Content strategy is a dilemma.
Do not worry. I don't apply Bostonian jargon.
Issue sinister difficult to resolve because “requirements are incomplete, contradictory, or a change that can be difficult to discern. ”
I like information researcher Jeff Conklin's description of bad problems because those "problems" aren't understood until a solution is found. ”
I see a lot of bad stuff in content strategy. One of the hardest things is realizing why you need to change when you can't see how things are broken.
One of the hardest things to realize is why you should change when you can & # 039; didn't see how things were broken, @Robert_Rose said via @CMIContent. Click to Tweet
Create an evil problem
My wife and I hang around in our kitchen just fine. We cook. The kitchen got messy. We clean up and put things back where they went. We do the same thing at the next meal. It works well for us.
Recently, a friend came to dinner and wanted to help us cook. It was pure chaos. “Nothing is in the right place,” said our guest. She went to our trash drawer to find silverware and opened our spice cabinet to find plates. “Don't even make me start with how the fridge is organized,” she says.
My wife replied, “This is how we've been doing it for years. It worked for us. ” Then I said, “That's how we do it. It's an optimized process. ”
Our friends played along and said, “No. That's how you do it. But it is not optimized. ”
She was right. As she showed how things could have been more efficient, we realized we had a problem.
A bad problem.
In content strategy, experts often say document indicates a business's commitment to its content. On the surface, a document seems oddly bureaucratic. How to make a powerful Google Docs or PowerPoint presentation the core of a content strategy?
Extension warning: Document not important.
Having the documentation means you've thought through the details of who's responsible for what and how the content works in and for your business.
Imagine how different our friend's cooking experience would be, for example we gave her a detailed map of the kitchen and meal preparation process ours for her to review before her visit.
As head chef, she was still able to point out the suboptimal parts of our workflow and “asset management” strategy. But she'll also be more functional and, more importantly, able to see where our kitchen organizer hacks make pragmatic sense. of the problem.
As @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent said, a content strategy document can solve many complex problems. Click to Tweet
Unanswered Question (yet)
About three months ago, I worked with a large, fast-growing technology company to implement a new governance model, workflow, and content lifecycle management plan. Those who have been with the company for less than a year are delighted. They love it.
On the other hand, senior leaders and many veteran content and marketers do not. They agreed that the solution sounded fine, but they didn't see the problem it would solve.
Bad.
I hear this question from all the CEOs and CFOs of the time: “I don't see a problem. Let me know what is the benefit of fixing it. ”
Answer: We don't know yet – not yet.
Good people always lose to bad processes
Engineer and professor W. Edwards Deming once said, “If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. ”
What does that mean? For example, I can't describe the process of writing this column weekly, but I still get it done. I know what I'm doing.
But Deming doesn't mean friend I don't know what I'm doing. It's the organization don't know what it's doing.
For example, I talked about the technology company content creation process with two global marketing experts responsible for translation and localization. I asked them to explain the process for how hundreds of assets are selected, planned, and prioritized for delivery.
Here's how they describe it:
- They select articles based on their own feelings. Sometimes they have email conversations about options, but sometimes anyone with the time picks up pieces.
- They list the selected assets on a spreadsheet, prioritizing each asset by marking it red, yellow, or green.
- They upload content to an external file sharing service for their own sake digital asset management system does not allow access to translation and globalization agencies.
- The agencies that returned translated the file to two managers through a file-sharing service.
- Global marketing managers email translated files to local marketing managers at the appropriate regional offices.
How oth er did the regional offices know about the content? How are translated assets centrally syndicated? The two curators will upload them when they have time.
If those two managers leave the business, the business will have a complicated translation and localization mess for newcomers to unravel.
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Clean the current kitchen
Let's go back to the cruel challenge.
How can you answer the CEO's question about the potential value of fixing problems the business didn't know existed?
You can not.
But you can develop a culture of checking what's happening.
What happens is what happens in the business compared to what is supposed to happen or what the business perceives to be happening.
This tech company offers a great example. From the CMO's point of view, nothing breaks. She is aware of the operating model she inherited at work. When I showed her “the translation and localization process,” she said, “That's not how it was designed to work. But if it works, it is working. ”
Thousands of similar examples exist in every company. The way people think things work is different from the way they actually work. How many times have you offered an employee advice like this: “The document says to email this department to get this reply, but just email Jane. She will give you answer 10 many times faster. ”
Test the 'culture' of your content strategy
Accumulate all that tacit knowledge and it becomes a culture.” Whether you run a test, a review, or a simple test group, really test the current behavior of your content strategy.
Here's how to do it:
1. Find out what's going on
Grow a team to test and document the ongoing behavior around your content – ideally, create, manage, activate, publish, promote, measure, and archive.
If necessary, start with an area, such as marketing or thought leadership. Better yet, start with one area of your journey customer . Document what will happen (not what is supposed to happen.) Identify and categorize obvious challenges and where approaches go beyond perceived patterns (even because of good reason).
2. Draw obvious gaps and unavoidable costs
With gaps recorded, identify costs, missed opportunities, or high-risk risks if they remain as they are. For example, at one technology company, the process of creating generated content motivated employees to create new content rather than reusing content generated from another silo. They found an e-book with 32 versions. What is the cost of time spent doing that 31 Unnecessary eBooks?
3. Take a look at the estimated challenge dragonfly
Dragonflies see 315 degrees around them. People don't. No one can develop a perspective that covers every aspect of every business process. But after looking at an area, you can estimate the value of fixing your bad problems based on the checks or tests you have done.
Consider costs for the obvious (like 31 additional e-books). Assume similar problems lie in other unexplored areas and extrapolate costs. Include estimates based on what organizations similar to yours have found if you can.
Answer the value question
These steps will give you a useful estimate of the value of developing or improving your strategic content process.
People (and businesses) don't want change, especially when they don't feel the pain. But please be kind. I have worked on more
They are cooking, making meals, cleaning and succeeding, and they fear that change in work habits will mess things up.
They are not wrong to be reluctant. If they can't understand the problem, looking at solutions can be confusing.
That's a bad problem.
But, if you don't learn how to improve step by step, you will always have to fix things intermittently. You may not be able to solve evil problems, but you can just solve enough evil problems away from them to be useful.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski / Content Marketing Institute
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