Content connects people.<\/p>\n
A content strategy helps make that connection stronger. It brings focus to what you want to tell people. It helps you organize your content and your time.<\/p>\n
Why have a website at all? This may seem like a stupid question. But ask yourself when you look at your website why any of it is there? Who is it for? What is it trying to say?<\/p>\n
There are two golden rules<\/strong> to good content.<\/p>\n If your content doesn\u2019t do both of these things then you really don\u2019t need it on your website. Just get rid of it.<\/p>\n Small websites are easier to manage than big ones. Since this is obvious, why don’t more sites choose to be smaller?<\/p>\n David Hobbs (@jdavidhobbs<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Less content is easier for people to find and process. It allows greater\u00a0focus for your message.<\/p>\n Less content costs less to create and maintain.<\/p>\n So you might be thinking this is all very well, but some websites need\u00a0to have lots of content. But why have more content than you need?<\/p>\n How much do you need? Again, what are your key business\u00a0goals? What are people looking for?<\/p>\n Great content cannot be designed successfully by committee.<\/p>\n A problem I\u2019ve seen often\u00a0around our university is that content editors are put \u201cin charge\u201d of a website. Then they are swamped with requests from lots of people for content\u00a0that should be put on the website, right now.<\/p>\n This results in a sprawling, confusing and often contradictory mess. Of course it does. But it happens all the time because content creation has become\u00a0a reactive process. There is no strategy. There is no resource planning. There are no realistic priorities.<\/p>\n A content strategy should help give content editors\u00a0the freedom and confidence to create good, relevant content. It should allow all the stakeholders to understand clearly what the desired outcomes of the website are, and what priorities should follow from that.<\/p>\n Think about the person looking at your content. Think about where they will be and what they are trying to do. What are you trying to do right now?<\/p>\n You\u00a0don\u2019t really care where this post lives or how it was published. The content might be on a blog or it might be on Facebook or in a series of tweets? But you would\u00a0care if you found this post about content strategy, and then it told you something entirely different.<\/p>\n If you don’t know what people are looking for from your content, then ask them. There are lots of ways of doing this. I covered a few a while back in\u00a0a post about personas<\/a>\u00a0and a post about user-centered design.<\/a>\u00a0Site analytics are well worth looking at too, but only really tell part of the picture.\u00a0Taking this extra effort\u00a0can seem like a daunting process at first, but it really will save time, money, and effort later.<\/p>\n A\u00a0content strategy can provide a framework to help you\u00a0focus on the people using your content. Only then can you think about the best way of getting a clear message across to those people.<\/p>\n In my related post about content strategy<\/a>, I outline how content strategy works, and how you might go about building one. Or at least how you might start planning\u00a0a content strategy.<\/p>\n A big thanks to\u00a0the excellent book Content Strategy for the Web<\/a> by Kristina Halvorson (@halvorson<\/a>) and Melissa Rach (@melissarach<\/a>). It\u2019s a great read and a big help in getting me started with content strategy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
\n
Less content. More focus.<\/h2>\n
Business objectives: putting experts in charge<\/h2>\n
User needs: putting people first<\/h2>\n
Next steps: building a\u00a0content strategy<\/h2>\n
Further reading<\/h2>\n