For the Content Hungry: The Eat Media Blog

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Learn the all the notes. Sing all the songs

Whistle While You Work

Business goals, gap analysis and taxonomy definitions are useful tools for determining what should be said where. And the different tactical delivery methods: (video, how-to article, mobile, info-graphics, social media) dramatically affect the presentation and context of the content,  helping us determine the how. Combined with budgets, calendars, SEO, style guides and a host of other details, Content Strategy attempts to responsibly create quality content and put it where it is most appropriate, in the most viable format. What song we whistle while we are doing it is inconsequential, as long as it is in tune with rest of the symphony.

Content Strategy Mimids

Most everyone can recognize the song of the Blue jay, Seagull or (fill in your regional bird). Each bird’s song is distinctive and helps them mate, protect, and communicate. But Mimids, the family of birds that includes mockingbirds, are one of the few birds that can mimic the sounds of other animals, including other birds. This is their most powerful tool and the foundation of how they survive.

Content Strategy, a broadly under-defined term, fits rather well into the family of Mimidae (Mimids). Our tools and roles are centered on our ability to mimic, understand and interconnect many different practices. Sometimes due to our ability to whistle different tunes, we are viewed as extra, unnecessary or covered under the punch list of another practice. When this is true it is usually due to poor project management or unsatisfactory vendor assessment/selection.

Great content strategists are like that friend you have who is just as comfortable (and charming) discussing Renaissance art at an Upper West Side gathering as they are graffiti in a Brooklyn rail yard. They are the kind of people who, years after knowing them, you realize they speak Swahili and went to Rice on a basketball scholarship. They are multi-faced, fascinated and fascinating. They are happily many sides of many coins and their ability to sing the appropriate song at the appropriate time, without sticking to a style, or favorite key, is what makes them valuable.

In the Content Strategy (CS) world there are four basic families:

The Mimid Families

Content Strategy Technologists—are perfect for projects that are CMS heavy (assessments, migrations, template setups), or require medium-to-heavy code/data base lifting or understanding in order to bring a project to fruition. The technologists are usually technical project managers or coders who understand that technology that just pushes numbers around is called a calculator. And calculators aren’t all that engaging to read on a Sunday.

Content Strategy Editorialists—are perfect for projects that require managing and organizing content at the nuts and bolts level (content inventory, style guide creation, editorial calendaring and curation.) These folks are writers at heart but stole away from the Underwood years ago and realized that content needs technology. *See bankrupt magazines and newspapers.

Content Strategy UX/IA’ers—are perfect for projects that require managing and organizing content at both the macro and micro level (gap analysis, wire-frames, content identification). Content Strategists with IA/UX leanings are a powerful blend of logic, information architecture understanding and have a particularly valuable focus on the space where content meets and becomes information. Go Team OmniGraffle!

Content Strategy Designers—are perfect for projects that require managing and organizing content when design is a key element of how and why the information is being presented to the user. There are some designers who simply copy the text the copywriter gave them from WordPad to Photoshop and make it pretty. There are others who ask questions like “why are we saying this on this screen.” Wireframes, information architecture and even some front-end coding are tools in their belt. These people usually have great haircuts.

Detailing these four types of Content Strategists is not meant as a selective quadfurcation but more as a glossary of the broad skill-set under the Content Strategy umbrella. And while each of the above may have leanings towards one strength, be it Design, UX/IA, Editorial or Technology, the practice itself hinges on the practitioner’s ability to understand all the notes and know when to sing which song, when to listen and when to hit shuffle.

—Ian

We can argue about what’s the new black, but one idea that’s gaining a lot of credence is that mobile apps are the new websites.

Think about it: If you are a smartphone user, how many apps do you have and how many of those apps supplant the actual website for mobile use? A quick count on my phone reveals apps for: The Weather Channel, ESPN, Facebook, Twitter (Nambu), Pandora, Google Earth, The Wall Street Journal, Fandango, The New York Times, AccuWeather, fring (IM client), and National Public Radio. That’s 12 websites that I never visit from my mobile browser because the apps provide the same content in a sleeker and faster format.

I also have apps that allow me to complete other tasks that would have previously been handled through the browser as well like mapping, getting the surf or ski report, foreign language translation, star maps (the constellations, not celebrities, though, no doubt, there’s an app for that too), dictionary, hurricane tracking, the U.S. constitution and stock quotes. More websites I won’t be browsing ever again.

And then there’s the special category of app that also lives on my phone: the disposable app. These apps mostly focus on specific sporting events like Wimbledon, The U.S. Open, etc, and allow me to get specific updates all the live long day. (I’m still hoping for a Tour de France app next year.)

And while these apps may have a limited shelf life, they were by no means constructed in a slapdash or haphazard way; these are quality apps that meet the needs of serious fans and often involve partnerships with heavyweights like IBM. These apps appeal to enthusiasts, so there is little margin for error.

What else should you think about when planning to include apps in your next content strategy presentation?

1.    Functionality. I love Nambu as my Twitter app because it takes me to web links without leaving the app. But for corn’s sake, don’t overload the thing with features. Think Thoreau: simplify, simplify, simplify.

2.    User Experience Design. This may be your chance to create the lean and mean website you’ve always wanted but can’t ever have because of institutional inertia. For example, The Weather Channel’s website is an ad-choked nightmare with a user interface designed by Hannibal Lecter and a search function run by Mr. Magoo. I never visit it because it makes me angry. I only reluctantly downloaded the mobile app because I hated the website so much. All hail the clever and wiry programming geniuses who put together The Weather Channel’s app. It’s simple, elegant and it just works.

3.    Realize and accept that some apps will have a short life. This does not reduce their value, if anything, even more thought must go into design as you only get one chance to get it right. The U.S. Open tennis tournament just concluded and I will likely never open that app again, but I opened it several times a day during the tournament.

4.    Does this mean you shouldn’t optimize your site for mobile browsing? Of course not. Though, if you are going to make your mobile site crappy (Yes, I’m talking to you CarandDriver.com.) don’t make it impossible to switch to your main site when you see someone’s using a mobile browser.

Where do mobile applications fit in your content strategy? Let me know in the comments.

—Jonathan
(@bentpiton)

Photo by respres

Ian Alexander, VP of Content at Eat Media (@eatmedia) will be on a panel tonight talking about content strategy. Use of the word “thought leader” or “holistic” during the event will result in severe penalties.

About the Event

What is editorial strategy? Why is it so integral to content strategy? And what is the relationship between content strategy and publishing?

Jeff MacIntyre, principal of Predicate, will present and moderate a small panel discussion:

• Ian Alexander, VP, Eat Media (http://eatmedia.net/)
• Craig Bromberg (http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=294446) [virtual panelist]
• Matthew Geraghty, Senior Content Strategist, Razorfish (http://www.razorfish.com/)

When

Thursday, August 27, 2009

7:15pm – 9:00pm

(Your time zone?)

Where

Bond Art + Science

38 West 21st Street, 3rd Floor

New York, NY

On Twitter

Follow LIVE event coverage at #contentstrategy on Twitter.

RSVP & details

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=108930259557

This event is kindly hosted by…

http://bondartscience.com/

About CSNYC

The Content Strategists of New York City (CSNYC) is a group of content specialists who organize a monthly meetup series and other special events. Regularly scheduled meetings run the fourth Thursday of each month and are open to all. See our Facebook Group for further information. Learn more about Content Strategy as a discipline.

—Ian

It’s a simple question really—what is your digital footprint?

The obvious first step most people would take would be to consult one of the mainstream search engines.

So sure, you can Google yourself, or if you are feeling particularly jaunty, give Bing a whirl.

Metasearch engines like Dogpile and Mamma can give a broader view, sometimes pulling in more obscure results.

Semantic search is the next step. Kosmix, Clusty and Primal Fusion are just three examples of this new way to search the web.

But if you want elegance and simplicity in the answer to our simple question, there is only one place to turn, Personas, an MIT-based project that began as an art installation.

The homepage is lovely, and, until a few days ago, looked like this:

But, this week, some explanatory text was added:

I have an uncommon last name, Maziarz, so if I do a web search on myself, the results are pretty focused, so I was interested to see what Personas came up with. I ran the search five times, and, interestingly, got five different answers.

The first, and my favorite, due to the outsized presence of the word “illegal,” is below:

I’m not sure where the “fashion” or the “religion” bars come from, but the rest were at least plausible. The other four times I ran the search, “news” continued to dominate (no surprise after 10 years in the newspaper biz), but illegal disappeared altogether and the other fat and thin bars varied.

As the Personas homepage notes, data mining techniques are growing more sophisticated by the day, meaning that even the most faint parts of your digital footprint are being scanned, collated and analyzed by government and corporate entities.

How does the web see you?

—Jonathan

@bentpiton

Joshua Porter of Bokardo Design fame talks design and content in this slide show. Things get really interesting on slide 33.

Last week, I unofficially finished up a major project. This week, a wave of introspection has taken over, leaving me wondering what to do next and beginning to organize the stack of proofs and endless rounds of edits on my desk.

I’m reading Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, and managed to find a quote that evokes content strategy just as much as world domination. Author Jack Weatherford writes:

“Genghis Khan’s ability to manipulate people and technology represented the experienced knowledge of more than four decades of nearly constant warfare. At no single, crucial moment in his life did he suddenly acquire his genius at warfare, his ability to inspire the loyalty of his followers, or his unprecedented skill for organizing on a global scale. These derived not from epiphanic enlightenment or formal schooling but from a persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined mind and focused will … In each struggle, he combined the new ideas into a constantly changing set of military tactics and weapons. He never fought the same war twice.”

As we know from faded bumper stickers and forwarded emails from our mothers: it is not the destination, but the journey that matters. Use this modified adage for project review purposes: If you don’t take time now to reflect on the work you’ve done, how are you going to improve the next time around?

Warriors and writers unite: whether you have conquered the free world, sent a magazine to the printer or launched a new site, how do you wrap up a project? What questions do you ask your team, and how do you ensure that you are taking something away from the process and applying during the next iteration?

—Wendy Joan

photo from wikipedia

If you want great content, nothing beats a compelling story.

It’s the first rest day of the 2009 Tour de France cycling race and in the absence of having to follow live updates from the roads of Gaul today, let’s look at nine elements of great storytelling as illustrated by this year’s Tour.

1. A rich backstory. This year’s iteration of the Tour has something that has been sorely lacking for the past few years: a compelling backstory. The backstory is one that’s as old as human civilization: the conflict between the power and vitality of youth versus the wisdom and experience of age.
2. A young brash upstart. 2007 Tour de France champion Alberto Contador, known as “El Pistolero,” (The best cyclists get cool nicknames, unless they already have a Saturday matinee idol name, like Lance Armstrong.) was the heavy favorite coming in to the race. Not only was he riding for the strongest team, Astana, but he has proven himself to be one of the best climbers in cycling, winning the trifecta of cycling’s grand tours—Spain, Italy and France—already in his young career.
3. The old lion, back for one more shot at the title. Seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong stunned the cycling world last fall when he announced he was returning to competitive racing and planned to compete in the Tour de France, cycling’s biggest race. Armstrong, who spent more time in the tabloids than on his bike in the past few years, said he was mainly coming back to draw attention to his Lance Armstrong Foundation , one of the premier cancer education and support resources, but most pundits speculated that if Armstrong was going to race, he was going to race to win.
4. A grueling test. The Grande Boucle, as it’s known in France, is cycling’s most demanding test. Three weeks. Thousands of kilometers in the saddle. Tens of thousands of feet of climbing. Nowhere to hide. This year’s course is somewhat peculiar for several reasons.  The team time trial was back, but the individual time trials are short and technical. The race’s two forays into alpine territory feature only three summit finishes and one of the Tour’s legendary obstacles, the Col du Tourmalet, was placed in the middle of stage, reducing its race impact to nil.
5. A shot across the bow. In the race’s only summit finish in the Pyrenees, into the ski station at Arcalis in Andorra, a select group of contenders rode together toward the summit until Contador, apparently not acting on team orders, attacked the field and rode away alone toward the finish. This show of strength added fuel to the fires of discord between Armstrong and Contador and indicated a possible split in the team.
6. The French. Can you minimize the fact that this race is taking place in France? No way. The French love a good story and they love to be right in the middle of it. After a love/hate relationship with Armstrong while he was winning the Tour, the French have jumped on the Lance bandwagon this July. As Velo News editor-at-large John Wilcockson (@johnwilcockson) noted last week, “The French love an underdog—and old dogs.”
7. An unwritten code of conduct. When Contador took off on the road to Arcalis, Armstrong was bound by the part of the cycling code that does not allow you to attack a teammate once he goes up the road alone.  Armstrong instead stayed back to mark the other contenders, none of whom tried to follow Contador. Contador is bound by the same code (of course, they are more like guidelines than actual rules) and has stated that he won’t follow an attacking Armstrong when the race hits the Alps later this week.
8. A near insurmountable obstacle. What happens in the Alps may not even matter because of what stands in the way of riders on the penultimate day of the Tour. Two words that strike fear in the heart of every cyclist: Mont Ventoux. A summit finish on the “Giant of Provence” will likely decide who will ride into Paris the next day wearing the race leader’s yellow jersey.
9. Wild cards. Armstrong and Contador are not the only world-class cyclists competing in the Tour this summer. In addition to two other potential podium finishers on the Astana team (Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Kloden), 2008 TdF winner Carlos Sastre, two-time runner up Cadel Evans and others lurk, waiting for an opening.

Can Lance Armstrong beat back Contador’s challenge and the sands of time to win an eighth Tour?  Coming back to “win one more” rarely succeeds, but Armstrong can look at one other great champion who made it happen: Pete Sampras. Sampras won his fourteenth and final major championship, the U.S. Open, two years after most pundits had written him off.

The 2009 Tour de France has all the makings of race for the ages and certainly has more intrigue than the last few iterations. When will we know the true quality of this year’s story? Not for a while yet.

A story only becomes truly great when it passes into legend and someday when that legend becomes myth.

— Jonathan

(@bentpiton)

Photo of Mt Ventoux Summit by Pereubu

Photo of Tom Simpson Memorial on Mt. Ventoux by Welland

We may have reached the point in the internet revolution where pervasive broadband access has made everyone a publisher, but this explosion of content providers—most of them roaring pell-mell down the information superhighway—has made the need for savvy editors ever more acute.

This thought struck me yesterday as I was plowing through Flickr, looking for some photos to accompany an upcoming story. The simple search for “student teacher”—and mind you, this was not on the full Flickr library, but just the Creative Commons subset—led to nearly 900 results.

Too many to wade through, but after having exhausted the 7.4 million photos on Shutterstock and not even finding one appropriate and non-cheesy photo, it was off to the wild, wild West of photography, Flickr.

Screen after screen shuttled by, but eventually, I was able to dig up a few gems that could be sent to the stakeholders along with the story.

As I chugged through the 895 items tagged with the words student and teacher, I did find myself longing for a little self-editing from the photographers on the other end. Many of the photos were of dismal quality, the kind of snapshots that in the Fotomat era, would never escape the little envelope and find their way into an album. What, I wondered, was the person thinking who uploaded all 200 shots from a new teacher retreat in China, most of them underexposed and completely bereft of anything resembling composition? And what was with all the shots of the guy scooping out the innards of a watermelon? Why did the photographer feel compelled to take those photos in the first place, and then, later, decide that more than one needed to be shared with the world?

Why wasn’t the photographer editing as he went? When I trained as a photojournalist, I was repeatedly admonished to “Crop with the camera, not in the darkroom.”

Memory cards with massive capacities have made it too easy to take too many photographs. Giant hard drives make it too easy to keep every photo; just download and resume shooting. I am guilty of this at home. There are seven years worth of photos of my dogs and five years worth of photos of my son at home on my iMac.

But yes, only select images have been edited in Photoshop and either printed or emailed to family and friends. I can remember a set of photos, uploaded to a sharing site by a-family-member-who-shall-remain-unnamed, that contained more than 100 images of his young child, all from the same trip to a pumpkin patch or petting zoo. I scanned the thumbnails, but I couldn’t make myself leaf through all of the photos.

Which brings us back to why editors are going to be ever more valuable as the amount of content on the internet continues to burgeon. We may all be publishers, but we are not all editors.

1.    Editing is a skill. Whether it’s text, photos, video or audio, deft editing takes experience and knowledge.
2.    Editing is an art. Having the ear that detects a tin word, the eye that can pull the one image from hundreds or thousands or the touch to slice up an hour of raw video into 10 compelling minutes, there is an aspect to editing that cannot be acquired; it must be possessed.
3.    Editing takes time. If it’s not being done as the writer writes or the photographer shoots, it’s going to have to happen at the editor’s desk. The less care taken on the front end means the more care that will need to be taken on the back end.
4.    Editing takes care. Corralling and curating your content so that it stay fresh and compelling is the only thing that is going to keep your readers coming back.
5.    Editing is necessary. Is it reasonable to ask users to edit their own content? Maybe. Is it going to happen consistently and carefully? Probably not. There are plenty of websites that are just content dumps. Don’t let yours be one of them.

—Jonathan

(@bentpiton)

Photo by Jennie Faber