The perils of designing with real content

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Summary: In my clamour to get real content into design mockups I accidentally derailed the design process. Words are powerful – that’s why they may have to take  a back seat when the focus has to be on design.

I sat down all jazzed to write about using loreum ipsum in design mockups and Karen McGrane beat me to it. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

In response to anti-ipsum sentiment, she wrote:

How about this: build in appropriate intersections and checkpoints between design and content. Accept that it’s sometimes okay to focus just on the content or just on the design.

I’ve been on the sharp end of this issue – that is, whether it’s OK to use fake text when showing clients early drafts of your development work.

I’ve been to a few content strategy events where speakers have evangelised using real content from an early stage of the development process. It’s easy to get behind this argument. You’re building something around the content, right?

The days of developers making blank containers for us to come along later and drop content into are slowly dying out. So why would you use stupid text that doesn’t mean anything when showing your work to a client?

My bad experience with real content

I found out why about a month ago when a front end developer and I showed clients a mockup of a landing page we had worked on together. Throughout the project we had used informal working titles to refer to each section of content: the flowcharts, the chunks, the search. We were talking about what each bit of content was, not what it was for.

That’s fine if it stays in-house, but I wanted to be sure users had meaningful, useful labels and descriptions to help them navigate.  So – with the developer’s agreement – I wrote really solid navigation text. I did keyword research to find out what terms people favoured and looked at similar sites to see how they handled the same problems.

Doing it this way meant close collaboration with the developer. We agreed there were four main sections, with some need for an introduction and some extra links in a side panel. Writing my copy short enough to fit in the four main panels was a challenge, but at the end I was happy with the result.

When everything was finished and looking good we had a conference call with the project sponsors to see what they thought. My front end developer colleague wanted to hear what they thought of the colour, the prioritisation of information, the overall layout. In other words, the visual design. I wanted to know if they had any notes about the wording.

The call did not go well. We spent almost no time talking about any of the design elements and almost all of it listening to the clients’ concerns about some words they didn’t like. It was useful for me, but the developer was no further forward with his designs.

In hindsight I think we did the right things with good intentions. We were right to design around the content, and I was right to scrap the working titles and describe every section in useful terms.

But we slipped up by presenting two major new pieces of work together. The clients honed in on the wording they hated and the design discussion didn’t happen. What we should have done was design around the content and write the new descriptions, but switch them for lorem ipsum before getting the clients’ signoff on the design elements. The arguments about wording could have come next.

I think that would be the right order, because the names I had chosen were tightly constrained by the available space. There was no point in me agreeing great wording with the clients only to find it was hopelessly long and wouldn’t fit in any kind of useful design.

Words are powerful

Karen McGrane nails it with this observation:

Lorem Ipsum doesn’t exist because people think the content is meaningless window dressing, only there to be decorated by designers who can’t be bothered to read. Lorem Ipsum exists because words are powerful. If you fill up your page with draft copy about your client’s business, they will read it. They will comment on it. They will be inexorably drawn to it. Presented the wrong way, draft copy can send your design review off the rails.

That’s the hole I fell down.

In the rush to get content taken seriously enough, early enough, we sometimes risk underplaying the role of our development colleagues. We don’t like being told that the content is not that important or not worthy of analysis on its own. What designers and developers do is important and we should afford them the same courtesy.

My colleague needed the clients’ feedback, and the best way to get it at that stage would have been for my content to take a back seat. It’s about showing the right information at the right time. As content strategists that’s something we should be good at.

Will content strategy make itself obsolete?

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Summary: As content strategy becomes more widely adopted it may no longer be recognised as a distinct role and discipline.

Towards the end of Confab London 2013 it struck me how much of content strategy methodology could be summed up as common sense and good planning.

I don’t mean for a second to diminish the importance of content strategy. I use it every day in my work and consider it a framework for any kind of content creation. And really, that’s the point. Content strategy should be embedded throughout the content creation process.

In future, will content strategy just be thought of as ‘how content gets made’?

Maybe the only reason content strategy exists as a job role and a discipline is because so many organisations are so bad at creating and managing content in a measured, sustainable way. Maybe that won’t always be the case.

Will we need content strategists if the time comes when content strategy methods are generally acknowledged as the best way to create content?

Or rather: if everyone in the content workflow understands and follows these methods, will there be a need for a content strategist who advises them and their leaders?

Clearly, every organisation has leaders who set direction and help put practices in place that help meet organisational goals. Perhaps in future an editor-in-chief will be responsible for setting strategy and ensuring everyone works towards it, using what we call content strategy as the framework and methodology. Isn’t that the goal?

In this vision of the future, the success of today’s content strategists will be measured by their obsolescence. If we reach a point where content strategy is no longer its own discipline with its own practitioners, maybe that’s a sign that we’ve made it and the message has got through.

Disclaimer: I’m not sure if I totally buy my own argument, but I think it’s interesting and I’d love to hear what you think about this idea in the comments or on Twitter (I’m @contentscotland).

Confab London 2013 – day two

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Here’s my writeup of day one of Confab London 2013 in case you missed it.

Day two

I went into the second day a tiny bit fragile from the previous night’s beer and lack of sleep. On paper I had lower expectations for day two, but as the day went on I noticed a theme of good writing and editing, which I liked.

Confab crowd

Ginny Redish

Ginny got us started with a talk about writing for the web (although she pointed out, as others did, that good writing is good writing wherever it appears).

Here are some key points:

  • Content is a conversation between you and the user. Unlike print, the user starts the conversation online.
  • When planning content, focus on what you want the reader to do or achieve having read it.
  • Structure information as a bite, snack and a meal. The bite could be a heading, a snack could be a short snippet explaining what follows, and the meal is the full page of content.
  • Consider the questions the user may have for a piece of content – how much does this product cost, what colours does it come in, what does it look like – and answer them
  • Write calls to action from the user’s perspective (e.g. ‘start my 30 day trial’, not ‘start your 30 day trial’). In A/B tests this performs better.
  • Channel your personas and walk them through the conversation. Be the persona as you read the content aloud. Imagine their situation and see if the content addresses it.

Gerhard Arnhofer

Gerhard is a content strategist for Merck, a pharmaceutical company with an online presence 40 countries.

He gave an interesting talk about the challenges of centralising and organising such a massive operation. I know how hard it can be putting good practice in place in one language – imagine if you had 40 to contend with.

Some highlights:

  • Merck treats its website as a product with the same resources as the drugs they sell (a product manager and a marketing budget, among other things).
  • Gerhard would rather hire someone passionate who doesn’t yet have content strategy skills and training than a qualified person who was, in his words, boring.
  • Reuse the content that’s worth keeping – you don’t have to completely start over when you overhaul an organisation’s content strategy.

Sarah Richards

Later on we heard from Sarah Richards, who gave one of the most inspiring talks of the conference about her experiences at the Government Digital Service (GDS, responsible for GOV.UK among other things).

Key points:

  • Sarah created the excellent GOV.UK style guide.
  • GDS employs 200 people
  • Their ethos is ‘simpler, clearer and faster’.
  • To move from the old Directgov and various business websites to GOV.UK they had to audit 75,000 pages of existing content. They read every single one and weeded out the crap, ending up with 3,000.
  • During the audit they asked ‘what is the point of this content, do people want it, would people reasonably expect the government to meet that need, and can only the government meet it?’
  • If another organisation does a better job of providing information they cut it from GOV.UK – consumer rights information was one example.
  • Do the hard work to make things simple for the user.
  • They’ve kept some niche content on GOV.UK but don’t have it front and centre. [I wasn't sure if this meant it doesn't appear in navigation at all - Sarah mentioned using Google to find it]
  • GDS has saved £50-70 million so far.
  • They develop in-house – it’s cheaper and faster and they aren’t tied into contracts with suppliers.
  • Do less, do it better.

Matt Thompson

Matt Thompson

One of the more interesting talks of the conference came from National Public Radio’s Matt Thompson. He spoke about the narrative device of the quest (you know, hero from humble beginnings struggling against evil force to eventual triumph and acclaim).

The talk wasn’t the most relevant to my line of work (health information) – in fact, he pulled up a page from Web MD on groin pain as an example of when a quest narrative may not be appropriate. But Matt was such an engaging and affable speaker that it stood out as a highlight regardless.

A couple of interesting points from Matt’s talk:

  • By far your biggest audience is people who have never heard of you or your organisation. Fans and friends are important, but in the minority.
  • In an ongoing narrative that unfolds over time, start each update with a quick recap. It helps jog the reader’s memory and helps people join in if they haven’t followed up to that point.

Erin Kissane

Erin Kissane

Erin spoke about the role of editorial work, focusing on the problems and opportunities big data gives us.

Here’s a few points:

  • We need editorial work to help us through this period of rapid change.
  • How do we handle change – deride and ignore it, embrace it unquestioningly, or take what’s helpful and use it wisely? Erin said content strategy had been through periods of the first two, but it’s time for the third approach.
  • Editorial thought is not a red pen and it’s not about being a stickler. Erin gave an example of a colleague who said she was scared to send Erin an email in case she tore it apart.
  • Editing is a negotiation between the organisation and the user. [I think that sentiment could apply to content strategy as a whole]
  • We can learn from data journalists and we have a lot of data coming our way
  • Start with the question and see if the data supports it. It’s easy to be led in the wrong direction by data.
  • Decide what matters and learn how to measure it.
  • Editorial judgement fills the gaps between the numbers.
  • Don’t mistake numbers for objective facts.
  • Remember we shape the data by asking the right questions.
  • If you have to use online surveys, find out which of your audience refuses to fill them in and find some other way of reaching them.
  • How do we decide what’s important? Go back to editorial basics – what are you trying to accomplish, for whom, what do they need, what would success look like, how much of what we do is because of demand?
  • Don’t be passive – as editorial, you’re one of the people anyone presenting data needs to convince of its merits.
  • Detect bullshit – ask questions and be skeptical, but don’t assume all data is useless.

Ann Handley

Ann gave the closing keynote, which focused on creating a content brand. Ann comes from a marketing background, which isn’t really my area of interest, but she had some useful insights:

  • If your audience signed your paycheck, what would your content look like?
  • Would your customer thank you for your content? That’s the ultimate sign of utility.
  • Tap into conversations that are already taking place – it’s much easier than trying to get people engaged in a topic of your choosing. Ann’s colleague created a Slideshare presentation about the recent working-from-home discussion and got the company 3,000 new email subscribers.

Summary

For me, Confab London 2013 was a big success. It was well organised, the speakers ranged from very good to incredible, and I left with more questions than answers about what I’m doing at my day job. I take that as a good sign. It’s healthy to have your assumptions challenged.

Thanks to the organisers and speakers for a great event, and thanks to my boss for making sure I got to go. Bring on Confab London 2014!

Confab London 2013 – day one

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I was fortunate enough to have the chance to go to Confab London 2013 and I wanted to do a quick blog post about some of the speakers I heard and some of the main themes.

As expected, I’ve come away with a load of ideas for my day job as a content developer and strategist and the event was totally worthwhile. It was also brilliantly organised and run; I suppose that’s what you get when a bunch of content strategists put on an event.

It’s not possible to see everything at Confab, since some of the talks run concurrently, but I’ll do a recap of some of the talks I heard.

Kristina Halvorson

Kristina Halvorson

Kristina started us off with an opening keynote that did a nice job of setting the scene for the conference. Here are some of the main points:

  • We (conference attendees) should aim to take back a handful of lessons or tasks we wanted to apply to our day jobs – some of those things could be conversations we need to have with colleagues.
  • Make the distinction between copy (static, done once and left) and content (interlinked, moving, changing).
  • Move the content conversation from what, how, when – start asking whom, with what, where, how often, and what happens next?

Kate Kiefer Lee

Kate Kiefer Lee

I really enjoyed Kate Kiefer Lee from MailChimp’s talk. Kate is a prominent advocate of planning voice and tone, and she created MailChimp’s publicly available guidelines, which you can read at Voice and Tone.

I didn’t take many notes during Kate’s talk because her slides did a great job of explaining the main points and they’re being circulated soon. There’s a great podcast with her advice on voice and tone on the Lucid Plot blog.

Leisa Reichelt

Leisa Reichelt

Leisa Reichelt was up next, and she gave a great talk about strategic user experience. It focused on prototyping and iterating as a way of developing better content and of giving clients usable, working models rather than static wireframes and descriptions that could only ever be approximations of the product.

Some other key points:

  • Think about the hole, not the drill – the user is interested in what your content helps them do, not how it does it.
  • Try to quantify the financial cost of bad content.
  • Make, rather than document. Strategy lives in execution.
  • Avoid Photoshop – the idea that what you’re making will look exactly the same on all devices is a myth.

Karen McGrane

Karen McGrane

The closing keynote for day one was by Karen McGrane. I’m a big fan of Karen as a speaker, and as an advocate for structured content and the importance of mobile.

A phrase I particularly liked from her talk was “it’s not a strategy if you can’t maintain it”. Painful, maybe, but true.

There’s a video of Karen giving a version of this talk on her blog, which I urge you to check out.

Karen McGrane

Lighting talks

On the evening of day one we decamped to The Book Club in Shoreditch for drinks and a round of lightning talks by some brave volunteers.

Each speaker had five minutes to talk to a room full of content strategy nerds with slides that changed automatically. No pressure!

Michael Kirwan
Michael Kirwan

Nicole Jones
Nicole Jones

One thing that struck me about Confab as a whole was how many speakers described themselves as introverts. Maybe they have a different definition but there’s no way I’d have the guts to talk as ably as they did to such a knowledgeable audience. The overall standard of speaker across the two days was really, really high.

Here’s my writeup of day two.

How to implement a content strategy

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Summary: This is a list of resources that will show you how to do content strategy. I’ve tried to focus on useful, practical advice for turning content strategy theory into reality.

In the spirit of not adding content for content’s sake, this isn’t going to be a huge list. I’ve kept it to a handful of useful resources for each topic. I hope to keep working on this list over time to make it as valuable as possible.

I’ve used Content Strategy for the Web to structure this post and I highly recommend you buy a copy if you haven’t already.

Alignment

Alignment is about identifying the people who have a stake in your content, getting them on board and keeping them engaged and motivated.

Brain Traffic Alignment: the secret to a successful content strategy
CMS Wire 7 practical tips for getting stakeholder buy in
Digital Busy Bee Enlisting web content contributors within the organization
MarketingSherpa Blog Content marketing: 5 questions to ask subject matter experts to get the ball rolling
Vimeo Using content strategy to change your organisation, part 3: align—Kate Kenyon

Audit

Content audits are about taking stock of the content you have and figuring out how good (or bad) it is.

4Syllables Content audit guide and template
Content Insight Content analysis tool (CAT)
Econsultancy Start your content strategy with an audit
UX Matters Content analysis: a practical approach
Waltzing Matilda Building the mother of all content inventories

Analysis

Before you start to put a strategy in place there are a few things to consider. You need to find out the status quo before you can look at ways to improve it.

Internal analysis

So you’ve audited the content. Now it’s time to talk to the people in your organisation and find out how the content process works and where the problems are.

Content Strategy 101 Identifying and interviewing stakeholders
E3 Content Strategy Stakeholder interviews for quality content: Why, who, and how
Kevin P Nichols Newly revised content strategy stakeholder interview protocol

User research and user testing

It all comes back to the user. What do they want to achieve and how do they want to do it? Why not ask them?

A List Apart Usability testing demystified
Midcourse Corrections Identifying influencers: harnessing the power of individuals
Usable Interface User research
UX Matters Preparing for user research interviews: seven things to remember

Competitive analysis

It’s good to know what you’re up against – what are your competitors doing, and how can you get the jump on them?

Hubspot How to conduct competitive analysis to step up your content strategy
Meet Content Conducting a competitive analysis

Core strategy

The core strategy is your boiled-right-down mission. Everything in the content strategy universe is done in the name of the core strategy.

Brain Traffic Brain Traffic lands the quad!
Content is the Web On the content strategy quad, and what’s at the core

Content

Now we’re getting down to business. I’ll start off with a link that covers a good chunk of the content process then break it down into specifics.

A List Apart A checklist for content work

Audience

Here’s where you take what you learnt at the analysis stage from your stakeholder interviews and user research and use that information to create personas that represent your target audience.

Johnny Holland  Why personas are critical for content strategy
Point to Point Supplementing your persona-building for content strategy
Boagworld Defining your audience and their tasks

Messaging

Now we get into the murky world of marketing (just kidding). What message are you trying to get across with your content?

Content Strategy Scotland Objectives and messaging: the importance of planning your content
Openview Marketing Lab Building your content strategy with a message architecture
Web Standards Sherpa Designing for content: creating a message hierarchy

Topics

Here we consider the different types of content we’re going to produce and what it consists of. It’s crucially important when you come to creating a structure and for keeping some consistency for similar content.

24 Ways Extracting the content
A List Apart Content modelling: a master skill
A List Apart Content templates to the rescue
Blenderbox How to create a content model: an overview
Gadgetopia The necessity of a content index
GatherContent A guide to strategic content templates
Lullabot Ideas Deblobbing your chunks: building a flexible content model

Purpose

It’s good to have an understanding of the different purposes content can have – should it inform, entertain, persuade, or do something else?

Meet Content Content with purpose: ready, set, action!

Voice and tone

What does your organisation sound like and how does it communicate with its users? Voice and tone guidelines are invaluable for your content creates and to maintain a common thread through all your output.

CMS Wire Content strategy: 5 ways to find your voice and tone
iAcquire The face of your content: message, voice & tone
Lucid Plot Kate Kiefer Lee podcast interview: voice & tone at MailChimp
Voice and Tone (MailChimp) About voice and tone

Sources

Ah, the everlasting debate about whether to create content, aggregate it from elsewhere or curate it. Throw user-generated content into the mix and you’ve got plenty to consider.

Katalistik To create or curate content?
Mountain Media The benefits of user generated content and how to implement it
Terralever To aggregate, syndicate or curate…that is the question

Structure

You’ve got a load of awesome content, but don’t think your work is done. Creating a structure for it that makes sense to your users is so important – if they can’t find the content they need, what’s the point?

Brain Traffic An intro to metadata and taxonomies
CMS Wire The importance of metadata in content management
Mark Boulton Structure First. Content Always.
Meet Content It’s the little things: why microcopy matters
Nielsen Norman Group Card sorting: how many users to test
Usability.gov Card sorting

People

Those pesky humans. This section looks at the processes and roles that you’ll need for a sustainable and valuable content publishing process.

Workflow

Workflow is about how your content gets published – who does what, and what tools do they need to help them do it? I particularly value what Meet Content have to say about workflow, because they’re awesome.

Arts & Farces Workflow
Braun & Company Editorial style guides – types of guides and how to create one
HowTo.gov Migrating to a CMS
Integrated B2B 7 ways to keep your subject matter experts feeding the content machine
Meet Content Content worksheets for editorial workflow
Meet Content Designing content workflow for your CMS
Meet Content Guidelines for effective editorial calendars
Meet Content Web writing guidelines for content contributors

Governance

Governance is about who makes decisions about content and how those decisions are communicated.

ASIS&T Developing a content maintenance and governance strategy
CMS Wire Content strategy: 5 essentials for governance success
UX Magazine Get your content strategy out of the drawer with governance

Selling content strategy

So you’re convinced that content strategy is the answer to your organisation’s problems. How do you sell it to senior management? Seriously, just read Gerry McGovern.

A List Apart The case for content strategy—Motown style
Brain Traffic Give content strategy a fighting chance
CMS Wire Three ways to get buy-in from the corner office
Gerry McGovern Web professionals are change managers
Meet Content Selling content strategy: a continuous process
Web Managers  10 tips for selling content strategy to your organisation

Miscellaneous

These are a couple of links that didn’t really fit anywhere else but that I think are valuable enough to include anyway.

GOV.UK Government service design manual (beta)
Editorially Writing a better terms of service