Friday, February 06, 2009

Web Content Strategy
How to Plan for, Create, and Publish Online Content for Max ROI
Junta42.com

Better, in-depth notes from this offering here!

Why planning the structure of content is important before executing on your website.

Why content, and why now?

Marketer or publisher? We're all publishers, even as marketers, we're going back to the beginning. Our tools are publishing tools, but the challenge is marketers don't understand the publishing process and how to follow the right steps to meet ROI from the beginning.

Text, graphics, video/Flash, audio < content as it meets the needs of our customers.

Tell you story, motivate and engage your customers, manage expectations, brings your brand to life -- drives action OR inaction.

Need to avoid all-sales-y content in your enewsletters, etc. Needs to be truly informational and meet needs of customers, talk about how you meet their problems, THEN go sales-y.

Your content should meet reader needs first and foremost, it's all about your customers. Most marketers want to talk about products/services, customers want to know how you're meeting their needs and how you can cure their pain(s).

You must have something valuable to say or to show your customers in the social media space -- don't just talk about your products. You must have something valuable to say first or you won't be successful.

First listen, then talk.

The art of understanding what your customers need to know and delivering it to them in a compelling way.

56% of marketers are increasing their spending on content creation in 2009 (13% decrease).

Are you going to be the trusted solutions provider, or possibly your competitor?

The Problem & Its Impact
Planning for useful and actionable content... Many, many content folks in our orgs -- metrics/seo/info architect/etc. Not a lot of attention is being given to the sourcing, editing, publishing of the actual content itself.

Who is allocating the necessary resources to creating the actual content? We plan the look/feel and overall timeline, but the content itself is last on the list of priorities.

Start with a content strategy FIRST...

@halvorson suggest reversing (graphics)/(functionality)/(content) prioritization - to focus on content/seo first #oms09

Content is complicated, and needs to be weaved through a process to ensure that it aligns with your plans, needs, campaigns. Needs to be a benchmark of all content-related decisions.

Snag original slides, content generation strat = long process, multi-layered and detailed.

brain traffic blog = source for upcoming throughts on this topics...
http://braintraffic.typepad.com/braintraffic/content_strategy/

zenaweist: mint.com - knows what it's customer is looking for - homepage that speaks to "what I want?" - @halvorson - quicken.com...not so much #oms09

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