Last summer, we published a popular article on three content strategy practices that will make you a better content marketer. Over the phone number list past few months, we've discussed these and several other topics in greater depth. Why are we so passionate about content strategy in the marketing world? As I mentioned in the phone number list original article, marketers have a lot to learn from content strategists. Our intention is not to turn you, dear marketer, into a content strategist; rather, we want to help you understand how to take what content strategists have been doing phone number list for years and apply it to your marketing. (You may want to hire a content strategist, and if so, there are two main types to consider.)
Content inventory and audits
Publishing to Start: How to Stop Worrying and Love Content Inventories and Audits by Marcia Riefer Johnston (from an interview with Paula Land) .Is your content full of ROT: redundant, outdated or trivial information? Do you even know that? ROT hurts phone number list content performance. An inventory and an audit can help. Are your eyes already rolling behind your head at the thought of doing a content inventory and audit? Is it really necessary to go through all that phone number list content you've posted? If you want to provide a great experience for your users and help your business achieve its goals, the answer is an emphatic yes.
This example from Gerry McGovern, which I shared in my original article, is worth recounting. Gerry worked with Columbia College in Chicago to reduce the number of pages on its website: from 36,000 to 944. Result: Student inquiries went from 477 per month to 855. Think about it! They took down 35,000 web pages and the response rate doubled. Why? Chances are that visitors will now come to the phone number list website on up-
Metadata
Post to Get Started: Metadata 101 for Content Marketers: Your Questions Answered by Michele Linn (Based on an interview with Rachel Lovinger). If you want your content to get to the phone number list right place at the right time – or if you want readers to discover related content and become more engrossed in your site content – your metadata is essential. I don't know phone number list of a way to have content organized without metadata.
Categories and blog tags are two types of metadata that you can probably easily view. Among other benefits, categories and tags give people – both inside and outside the phone number list company – an easy way to surface related content by subject (e.g. metric) or type of content (for example, templates). In some cases, this surfacing is built into the phone number list interface so that related topics appear automatically. In other cases, people bring up related topics themselves by clicking on a category or tag name.
Digital governance framework
Digital governance formalizes which members of your digital content team are responsible for all the phone number list different aspects of creating, producing, distributing and maintaining content – and for creating, maintaining and communicating those contents. Content standards across the organization. Think of it as a way to assign roles and responsibilities for making decisions about your company's digital presence especially important for behind-the-scenes responsibilities, such as reviewing and refreshing older content.
One of my favorite insights from Lisa Welchman at the phone number list 2016 Intelligent Content Conference is that you can usually check out a company's website and say how aligned their teams are. If your information is siled, chances are your teams are too. On the phone number list other hand, if your information is customer-centric, chances are your teams are too.
Governance is the phone number list key to well-managed content. As Lisa puts it, “Most digital governance issues come from not knowing who is supposed to decide things.” Read Marcia's article to learn more about how to think about and implement digital governance in your organization. (You can also download a detailed guide based phone number list on Lisa's session and get this template to help you make governance decisions.)
Agile Marketing
Publish to Get Started: Your phone number list Content Team Can Sprint with Agile Marketing by Andrea Fryrear. On a personal note, I'm very interested in Agile marketing as I try to organize and prioritize our content ideas and activities at CMI. It's so easy for the phone number list team to feel overwhelmed with where to start or jump from one brilliant idea to another.