Maximizing Your Return on Content
How to make your content more successful
Hilary Marsh, Chief Strategist & President Content Company, Inc.
A presentation at Gather Content webinar in March 2017 in by Hilary Marsh
How to make your content more successful
Hilary Marsh, Chief Strategist & President Content Company, Inc.
• Product data • Reports • Press releases • News stories • Customer success stories • Executive bios • Event information • Course details • Policies • FAQs • Mission statement • Job listings
Because the boss said so Because the committee asked us to Because the committee told us to Because we have this program Because we do this thing Because we created the information Because we have no way to say “no” to the request Because we think we have to Because everyone else is Because Because
Why are we publishing this?
The goal is NOT • It’s published • Lots of people look at it
• Meets a business goal • Satisfies a user need • Ideally, both
Organization meets its goals Users meet their needs
Organization focus Audience focus
Organization focus Audience focus
http://xkcd.com/773/
• Product data • Reports • Press releases • News stories • Customer success stories • Executive bios • Event information • Course details • Policies • FAQs • Mission statement • Job listings
Each piece of content needs a clear, explicit reason to exist
Examples: • Bring in non-dues revenue • Encourage joining or renewing membership • Raise awareness and perception of endocrinology • Help general practitioners care for patients • Inspire more people to register for the event • Reassure people about the organization’s stability • Raise the quality of job applicants
• Increase sales by identifying prospects and creating proper messaging • Drive communications by keeping managers aware of initiatives they should be out front on • Help the executive team in identifying future leaders through writing, social media and presentation workshops • Help keep the tech budget on target by running a lean, meannCMS —Ronell Smith
• Behavior flow and conversions • Direct and indirect feedback
—Jess Hutton
• Why are you publishing this content? • Why? • Why? • Why? • Why?
The reason is clearest when the content is first conceived.
• Reached the audience in the channel that matched their expectations • The audience took the action you wanted them to take • Users took the next step you wanted them to make • They were more satisfied with your organization • They called customer service less • They bought more stuff from you • They talked you up to their friends/family/colleagues
• Executives • Site management • Content owners • Users
• Site redesign required a news article for each update on the home page • Volume of news articles overwhelmed the site management staff • Viewership to each article was relatively low • Would fewer articles mean fewer views?
Benchmark where you are now • Content performance • Pain points • Tie back to business
What will constitute success? • Envision the desired goal • Make it measurable!
• Make sure your KPIs cover both organizational goals and user needs • Think about them from multiple perspectives
• Who needs to know? • How do they need to know it? • How to tweak it?
Measuring the goal, and using the information about what we find
• My article and worksheet https://contentcompany.biz/blog/return-on-content/ • Aligning Business Goals with User Goals in Content by Michael Andrews http://storyneedle.com/aligning-business-goals-with-user-goals-incontent/ • Making Content Measurable by Jess Hutton http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/making-content-measurable/ • Why Attempting to Establish the ROI of Content Is a Fool’s Errand by Ronell Smith https://medium.com/dissenting-opinion/why-attempting-to-establishthe-roi-of-content-is-a-fools-errand-d8b4fdfd3a6c#.39kpxyxzs
Thank you! Hilary Marsh President & Chief Strategist Content Company, Inc. hilary@contentcompany.biz @hilarymarsh
