lucid plot

If web and user experience agencies want to embrace content strategy, they need to change the way they sell their services, switching from a contractor model to a consulting model. Which means throwing away some unethical working practices. Let’s talk about scoping, selling, and project management.

Three ways to scope a project

Back in October 2010, Stacey King Gordon posted Content strategy and the project pricing dilemma to the content strategy Google group. She posed an insightful question which started a great discussion. Here’s an extract:

…[an agency I collaborate with] work hard to price the end-to-end design project based on assumptions — the client’s, theirs, and mine as the content strategist. However, as I dig in and do my work — content analysis, stakeholder interviews, brand research — the scope of the project inevitably grows. It’s very difficult to be accurate in what the final site will entail until the content strategy work has been done.

It’s worth reading the whole thread. I found this response from Karen McGrane particularly illuminating:

This is a common problem when you try to scope development—both copywriting and technology—without a clear understanding of what will be required. There are really only three options:

1. Only work with clients that will accept a 2-phased project (strategy/design + development)
2. Only deliver work within the bounds of the initial contract
3. Change order, change order, change order

We treat web design like accountancy

Karen’s three-way choice about how to scope projects provides a neat way to explain the changes I’ve noticed in the way UX-like services—web and interaction design, software development, content development, etc.—are bought and sold.

Option 1 implies a consultancy relationship: the client thinks that they need expert help to work out where they are, and where they need to go, before they can start implementation. This is strategy.

Options 2 and 3 are more like a vendor, solution provider, or contractor relationship: the client knows what they want, and they’re shopping around for someone who has the right experience and can agree on terms. This type of relationship is familiar and comfortable for organizations: it’s similar to the relationship they might have with standardized professional services firms like accountants, or software vendors, or even cleaning contractors. This is tactics.

Until recently, most organizations have managed to buy these types of services using options 2 and 3. Need a website redesign? Write a request for proposal (RFP) and send it to some agencies to get quotes. Agencies like selling in this way too. Why is that?

Fixed specs are attractive

Let’s start with the buyer. She works in an organizational silo: maybe it’s marketing, IT, product management, or corporate communications. Although she has organizational goals in mind when she decides to start a web initiative, she’s more focused on her silo’s goals. All of her budget comes from the silo, and her performance is measured based on that silo’s metrics, not on the higher-level goals of the business. From the client’s point of view, it’s much easier to buy a fixed-price, nailed-down contract.

Even if she has some doubts about what should be in the spec, it’s easier to get her manager to fund a clearly-articulated, conservative scope than an open-ended strategic exploration whose results are unknown, and which could easily open a can of worms. For example, it might suggest that the organization needs to change the way it operates in some way. My goodness, we might need to talk to the other departments! Our client wants a quiet life, and that’s scary stuff right there.

We could be forgiven for thinking, “those wretched clients! Why are they so short-sighted?” But that’s only half the story. Web professionals are scared of strategy, and we use the distraction sell to keep projects within our comfort zones. We’re comfortable using option 2, and option 3 is even better, because it allows us to blame those pesky clients for all the faulty assumptions in the original contract. There’s nothing the lizard brain likes better than setting ourselves up for failure.

But fixed specs are dangerous

So what’s wrong with fixed specs? Let’s start with economics. Do you ever see web designers complaining on twitter about crappy RFPs, and how difficult it is to compete on price with the 3000 other web design shops who claim to be able to do great work for peanuts? Have you ever come across a client who decided to outsource their work to a contractor thousands of miles away in a low-cost location? Or have you ever heard copywriters complaining that companies just don’t appreciate the true value of content?

If the spec really is nailed down, if the strategy work’s been done—that is, if the client truly knows what they need—the actual implementation work is less valuable, more price-sensitive, and will eventually become commoditized. Someone else will do it for less, and probably to a good-enough standard. (Jared Spool calls this distinction hands vs. brains.) That’s great if you’re creating a factory-style contracting business in a low cost economy, but if you live in London or San Francisco, eventually you’ll have problems funding your latte and iPad habit.

Many web projects are sold in a murky bait-and-switch fashion, where the agency agrees to an unrealistic fixed spec written by the client, and then hopes that once the problems become obvious, the client will prefer to pay their way out of the mess rather than starting over with a new agency. You’ll recognize this practice from the technology industry, who call it lock-in. (They used to say that nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. That isn’t true any more.)

I see the move towards content strategy as part of a slow recognition that this type of sales and project management has mostly been disastrous. Objectives aren’t met, nobody plans for content governance, and projects focus on short-term pizazz instead of achieving business objectives in a sustainable way.

Client: “We want content strategy, but we need to know what it looks like first”

Let’s return to Stacey’s question. We’re competing for a client project, and we want to include a content strategy piece, because we know it’s the right thing to do for the success of the project—and it will also differentiate our proposal. But we’re worried that the client won’t buy a two-phase project, because they want to compare our proposal with all the others. And the RFP has a set budget and timeline.

The tempting option (which Stacey explains in the thread) is to add a line item for “content strategy”, make some assumptions about the outcome of that process, and then bake those assumptions into a single-phase proposal that includes implementation (and presumably a commitment to a fixed delivery date.)

Here’s the problem: if these assumptions are correct, the client isn’t ready for content strategy. They’re not ready to acknowledge a problem that’s bigger than a silo or a delivery channel, or to ask consultants to help them with strategy. It’s much easier to say, “we need technical help with development, design, and web writing” than to say “we need strategic advice, web therapy, and inter-department facilitation.” Crucially, the person buying probably isn’t ready to become an agent of change in their organization. Change hurts, and actively advocating for it scares the hell out of people.

No content strategy? That’s a show-stopper

When a client asks an agency to build a website, and admits to not having a content strategy, that’s a show-stopper. You can’t just graft strategy onto the project and cross your fingers.

Just because a client says they want content strategy, it doesn’t mean that they understand what that actually entails, or that they’re ready to start changing the organization. The best we can do is to explain the problem as clearly as we can, talk about the pain and suffering that will continue to occur if it isn’t addressed, and politely decline work when clients don’t appreciate the value of a strategic approach. They’ll be back, in time.

Good news for content strategy advocates

This is great news for those of us who are tying to raise our game, to leave our comfort zones, and to get our practice to a place where it sustainably serves both business objectives and user needs. (Note: if you’re already there, congrats! Many of us aren’t.)

The sales methods and working practices of many existing agencies (and internal teams too) are threatened by the growing realization among clients that their web initiatives aren’t effective. And the two-stage scoping model is key to understanding this shift. Can traditional agencies hack it?

The skills that a web professional needs are changing: it’s less about design chops, technical prowess, web writing skills–all essential of course, but also widely and cheaply available. The skills that set true web professionals apart are interpersonal skills like facilitation, counseling, advocacy, diplomacy, pragmatism, and patience. And the courage to be an agent of change.

In practice it will take a long time for client-side advocates to lead their organizations into the change management programs they actually need to start to get a hold of their content and web problems. But it’s starting to happen. And those of us who work as consultants should take an active role in the process, by refusing to participate in unethical selling practices.

Good news for web professionals: we’ve hit the big time. There’s nobody worth listening to who still thinks that the rise of the internet is a passing fad, that the web is just another channel, or that its influence on our companies, governments, and social lives isn’t revolutionary.

But our organizations are still set up like none of that has happened. Pre-web processes, job descriptions, culture, attitudes—corporate denial. It’s 1994 all over again.

The impending crisis

Here’s the problem. The disconnection between the way organizations operate and the web’s revolutionary changes is getting so big that it’s causing a crisis. Most organizations still don’t have the basics of web strategy, governance, execution, and measurement covered. Ten years ago that was a competitive disadvantage. Today it’s a set of chronic risks: strategic, financial, regulatory, and legal.

Which is where you come in.

Web governance is nobody’s job, so make it yours

Today, web professionals face a stark choice.

We can keep our heads down while watching this slow-motion train crash from the comfort of our official job descriptions, perhaps taking some perverse pleasure in the fact that we told people this would happen, and they ignored us. This is the way to make ourselves replaceable, outsource-able, fireable—not to mention depressed. The best possible outcome is that someone else decides to take the lead, but a long, painful decline is more likely. This route doesn’t require any courage, but it’s reckless all the same. As Christine Pierpoint puts it, “be careful of what you wish for”.

The alternative is to acknowledge that establishing web governance is nobody’s job, and instead of whining about it, make it our own. That means stepping outside of our comfort zones and job descriptions, speaking up against the status quo, and leading. Scary stuff.

What Seth Godin taught me about web governance

If that makes you think it might be time to leave the web profession and transition to something safer, stay with me for a moment. This problem isn’t exclusive to our profession.

In his masterpiece Linchpin, Seth Godin describes the effect of the end of the industrial era on our organizations:

We have gone from two teams (management and labour) to a third team, the linchpins.

Godin’s linchpin is an indispensable person: an artist, someone who exerts emotional labour to overcome the resistance, who challenges the status quo, who pursues human connection, who makes change by leading and shipping.

We’re living through a period of massive cultural change, and the rise of the web is at the center of it. Organizations need linchpins in order to survive, because they need to change how they operate to fit the realities of the changing world. And when it comes to the web, most organizations have been trying to ignore change for so long that they’re suffering from a serious case of denial.

So if you’re convinced by Godin–and you should be, he makes a strong case–it’s not just web people who face a stark choice. Every professional in the Western world is in a similar situation: if you don’t lead your organization by becoming an agent of change, you’ll become a replaceable cog.

How to talk so management will listen

So what does being a linchpin have to do with web governance, and how can we apply it in practice? Stop whining and start leading.

We’ve all done it: whining about how difficult it is to do our jobs, how nobody appreciates us, how colleagues don’t understand what we do, how our jobs are made impossible by organizational culture. It’s almost standard practice for web professionals. The problem is, whining is the perfect way to get management to write off our concerns as the obsessive-compulsive ranting of geeks with poor interpersonal skills and no understanding of business objectives. We can do better.

When we whine and complain, we’re effectively asking others to give us permission to make the changes we need to do our jobs properly. That permission will never come.

The only way out is to stop waiting for permission, and to start leading. This isn’t technically complex, but it takes courage: the willingness to leave our comfort zones, face our own fear of confronting the status quo, and overcome our resistance to shipping. It also takes a lot of messy interpersonal work: advocacy, facilitation, diplomacy, pragmatism, and patience. This is what Godin calls “emotional labour”. Like it or not, these are the key skills of the modern web professional.

If we want to talk so management will listen, we need to sell to their pain. What risks is the organization taking by ignoring web governance problems? What opportunities is it missing? How could overcoming the challenges we’re facing as web professionals improve the organization’s future prospects, or its competitiveness?

Get out of your comfort zone: ship web governance

This is a time of huge opportunity for web professionals. But if you want to embrace it, you need to leave your comfort zone and start shipping. Become a linchpin, an agent of change, and a web governance advocate. Your organization needs you.

Note: For a longer take on web governance, check out my recent article in A List Apart.

Here’s a video of my 5-minute lightning UX presentation on why content strategy is a big deal for user experience professionals.

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Transcript

The video is captioned, and here’s the transcript:

My name’s Jonathan Kahn. I’d like to talk about why content strategy is a big deal for user experience professionals.

So content strategy, you’ve heard about it, right? Everyone’s talking about it, have you got a content strategy? So, why is it so hot? It’s been around for as long as the web’s been around, it’s not really anything new, it’s part of user experience. Why the big deal? So I think the reason it’s such a big deal is we’ve been talking for a long time about stuff like information architecture, usability, UX, research, all this different stuff. They’re disciplines that people have grown and talked about for ages.

If you think about content and content strategy, it hasn’t really happened. We’ve only just recently been starting to talk about it, to write books about it, to have conferences about it. So I think we’ve been ignoring content and all of its complexities and hoping that it will go away, and that’s kinda caused a bit of a crisis.

So I think content strategy is the moment when you realise that you need to do some more thinking. If you think about all the complexities associated with planning and creating and governing and editing content, they raise all these questions that most organisations aren’t really very well placed to answer.

So think about the organisation you’re working with as a UX professional. They need to cover 4 components in order to really have a content strategy and be able to deal with content properly. And two of them concern content itself, which are substance, which is things like a messaging architecture, what are our key messages, and style guides, and structure which talks about the way that people navigate that stuff, classifications, you know, classic IA stuff. And then people components which include workflow, in real life which human beings are going to do what when, with all the content, and governance, which talks about decision-making processes, how do we set policies, how do we have ownership, standards, that type of thing. And the problem that we have as people who come from the IA background, speaking for myself, is that we’ve really focused on the structure piece only, and ignored all the other ones, which makes a lot of what we do kind of like a fantasy that may never actually get implemented.

So I think content strategy is an appropriate context to discuss some deeper business issues that are broader than any particular product or project that you’re working on right now, it’s an appropriate place to talk about bigger stuff. It doesn’t necessarily have all the answers, you can’t kinda go to the book and say right, content strategy, what’s the answer to this problem. But it think it has some really good questions, and that’s how we should think of it, it’s a way in, some things it’s OK to ask that come raise some bigger stuff. I think as UX designers, we are helping our organisations move through a time of great change, right, you know, the web revolution like the industrial revolution. And we’re all trying to help our clients or organisations deal with some big scary words, like these. Product strategy, corporate governance, metrics, or ethics. And I think content touches all of these things, so we can talk about these things in the context of content. So just to take ethics for an example.

What type of persuasion techniques are we using as an organisation, you know, are we straightforward with people, are we upfront, are we transparent, or do we use unethical marketing tricks for example, like Harry’s documented, and I know he’s going to talk more about that later, the dark patterns like this. Everyone in this room would like our organisations to not do any of this stuff, and I think content strategy is a great way to talk about why we need to have an ethical stance, and what bad things will happen if we do unethical things.

So if you think about your design context you might think of an oil tanker heading the wrong way, as if the web never happened. And in that context how on earth can we change some of the things I’ve been talking about, like how the organisation deals with content. I think the answer is, we have to become content strategy advocates, that’s what I’m asking you to do today, become an advocate. Which means you’re the person who’s bringing up these issues, and saying this is a problem, we need to deal with this problem. So the way to do that is to become, sorry, to thrash early. If you can get everyone in the room as early as possible and bring this up, on whatever level you can, and say, this is a problem, are we dealing with this, if not let’s create a plan to deal with it. I think that’s the way to start to turn that oil tanker around, because it can be done, it just takes a long time. So if you’d to learn more about content strategy I have a shameless plug for you this evening, which is I’m helping to organise a conference here in London in September about content strategy, keynoted by Gerry McGovern and Karen McGrane, which will be really good so I hope to see you there. And that’s why I think content strategy is a big deal for UX professionals. Thank you.

Strategy scares the hell out of web and user experience professionals. It’s outside of our comfort zone. So instead of dealing with it, we distract ourselves with tools, tactics, and techniques. Here are some examples that you might recognize.

You’re asked to help improve a train-wreck of a website that’s so obviously broken that you don’t know where to start. Somebody suggests a usability test. Great, we get to use the lab! Fun, but inappropriate. A quick expert review will catch the biggest usability problems. Diving into your favorite UX technique is a distraction from the real problem: a lack of web strategy.

Or you’re involved in a website redesign with the vague goal of “improving the user experience”. Users aren’t happy, please make them happier. The team decides to draw some wireframes and rework the visual design, instead of delivering the unwelcome news that a redesign won’t make the problem go away. As Lou Rosenfeld puts it, redesign must die. Here, tactical design work provides a distraction from content strategy, or the lack of it—which is the root of the problem.

And don’t forget classic shiny object syndrome. Have website issues? No problem! Just add a Facebook widget and some RSS podcast YouTubes, and everything will be OK.

Making change is scary

User experience design is about making change. To be effective, we need to be what Seth Godin calls a linchpin: create work that matters by challenging the status quo. Which is scary. As Karen McGrane puts it, design is the easy part:

For a designer to sit down at a desk and craft a better experience than what most businesses provide today is not that hard. What’s hard is getting a large, decentralized organization with many competing business units to review, critique, approve, and launch a better product. Show me a digital product that’s hard to navigate, and I’ll show you a business with an equally convoluted organizational structure.

Meet your new client, the ACME Widget Company. They’ve been doing fine for years using interruption advertising to sell products, and they’ve never dealt with the impact of the internet. Suddenly it’s obvious to anyone with a web browser that they have no competitive advantage, no coherent message, and no direct relationships with customers. They’re scared by the web, and in denial about their changing business model. ACME ask you to improve their website’s user experience. But the content and usability problems are symptoms of deeper structural and strategic problems. They need what Lisa Welchman calls web operations management: web strategy, governance, execution, and metrics. Until they get a strategy, tactics won’t be effective.

Tactics are easier to sell

We always got away with the distraction sell in the past.

Client: Our customers can’t use our website.
Us: Wanna buy this shiny new CMS? How about an eye-tracking study? Hey look, 2000 friends on Facebook!

The client didn’t hire you to tell them that their business model is threatened by the internet. They’re actually looking for distractions, for superficial fixes. Perhaps an important customer told them their website stinks, so they want you to make the problem go away. They’re in denial about the scale of their web-related problems. They probably don’t even know what content is on their website. (See: content strategy.)

Even clients who are aware of the deeper strategic issues are reluctant to confront them because of organizational politics. Can’t we just redesign the website and deal with all of that later?

The distraction sell is dangerous

Here’s the problem: today, the distraction sell is dangerously short-sighted. The client will judge the success of the project on outcomes, not on whether you did what they initially asked for. When that customer calls after the redesign and says the website still stinks, you’re in trouble.

Don’t be part of the problem

Web people are enthusiastic about technology to the point of naïveté. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve truly believed that if only a client would start a blog, or sell online, or participate in “the conversation”, everything would be fine. In reality there are few low-risk wins. Change is hard, and there’s no guarantee it will work.

When we sell tactics, techniques, or tools as magic fixes for an organization’s problems, we’re distracting them from what’s important–which makes us part of the problem. It’s time to stop doing that.

Do something scary today

To really help organizations fix their broken user experiences, we need to tackle the scary work of making change. If you choose to stick to what you’re comfortable with, own that choice: don’t be surprised when your work isn’t valued. The valuable work comes from moving outside of our comfort zone, and helping our clients to do the same.

If that seems overwhelming, let me suggest a first step. Next time you’re tempted to reach for your favorite technique, tool, or tactic, start a conversation about strategy instead. How does this initiative support our overarching web strategy? How will we measure success? What’s the governance structure for decision making? And do we have a content strategy to stop it from smelling fishy the day after launch?

If you can help to slowly change the organization, you’ll create a context for great design work. Tackle the scary strategy work first, and there’s a better chance that your tactics will be appropriate, effective, and appreciated.

I’ve written an article for A List Apart magazine called “Strategic Content Management”:

Any web project more complex than a blog requires custom CMS design work. It’s tempting to use familiar tools and try to shoehorn content in—but we can’t select the appropriate tool until we’ve figured out the project’s specific needs. So what should a CMS give us, apart from a bunch of features? How can we choose and customize a CMS to fit a project’s needs? How can content strategy help us understand what those needs really are? And what happens a day, a week, or a year after we’ve installed and customized the CMS?

Last week I presented at UK UPA‘s Pecha Kucha Night (20 slides x 20 seconds):

Most wireframes are works of fantasy: more aspiration than design solution. Fantasy wireframes lead to broken experiences, unmet goals, and angry stakeholders. But content strategy can help. Learn how UX professionals can use content strategy to design user experiences that work in real life, not just in a pretty wireframe.

The way most web teams are structured makes it impossible to practice content strategy. Agency or in-house, big or small, it doesn’t matter. If your lack of content strategy is hurting the user experience, it’s time to throw out your design process and start over. You have nothing to lose but your bureaucracy.

The web isn’t print, advertising, or software.

You got the memo years ago: the web isn’t print, advertising, or software. So why are so many web teams set up like it’s 1999? Here are three workflows that are alive and well (in London, at least).

First, the print design model, based on annual reports and brochures. Someone designs something, someone writes something, there are a few rounds of feedback and corrections. The client “signs off”, it goes to print, and it’s done. This process works for an annual report which nobody’s ever going to read (it’s about the shiny paper, right?) but only a mad person would use it for web design. You’d think.

Then there’s the advertising model. A man whose initials are on the front door comes up with a catchy strapline that would make a great 30 second TV commercial. Then it’s, “let’s make this a website!”, as they fly in a project manager to draw a linear Gantt chart with “copy” slotted in at the end. It’s entirely campaign focused. Nobody expects people to visit this “website” after launch day.

Third, the software “waterfall” method. The platonic form of the website’s features is passed down on stone tablets by monks who just know what’s best. (Agile won’t solve your content strategy problems, of course, but the waterfall has to go.)

These models are completely inappropriate for web or user experience design. It’s impossible to practice content strategy in this context.

Start with publishing.

Throw these processes out. Start with publishing, and then add what you need to make the project work. Research, user-centered design, agile: whatever it takes.

Tiffani Jones wrote about this topic in “Toward a Content-Driven Design Process”:

One of the biggest and best side effects of content strategy’s activism is that it’s encouraging agencies to reorder their design process. It’s no longer: discovery, information architecture, design, templates and development.

Instead, we’re doing: content strategy, information architecture, web writing, content production, design, templates and development—or some version of this.

The important thing is, we’re starting to think about content, early on.

It’s worth celebrating the early signs of content strategy taking root within web design teams. But a common question from web people learning about content strategy is, “how can I make clients pay for this?” The honest answer involves throwing out your design process, hiring more content people, repositioning your offering as strategic rather than tactical, rethinking your billing model, challenging your clients rather than offering them “solutions”, and generally ruffling a lot of feathers.

Nicole Jones might say it more succinctly: “Hold the fuck up, dude.”

Embracing content strategy is about the web industry growing up. We’ve been happily distracting ourselves from the scary, messy reality of web strategy, governance, and content by focusing on tactics, features, and techniques. If we want to fix the broken user experiences that result, we need to make some difficult changes. If you’re up for that, you’ll prosper. “She’ll be right,” as they say in Oz. Throwing out your design process is just the first step.

Here’s the video of my Content Strategy Forum presentation:

A “Do It Yourself” Guide to Content Strategy, by Jonathan Kahn from Jonathan Kahn on Vimeo.

And the slides:

I thought the Content Strategy Forum would be good. It completely blew me away. I’m only just recovering now.

I think we might be onto something with this content strategy thing, people. And that isn’t the French wine speaking.

Bloody good wine, though. And two-hour, sit-down lunches with wait-staff who put us to shame with their elegance. Wow. Need to go to more conferences in France.

Here’s a wrap-up of the presentations I attended:

• The masterfully-chosen exercises in Karen McGrane and Rachel Lovinger‘s “Content Analysis” workshop required us to analyze content on a real website using apparently straightforward criteria. It wasn’t until we actually started that I realized that analysis is impossible without an understanding of business goals. We couldn’t produce anything meaningful without backing up into strategy. Genius. (Extra points for picking on my favorite website to hate: Cisco.com.)
• Rahel Bailie‘s keynote described a repeatable system for managing content’s entire lifecycle. Bailie sees content strategy as a key element of user experience, noting that a broken experience is the fastest way to deter confidence.
• Sylvie Daumal offered insight into pan-European web projects run like global advertising campaigns, often in direct competition with local teams working for the same organization. According to Daumal, user-centered design techniques haven’t had much impact in Europe. I wonder whether that might change soon.
• In her keynote, Kristina Halvorson shared her story of transformation from web writer to content strategy advocate. She urged everyone in the room to bravely face the conflict that’s bound to arise when we advocate organizational change. Halvorson is onto something. The time’s right for some serious change-making. Let’s make it a content strategy party.
• Colleen Jones presented a thorough, rational approach to content analysis, backed by solid business strategy. I aspire to one day have Jones’ calm, authoritative demeanor when dealing with such a thorny issue.
• Sarah Cancilla shared her experiences working on content strategy for Facebook’s 5 billion pieces of content per week. (Read that again.) Cancilla outlined a strategy for selling content strategy to an engineering- and design- focused organization in which everyone already has a stake in content. Favorite quote: “apply content strategy to your content strategy”. Inspirational.

A massive “merci” to Destry Wion and STC France for organizing this breakthrough event.

You’re a web professional: a designer, developer, information architect, or strategist. Your team has the web design disciplines covered: research, strategy, user experience design, standards-based development, and project management. But something’s going wrong with your projects; the user experience just isn’t meeting your expectations. You’re reasonably sure you know why: there’s a problem with the content.

You’ve tried all the obvious solutions: installing a powerful, easy-to-use content management system, or demanding that the client supply content upfront, or even writing all the copy yourself; but none of them seem to have much impact.

You realize that your team could use some help from the discipline of content strategy, but for whatever reason, hiring a dedicated content strategist isn’t a feasible option. So what can you do to add some content strategy to your projects?

The answer, as with so much in web design, is: Do It Yourself.

A Do It Yourself guide to content strategy

All web professionals can engage with content strategy, whether we’re content specialists or not.

It turns out that content strategy is a core discipline of user experience design. We’ve all practiced it to an extent, but most of us have neither been doing enough, nor getting the timing right. Stay with me and I’ll show you how using the approaches and techniques of content strategy, and advocating them among colleagues and stakeholders, can substantially improve the chances of meeting your projects’ goals, through an improved user experience.

Definitions

A couple of definitions. By “content”, I mean text, images, audio, video; anything we publish online, and anything that our users expect to find on our website. For the discipline itself, see Kristina Halvorson’s “The Discipline of Content Strategy”:

Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.

The pain of a broken experience

Before we learn how to use content strategy, it’s helpful to establish why we need it in the first place. So let’s talk about the problem: the pain of a broken experience.

Despite all the work we put into user experience design, the final experience often doesn’t meet our expectations, because the content isn’t right. Call it content-delay syndrome, a failure to design the words, or simply treating content as somebody else’s problem. So we try the obvious solutions.

Easy solutions that don’t work

How many of these easy solutions to the content problem have you seen?

• Design the site with “lorem ipsum”, and hope the client comes up with the content later.
• Demand that the client supplies all the content before you start work.
• Install a content management system (CMS).
• Hire a copywriter at the last minute.

Unfortunately, none of these “solutions” actually work.

“Lorem ipsum” produces a template, aesthetics-only design, which has no relationship with the actual purpose of the site. Demanding content from the client is better than nothing, but is unlikely to work unless your stakeholders have an exceptionally strong grasp of content strategy themselves. (It can work for launch day content, but the site soon goes stale.) Everyone loves a good CMS, but software isn’t magic pixie dust: a CMS without a content strategy leads to shovelware or worse. And even the most talented copywriter won’t be able to rescue your content at the last minute: content strategy isn’t all copywriting, and it needs to be practiced throughout the design process.

Wasting our time

No amount of research, information architecture, interaction design, or usability testing can create a great user experience if the content isn’t useful and usable—if it doesn’t help the user to get things done. (A possible exception is web apps, but even Gmail has a content strategy: brochure text, documentation, microcopy.) To an extent we’ve been wasting our time; trying our hardest to polish an experience, when the core of what we’re offering to the user hasn’t been properly thought through.

So we need content strategy.

The ideal: hire a specialist

How can we add some content strategy to our projects?

Ideally, we’d hire a content strategist: a specialist, who can lead a broad, upfront study, before we even sketch the first wireframe; and take responsibility for content throughout the project. She’d work alongside the information architect, designer, developer, copywriter; you name it. (Many copywriters would gladly take on the role of content strategist, if we’d only ask them.)

If you can do this, congratulations; you’re on the road to success.

The reality: you can’t

In practice, we’re often unable to hire a dedicated content strategist, for various reasons:

• We don’t have the money.
• We don’t have the time.
• We don’t know any content strategists.
• It’s a miracle the stakeholders tolerated a planning stage at all. Asking for yet another expert on board is too radical, at least for now.

But don’t despair. The internet publishing revolution is part of the “mass amateurization of efforts previously reserved for media professionals,” in the words of Clay Shirky. [1] Web professionals operate at the fast-moving threshold between amateur and professional: our professional work enables anyone to exploit the power of the web, without further help. (For example, consider blogging tools: created by experts, they empower non-experts to publish.)

So, those of us who aren’t content experts, let’s embrace that spirit, and practice content strategy for ourselves.

A core discipline of user experience design

How does “doing it for ourselves” fit into our existing practice as people who make websites? Well, I said earlier that content strategy is a core discipline of user experience design, and that you’re probably already doing some; let’s expand on that.

If you’re like me, you learned a great deal about web design from Jesse James Garrett’s famous diagram, “The Elements of User Experience” (PDF link), published in 2000. It still describes the field remarkably well, nine years on. But as Kristina Halvorson has pointed out, the diagram doesn’t treat content strategically: it’s treated like a feature, with nobody taking ownership until the last minute.

Things change. It turns out that the bridge between site objectives and user needs—the strategy itself—is content. To say it another way, people come to your site because they want content; you meet user needs by planning, creating, delivering, and governing content, and you meet site objectives in the same way. Often, the content strategy is the web strategy.

This has been obvious to some practitioners for years, many of whom have called themselves “content strategists” all along. For the rest of us, it’s a bit of a shock. What, we can’t just throw some copy in on launch day?

The good news: you’re already doing some

But since it’s fundamental, anyone who’s tried to bring order, planning, and purpose to a web design project—like you, dear reader—is already practicing a little content strategy. Maybe you’ve:

• Asked the question, “who cares?”
• Compiled a content inventory.
• Used real content in a wireframe.
• Written a style guide.
• Planned an editorial workflow.

You might have called it web strategy, information architecture, usability; it doesn’t matter.

How to practice content strategy

So we’re already practicing some content strategy. But how can we do more, more effectively? Here are some suggestions.

Make it part of your web strategy campaign

Use the principles of content strategy as part of your campaign for a grown-up web strategy.

As enlightened web professionals, one of our constant struggles is adding some strategic planning to our clients’ projects. Lisa Welchman defines two key elements of web strategy:

1. Establishing a set of guiding principles.
2. Formalizing authority for the web in the organization.

Content strategy applies directly to both points, asking:

1. What content are we creating, and why?, and
2. Who is responsible for planning, creating, and maintaining it?

Practically, this often means allocating a large portion of the project schedule to upfront planning: research, web strategy, content strategy. Anything that allows you to design from the content out, by delaying the design phase until the content actually exists, will help.

Advocate it among stakeholders

Advocate content strategy when talking to stakeholders about their web projects.

Although clients often don’t realize it, commissioning a website is a big deal; for the client as much as for the design team. Talking about content strategy is a great way to communicate to your stakeholders just how much work they need to do. (See: Understanding web design.) The aim is to get your stakeholders to think like a publisher; and ideally to either narrow the scope, or increase the budget.

In my experience, clients appreciate the value of content strategy surprisingly quickly. I’ve had more success explaining its importance than with similar efforts for user-centered design or information architecture, for example.

Apply it to your design process

Apply the approaches and techniques of content strategy to your existing design process. Here are some starting points:

• Ask questions about content, right from the start.
• Utilize user research or personas to decide what content is needed: answer the question, “who cares?”
• Establish key themes and messages.
• Carry out a content audit, and a gap analysis.
• Write a plan for creating and commissioning content.
• Insist that the client plans for content production over time (an editorial calendar).
• Annotate wireframes and sitemaps, to explain how both interaction and content will work.
• Write comprehensive copy decks, based on common templates.
• Write a style guide for tone of voice, SEO, linking policy, and community policy.
• Specify CMS features like content models, metadata, and workflow based on the content strategy.

This only scratches the surface. For more on how to start practicing content strategy within a web design team, check out these presentations: “Explaining Content Strategy” by Jeffrey MacIntyre, and “Content is King” by Karen McGrane.

Engage with the community

Finally, engage with the community.

Some people have been practicing content strategy for years; they know what they’re talking about. It’s scary dealing with content experts—they eat grammar for breakfast—but imagine how they must feel about the CSS box model. They don’t seem to bite.

There’s a lively and growing community around content strategy. A few starting points are the Google group, the “knol”, and the twitter hashtag.

The benefits: look more accomplished

So why should you care about all this? You’re not even a content specialist.

Considering how well you managed to polish that user experience before, imagine what you’ll be able to accomplish when the site has a real content strategy. You’ll see a substantially improved user experience, increasing the chances of meeting the project’s goals; with the side effect of making your design seem more accomplished. Honestly: design an experience over a solid content strategy, and people will think you’re a genius. (Well, more of a genius than they thought you were already.)

The commercial aspect: this is going to be huge

Finally, a commercial- or career-oriented reason to get involved in content strategy.

Listen for a second. That crashing sound you hear is what we used to call the media industry, collapsing around us. All that destruction leaves a lot of space for web content. Web content strategy will be in demand for years to come.

So get out there, and Do It Yourself.

References

[1] “Here Comes Everybody”. Clay Shirky, Penguin. 2008. Page 55. (UK edition)