketers. As Aaron notes,

“The course was was speaking their [marketers'] language right from the start.”

Credibility

I personally led each session with a wide variety of professionals across different teams at Dell. Not only did I enjoy the insightful questions and diverse perspectives, but my background enhanced the training’s credibility. Diane points out,

“People appreciated meeting the author of Clout, a thought leader in the field.”

Professionals from different teams and with different perspectives at Dell came together for training in content strategy.

Case Studies

Sometimes, the best way to learn something is by example. Diane explains,

“It was really helpful to see the case studies within technology and also in different industries.”

But, the training would not be complete without the right tools.

2. Practical Tools

We provided several tools to empower Dell employees to do more with their content. “These were great supplements to the delivered training,” Brennan notes.

The Content Strategy Brief (sample shown) helps everyone involved in content ask the right planning questions.

• The Content Strategy Quick Guide
  A concise recap of the training’s main takeaways that content planners, creators, and managers can refer to frequently.
• Content Strategy Brief Template
  A custom template that promotes planning and communication before, during, and after content is created and launched.
• Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content
  My book, with even more tools, resources, and case studies.

So, what were the results?

THE RESULTS

The training and tools have fanned the spark of content strategy at Dell into more of a flame. Aaron notes

“The biggest success so far has been changing the conversation and getting people speaking with a similar vocabulary about content at Dell.”

The content strategy brief brings that conversation to life in actionable ways. Diane elaborates,

“I’m seeing people ask more questions like the ones in the Content Strategy Brief and do more planning at the front end of a content project.”

Dell has also set up a repository for the training resources and tools, which Burgess says has been active with people accessing and downloading them. He notes,

“Each of these things is a little seed that’s being planted, and I’m confident that we’ll see more good results as more people adopt and evangelize the lessons from the training.”

TAKEAWAYS FOR YOUR ENTERPRISE

If your organization suffers from silos or faces other scaling challenges like those at Dell, then you can learn from the technology giant’s example.

• Reach out across teams and silos.
• Talk through a more strategic approach to content.
• Get a big content “win” to spark interest and support.
• Scale the content strategy with relevant training and practical tools.

Change at this scale takes time, but it will happen. And, the results will be well worth the wait.

For Ecommerce Branding, Use Videos

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MARCH 08, 2013 · BY EZRA FIRESTONE

 

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In today’s social climate, it is more important than ever to create a recognizable brand for your store. Vital to that effort is building a relationship between your store and your customers that exceeds the usual search-click-buy interaction.

Most storeowners think about two things: traffic (how to get more targeted visitors to their websites), and conversion (how to turn those visitors into buyers). Few realize that there is a critical third piece to the puzzle: community engagement. This means connecting with your customers by adding value to your marketplace beyond just listing products for sale. By interacting with your customer outside of the sales process, you create more opportunities to build familiarity and trust for your brand.

People prefer to purchase from companies they know and trust. When you establish yourself as more than just another company peddling a product, you give consumers more reason to purchase from you, rather than your faceless competitors. This is the basic principle behind ecommerce branding.

So what is branding, exactly? Is it a color scheme, a logo, a sound? It is more than the sum of its parts. It is the feeling your customers associate with your store. This feeling is shaped by all the interactions they have with any facet of your business.

Videos on Informational Pages

Some of the most commonly overlooked opportunities for branding on an ecommerce store are on the pages that provide additional company information, such as your privacy policy, shipping information, contact, and about us pages. Believe it or not, people read these. By doing so, they give you the chance to build and shape your relationship with them. It is a perfect opportunity for some face time via a video explaining the details on each of those pages. This has the added benefit of increasing your store’s conversion rate. These videos — particularly the shipping information and FAQ videos —can also be placed on your individual product pages, which will increase your conversion rate all the more. This works best on a template that allows tabbed product details.

Zappos understands this and does a very good job implementing it on its "Shipping and Returns" page.

Zappos includes a helpful video on its Shipping and Returns page.

Educational, How-to Videos

One of the best ways to build brand recognition within a market is to offer something beyond products to your customers. This could be solving a problem your customer has, via an educational guide about a product line, a how-to video, a product bundle, or a list of resources.

I recently experienced this strategy as a consumer. I was shopping for a new video microphone. I did my research and picked the one I wanted. As I compared prices online, I found the product for roughly the same price on several different sites. One site grabbed my attention, however, and it had nothing to do with the price. The site, The Podcaster's Studio, is not a store. It's an informational hub about audio and electronics. It contains an educational video on how to use the mic and how to pair it with complementary products — which it listed.

I ended up purchasing the products through the site's affiliate links because it added the most value to my shopping experience. When I need another piece of electronic equipment, I’ll check that site first and likely buy from its recommended products — i.e., affiliate links — because I trust its expertise. By offering more than just a "search-click-buy" experience, the site branded itself to me as a helpful source for making purchasing decisions about audio and video equipment.

An educational product video is an opportunity for branding. This one on The Podcaster's Studio, an informational hub, explains how to use a microphone.

This educational video strategy should be applied to all of your best selling products in our ecommerce store. Video on product pages typically increases conversion rates. Simple how-to videos are easy to create. A similar option is a how-to-choose video, as seen in the example below. This is a good choice if you have multiple products in a category. It allows you to explain the differences and features of each item in more detail than you could in a written description.

Simple how-to-choose videos are easy to create and can lead to more conversions. This video, from Bella Luna Toys, explains how to purchase a harp.

Summary

Taking advantage of all available opportunities to connect with your customers via video allows you to become more than just another faceless company. This leads to more satisfied customers and more repeat business. It builds your brand.

Becoming a Great UX Consultant, Part 1: Some Myths

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By Baruch Sachs

Published: February 4, 2013

“A big part of understanding what makes a great UX consultant great is understanding what deficiencies hinder greatness.”

I have been a UX consultant, in one form or another, for about 15 years now. After 15 years of doing the same thing, I have a decent amount of experience to look back and reflect on, so it seems a good time to examine where I’ve been and where I might want to go as a UX consultant.

If I were honest with myself, I would have to say that, out of those 15 years, I’ve considered myself to be a great UX consultant in maybe only the past five years or so. Admitting that makes me realize that I would also like to explore and articulate how UX consultants go from good to great. This is a question that I get a lot from others. So, over my next few columns, I’ll explore this topic in greater depth. In Part 1 of this series, I’ll discuss some myths about what makes a UX consultant great. A big part of understanding what makes a great UX consultant great is understanding what deficiencies hinder greatness.

Myth 1: Great Design Skills Are Key to Being a Great UX Consultant

“Being able to communicate the intricacies and particulars of your designs effectively is critical to your acceptance as a trusted advisor.”

Eh…, maybe not. I know plenty of amazing designers. People who can take the most obscure vision and convoluted requirements and turn them into elegant, natural, sophisticated, yet simple designs. Yet, for all of their superiority in design, great designers are sometimes unable to communicate effectively. Some designers like to say that their designs speak for themselves; but when you’re a consultant, clients may perceive that outlook as arrogance.

Being able to communicate the intricacies and particulars of your designs effectively is critical to your acceptance as a trusted advisor. I’ll freely admit that I am not the very best at design. I have very well-educated ideas about what is good versus bad design, what represents the right design for the domain I’m working in, and so on, but when it comes time to actually create a design, I recognize that there are people who are far better than me.

However, some of those people who are great at design may need a lot of help with communication. They might not know how to sell their designs. Or perhaps they don’t know how to make people comfortable, knowing that they not only know design, but can execute a design project. It is this type of communication that is very important to winning clients’ trust, helping them to believe that you are able not only to design something, but to complete their project successfully.

There is no doubt that being a great designer is a strength. However, if you focus just on your design skills, you’ll never be a great UX consultant.

Myth 2: Great UX Consultants Are Passionate People

“Someone who practices their craft passionately is different from a person who is just passionate. When you are truly passionate about your profession, you’ll do everything you can to master the intricacies of your discipline.”

Passion is, indeed, a key differentiator between merely good and great UX consultants. People who are passionate about what they do exude confidence and can get in tune with clients in a way that others cannot. But being passionate will get you only so far.

Passion does not make up for a lack of experience and knowledge about your area of expertise. I have worked with UX consultants who are extremely passionate, but incorrectly assume that they can use their passion to hide their lack of knowledge about user experience. Someone who practices their craft passionately is different from a person who is just passionate. When you are truly passionate about your profession, you’ll do everything you can to master the intricacies of your discipline.

In addition to being a master of your discipline, you also need to understand that it is almost always better to listen rather than to talk. People who have great passion for, but little depth in a subject do not make the best listeners. Sometimes, it is almost as if their passion ignites an insatiable need to talk.

When I interview people for a position on my team, I almost always let them ramble. I never make judgments about people solely on the basis of what they say, but also by what they do not say. A person who does not feel the need to ramble simply because the person on the other end of a conversation is keeping silent, a person who does not talk just to fill an empty space, that is a person I want on my team. A critical component of being a great UX consultant is just knowing when to shut your mouth. Don’t let your passion for what you do make you difficult to listen to. Great consultants know that they are there to listen just as much as they are there to offer guidance.

Myth 3: Knowledge Is Key to Being a Great UX Consultant

“Having knowledge about user experience without knowing how you should use it will hinder you in this profession.”

On the other hand, you can be truly knowledgeable about user experience and its tenets and still not be a great UX consultant. Knowledge will get you only so far. Having knowledge about user experience without knowing how you should use it will hinder you in this profession. There are plenty of consultants out there who have excellent depth and breadth in the UX professions, but are still not the ones clients look to when thinking of engaging a UX consultant.

Why? Because, although these people may be quite knowledgeable about user experience, clients just don’t want to work with them. Whether clients perceive them as arrogant, combative, or just plain reticent in communicating what they know, UX consultants who focus only on their knowledge will never be great consultants. Clients who hire UX consultants are more inclined to work with personable, effective communicators who not only know their discipline, but can easily convey their knowledge to others.

Conclusion

“Being a great UX consultant means a commitment to constantly improving yourself in a multitude of areas.”

What these myths reveal is that, to be the great UX consultant you strive to be, you really need to have quite a lot of depth and breadth. Yes, you need to be a very good designer. You need to be passionate about your profession. You need to be knowledgeable about user experience. But most of all, you need to be an amazing communicator who puts people at ease and makes them believe they cannot succeed without you. This ability does not come naturally to most consultants, but you must recognize that it is something you should continually work to improve. Being a great UX consultant means a commitment to constantly improving yourself in a multitude of areas.

Part 2 of this series will focus on some best practices and guidelines that will put you on the proper path to becoming a great UX consultant.

Becoming a Great UX Consultant, Part 2: Some Advice

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By Baruch Sachs

Published: April 1, 2013

“You must possess technical, design, and marketing skills to be truly successful as a UX consultant. I find that a large number of UX consultants have the most difficulty with that last skillset.”

Part 1 of this series addressed some myths about what people often believe makes for a great UX consultant. Now, in Part 2, I’ll share some advice that I’ve received from some truly great UX consultants or that I can offer from what I’ve observed through my own experience.

UX consulting always requires a three-pronged approach. You must possess technical, design, and marketing skills to be truly successful as a UX consultant. I find that a large number of UX consultants have the most difficulty with that last skillset.

In my experience, marketing in the world of UX consulting is not just about promoting yourself or your skillset. Marketing yourself means ensuring that the people who have hired you not only want to hire you again, but also tell their colleagues about you. In other words, you needradiation—both within and outside your clients’ organizations—to be successful. To accomplish this, people need to want to work with you. In user experience, the smartest person in the room is not necessarily the one who gets the work. The people who get the most opportunities are those who know how to work well with others, communicate well, and make people believe that they are the one who is going to deliver that amazing user experience they want for their product, application, or Web site.

With that in mind, I want to share three key points with you:

1. Stop educating people.
2. You’re there to consult, not to be right.
3. Know what you are and what you’re not.

1. Stop educating people.

“While our desire to educate is born out of noble intentions for the most part, a great UX consultant does not fall into this trap.”

A common belief among UX professionals is that we have a responsibility to educate others about what we do. We say to ourselves that bad design happens without people meaning for it to happen. If we could just get our clients to understand a few simple things, we could almost turn them into designers. If they just understood Gestalt principles or the basics of interaction design, we could raise the UX design bar.

While our desire to educate is born out of noble intentions for the most part, a great UX consultant does not fall into this trap. Something happens when you try to educate intelligent, busy people. You come off preachy. You come off arrogant. Your desire to transfer knowledge, more often than not, becomes a lecture. Intelligent, busy people hate being lectured.

You are not there to educate people. You are there to advise your client and guide the creation of an amazing user experience. You are the expert, that’s why they brought you in. Collaboration and openness is key here. People need to feel invested, not put upon.

2. You’re there to consult, not to be right.

“As a UX consultant, you must be able to admit when you have made a mistake and offer remedies to correct it.”

While you are, indeed, the UX expert, this does not make you infallible. I have worked with many UX consultants who were afraid to admit ignorance or that they were at fault if they were wrong about something. A lot of this stems from the fact that, as a profession, we have fought long and hard for acceptance within the business and IT communities. So we still feel the need to prove our value. Because of this, many UX consultants question: how can we show value if we admit that we are wrong?

I find that UX consultants sometimes fear that to err is to admit that user experience is at best subjective—even a very grey area that can have only limited impact overall. To become truly great UX consultants, we need to break free of that fear. While there is certainly a need for some caution here, as a UX consultant, you must be able to admit when you have made a mistake and offer remedies to correct it. This is where some UX consultants differ a bit from business consultants. The history of the profession of user experience makes it even more painful to admit that we’ve gotten a design wrong or our usability test results do not reflect actual use. Business consultants know that it is better to admit a misstep, then correct it before it becomes a larger issue.

As a UX consultant, you don’t need to be right all the time simply because your client hired you to be the UX expert. It is far more important to be a consultative partner with your client and help them create the user experience that they’re looking for. When UX professionals solve design problems, we try things out until we find the way that works best. Similarly, you can be truly consultative only if you participate in a collaborative process with your client and recognize that you will not be the one who has the right answer all the time. Other people will have great ideas, too. Sometimes you will make mistakes. It’s how you deal with them that makes you not just a good UX consultant, but a great one.

3. Know what you are and what you’re not.

“It is very important for UX consultants to be able to walk away from a potential consulting engagement with a client when they know they are not a good fit for it.”

User experience is a term that seems to mean everything these days. Unfortunately, this also means that user experience tends to mean nothing in particular. While there are loads of people out there calling themselves UX Consultants, it would be a mistake to think that any UX consultant could know everything about all of the subdisciplines under the UX umbrella these days.

For example, on my consulting team, everyone is a UX expert, but each of us has our own strengths. I had the luxury of building out a significant team that can handle a myriad of UX needs. Whether it is accessibility, user research, interaction design, or usability testing, I know I have someone on my team who excels at it. One- or two-person consultancies don’t always have that luxury, which is why it is very important for UX consultants to be able to walk away from a potential consulting engagement with a client when they know they are not a good fit for it.

When I started out in this profession, I used to think that one of the hallmarks of a great consultant, UX or otherwise, was being able to tackle a problem or a problem space in which they were previously weak and succeed at it. However, after observing talented UX professionals fail at projects they were ill equipped to handle, I started to realize that truly great consultants know when to walk away and hand a project to someone else. That is why, with the field of user experience being as vast as it is, it is critical that you be confident about what your greatest abilities are, but equally aware of which of your skills are not as strong—or even completely lacking. This not only helps you to be a better UX consultant, but improves the marketplace’s overall view of the profession.