For the Content Hungry: The Eat Media Blog

As a customer I’ve often stated, sometimes out loud and littered with expletives, “Why did they treat me like that?”  As an agency owner I get to ask the more interesting question – “How did they treat me like that.” Interactions with brands, online or in-person, should always exceed the vending machine experience of -put money in-take product out-go home. But often that is exactly the experience we get.

I’ve come to believe there are only 3 types of brand experiences:

1- Exceptional experiences you tell people about. – Mailchimp

2- Terrible experiences you tell more people about. – FatCow

3- Average experiences you forget about. – Exxon gas station

I recently interacted with the following brands and I believe that a content-first strategy would help all these brands.

Exceptional Experiences:

Roku – So much untapped potential here.

Warby Parker – An A+ experience that is so good they could do much better.

Terrible Experiences:

Shoebacca – A favorite site that fails me over and over and over.

Adobe – How do you fail me? Let me count the ways.

Forgettable Experiences:

USPS – I need to mail a letter. Mailed it. Zzzzzzzzzz.

SurveyMonkey – If you’re going to do one thing well, do it really, really, really well.

If you are a decision maker at any of the above brands I’d be happy to help you commit to being amazing.

-Ian

Every day nascent web startups gather buckets of funding with unproven concepts (see Color.) Unquestionably some startups need the money to move the next level. But others, armed with a product that goes WHZZZZ instead of Whzzzhz, simply desire the money while it’s still available. (See – 1999) Most startup founders do not start out as Jobsian geniuses with a fanatical vision of perfection and changing the world. This evolution and maturation usually requires time and patience. But founders are often just workers in a system tilted towards going to market too quickly. A system that seems to have an inherent lack of respect for 3 key items: theory(ists), true value creation (with value extraction factored in), and a general lack of understanding about what creating a minimum viable product entails.

The Food Chain is Eating Itself
We are witnessing a trend of big “startups” purchasing little “startups” solely to extract talent – dumping products on the side of the road – truncating talent from code bases and passion from purpose. We also have lost the etiquette of thieves, highlighted by the rampant poaching of talent – sometimes from as close as across the hall – turning “community” into to a dog-eat-dog competition of preferred stock options and flavor-of-the-week.

The early Internet was a top-heavy system full of theorists and inventors. It wasn’t perfect but passion and payout seemed to have more healthy balance than today. The 2nd Internet phase (e-commerce) consisted mostly of early monetizers and a few stylists. The 3rd Internet phase (social) has many stylists,  more how-to-ers and a blur of monetizers. The Web Worker food chain is a delicate ecosystem that requires an adherence to stages. But the pressure to monetize before and after every stage is upsetting that balance–our current lack of qualified developer/designer talent is but one symptom.

The Web Workers Hierarchy
Stage 1: (Web) Theorists are traditionally ahead of curves, way ahead.
Stage 2: (Web) Inventors are tactile theorists.
Stage 3: (Web) Stylists are practitioners who found a method that worked for them, shared that methodology and initialized distribution to the masses.
Stage 4: (Web) How-to-ers are documentarians who show users/practitioners how to use the work that stylists have manifest.
Stage 5: (Web) Monetizers support all of the stages above to differing degrees. (And historically have always worked with and through stages 1-4.)

(Web) Theorists
Provide value by opening the doors of invention and triggering possibilities.
Example: Marshall McLuhan – “the medium is the message.”
Extract value when they succombe to, promote monetization too early.

(Web) Inventors
Provide value by bringing possibilities to life. Placing theories into real world scenarios.
Example: Håkon Wium Lie inventor of CSS
Extract value by accepting capital for unproven concepts or moving to distribution prematurely.

(Web) Stylists
Provide value by optimizing the experience of service/product.
Example: Aaron Walter author of Designing for Emotion
Extract value by providing one size fits all solutions as a possibility for user/practitioner. (Not their intent.)

(Web) How-to-ers
Provide value by popularizing an experience
Example: David Scott Meerman author of New Rules of PR and Marketing
Extract value by providing one size fits all solutions as a possibility for user/practitioner. (Uninformed intent.)

(Web) Monetizers
Provide value by moving a product/service into the arena of solvency
Example: Fred Wilson managing partner at Union Square Ventures
Extract value by forcing theorists and inventors to productize and go to market too early. (How they make money.)

I’d be remiss not to note that theorists, and organizations that historically supported theorists, have always had a relationship with a capitalist bent. Universities have wings dedicated to corporations, Bell labs = for profit, IBM labs = R&D and most recently we got a peak at Google Labs = convert product development.  Innovation is wonderful and so is making money. The friction resides in needing money to innovate and/or being more interested in making money than innovating.  And it is the distance between these poles that abandons the current web worker somewhere between these two quotes

My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers. – Steve Wozniak

 

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” —Fred Wilson

Amazing is birthed at the top of the web worker food chain by theorists and inventors — people who play with possibilities. I see too many of these people being extracted, or self-extracting, and no longer pushing envelopes but instead settling to sell paper goods. Somehow we need to ensure that world class talent stays at the top of the food chain and continues to be inspired by the possibility vs. the payout.  Else, we reinvent Foursquare 30 different ways without making it any better, rewrite practitioner books for glory instead of education, and watch “amazing” dwindle into “just fine.” Potential – the fuzzy “what if”- that inspires us, is a requirement for all successes from Post-it notes to Packet switching. I’m not saying startups shouldn’t take VC/Angel funding, but rather that we should invest in our Web Worker future by supporting theorists and inventors to the same degree we do stylists and how-to-ers.

Making money is generally fairly easy, making a difference is tough and getting tougher, especially as we look to monetize everything right out of the gate.

—Ian

*Disclaimer: The Internet is a Playground is the title of a very funny book by David Thorne. You can buy that book here. This post has very little to do with the book.

“Now” has reached a critical state. Not the always-on input flavored now that comes in the form of emails, tweets, RFPs, requests, calls, horns and impatient wants. But rather the initialization now, the react now, the output-related now. Historically we have relegated now to closed-loop decision making. Stay or go. Move quickly or get hit. These are nows that we can complete, usually quickly, and close the loop. Open-loop nows, ones that require more research and ultimately iteration are incorrectly seen as the items clogging the system. The problem actually lies in our lens and a propensity towards tackling closed-loop nows first. In part because it feels good to complete things and check things off but also because identifying the finish-line of open-loop nows is intimidating. In short – we do what’s easy first.

Line up Klout, Empire Avenue, Facebook and Twitter on one side. Then line up the collapse of our economy, putting money into projects you are unsure about and attempting to add value on the other side. And suddenly tweeting a picture of your new sneakers seems innocuous.

Unfortunately by postponing dealing with iterative nows we shortchange those ideas, projects and systems. Call it lean, agile, open or iterative but these types of nows need to be initialized, shared and assessed many times before they become closed. This means the sooner we start them, share them and assess them, the closer they are to being completed. Furthermore the types of outputs we get from iterative nows (open-loop) tend to be more useful and perhaps have a longer tail than closed-loop nows.

What I am positing is simple, that we start projects, to-dos, items that need more feedback sooner rather than later. This may come in the form of: sharing specs for a product after an all-nighter, targeted questions about a whiteboard drawing or pushing a beta into the public way before it is ready. The initialization is just the beginning. Starting sets iteration in motion and this is where you determine whether you are on a wild goose chase or mining for gold. Adding value or extracting value.

—Ian

It’s a question I’ve found ourselves asking for the past 5+ years. My first answer is no. It’s not how I sell our services in a meeting. It’s not reflective of how we communicate ourselves on our site. (In short—it’s not a term I hold dear.)

But interestingly when clients introduce me to partners, employees and others – it’s how they describe what we do. Twice over the past week clients have introduced me like this:

“This is Ian, from Eat Media, his firm handles all of our content, strategy and marketing needs.”

In my mind we assist clients with product development, assist/create strategies that align with business goals and design/create both digital (web/mobile/presentation) and print (magazine, conference) assets. We think of ourselves as [content-first] creatives.  While perhaps that’s not a clear definition, it’s the one we’ve been comfortable and successful with to date. And, maybe, just maybe, we are a marketing firm.

This is what a day at Eat Media looks like (client work):

40% – Omnigraffle (with intermittent drawings on board and opinionated discussions)

30% – Copywriting (with intermittent edits and opinionated discussions and swearing)

20% – Researching

5% – Communicating with client

3% – Challenging assumptions

1% – Sipping coffee

.5% – Finding the right music to listen to

.5% – Fixing the printer

Is this Marketing? Not historically. But moving forward, this product-centric, content-first, technically adept version of “Marketing” is the only one that we believe clients need or will be able to afford. Doers. Strategy today – execution tomorrow. Keepers of the message as well as the experience of/in the message.

The days of a Traditional VP of Marketing or Director of Marketing hire (that often hires out to an agency to do the work) is dinosaur and soon to be ghost.  Agencies like ours are happy to fill that niche.

 UPDATE: 10/27/2011  Is Communications better than Marketing? Is it narrower or more focused?

—Ian

We’ll do a formal intro to this project in the next few weeks. For now I welcome you to take a look. We’re open to any and all feedback you have. Please use the user voice feedback tab on the right of the site or email me directly ian@eatmedia.net

calculator.eatmedia.net

INTERVIEW WITH SELF

What inspired you to make the Content Calculator?

1- We had a client who requested we break down content costs by piece but the hard cost of a word rate or per finished minute rate didn’t factor in their excessive stakeholder review cycle and training users on their new CMS.

2- The Time is Money Clock

3- Unruly excel spreadsheets

4- Umair Haque’s book – The New Capitalist Manifesto

I noticed that in some cases creating less content is more expensive. What’s up with that?

In some cases, like copywriting, it is harder and therefore more expensive to create less content.

Are these numbers for real?

Yes.

Didn’t you start this this awhile ago?

Yes.

Why should I care about soft costs?

So you can make more informed decisions related to content?

What are the calculations based on?

Our 5 years of experience estimating content strategy/creation/management projects.

Can I enter my own numbers and variables?

It’s coming.

What should I do with this information?

Make a smaller site? Invest in a content-first solution? Streamline your operations? Gosh, the opportunities are endless.

Are you still tweaking the tool?

Yes, that’s why we need your feedback :)

—Ian

Many years ago I worked for a now defunct NY company setting up outsourcing solutions in China. Our deliverables were code, creative and analytic reporting. Our clients included HSN and Disney. I was in charge of creating the systems that facilitated us managing creative 11,000 miles away in Guangzhou. I quickly learned four things.

1- Optimizing production based tasks requires a tremendous amount of documentation.
2- Optimizing creative tasks by running them through a production filter results in either crappy creative or missed deadlines.
3- Creative solves problems and requires understanding what questions to ask.
4- Creative is rarely creative when is treated like production.

The benefit of thinking with a content-first mindset is that it requires you to think through all possible scenarios, across multiple practices. On a daily basis I had to think about design, code, reporting, messaging, ad rates/specifications, campaigns, legal issues and IT. Managing multiple variables seems easy, or at least part of what we signed up for running an agency. I often like to say it all comes down to how many shovels do we need, how many guys do we need and where is the sand going. The creative is figuring that all out. Then, and only then, is the digging (the production) part of what we signed up for worthwhile.

Occasionally clients try to assuage the details of creative projects and cover it with disguise of “execution-only” primer — the end result is rarely good. Sometimes it’s a money issue, other times it’s a vision issue, but in reality it becomes a production vs. creation issue. Creativity is about hands-on experience coupled with the ability to ask the appropriate questions at the appropriate time, while managing the change necessary to implement that creative.

Once a project starts to house phrases like: “seems pretty basic” and “should take you 5-minutes” you have either knowingly or unwittingly moved from the creation of something to the production of something. All shovels down.

—Ian

I recently had a conversation with Doug Rushkoff about a project he is working on. My first instinct was, “This could be a product or an app.” Not so much for the commerce aspect but rather to translate the value inherent in his thinking/project to something people could use. And Doug said: Not everything is a product. Some things are process only, and processes are better implemented and actualized by people from start to finish.

Every day a new app that curates knowledge or helps users skip the process and get right to decision making is pushed to web. I use many of these sites/applications — they save me time and money. But at what cost?

To Doug’s point, at the cost of process creation, process understanding and the information/experience loss that comes from understanding complexities. Is opinion formed from a deep understanding of process more valuable than a decision quickly culled from a slider, input box, submit button and results page?

—Ian

Just hear me out. One emerging practice (content strategy) + one tactic (content marketing) = I’m not really sure.

Content Marketing: “Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty.” –from the Content Marketing Wikipedia page created 25 February 2008

Content Strategy: “Content strategy has been growing as a practice within the industry of web development since the late 1990s. It is recognized as a field in user experience design but has also drawn interest from practitioners in adjacent communities such as content management, business analysis and technical communication.” –from the Content Strategy Wikipedia page created 08 April 2009

Then a funny thing happened about a year ago—the terms got squished together to form “Content Marketing Strategy.” I’m not sure how this happened or even what it means but it’s out there and to some people it means something.

In my opinion, “Content Marketing Strategy” is vacuous—there is no such thing. There is content marketing and there is content strategy. Or, to rollback a round of buzzwords, there is integrated marketing and there is UX Design. Either way, one is a tactic and one is a practice. I’m not shining a light on one to keep another one in the dark, but rather here to say that we all agree content is important. That includes IAs, ixDs, coders, graphic designers, and copywriters. It’s what we do about knowing content is important that counts. How we solve client’s problems is what matters.

Volume and repetition matter
The solution I hear most often from content marketing is “make more content, gain more trust.” From content strategy, it’s “content should drive all other practices.” Increasingly, you will find many articles that use the terms interchangeably, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing; primarily for the client who now has to deal with ever-finer slices of practitioner specialties and more difficult integration/PM issues.

I recently met with a friend of a friend about a website he was launching. His business was a data-based content creation & strategy play with all the requisite buzzwords in place, along with poor design, clunky marketing speak and a mish-mash of “content marketing” and “content strategy” definitions. I was at loss. Here was a very smart guy with good intentions going out into the market with one puzzle piece. The whole event felt like dropping your car off at a mechanic who asks you for a ride because his car doesn’t run.

Perhaps you don’t build trust?
Building trust goes way beyond the creation of content. (And yes, I’m guilty of oversimplifying its importance.) I’m slowing starting to realize that you can’t set out to build trust. When you do, it implies that you are building it in order to leverage it later—and that feels a little dirty. Trust has so many facets to it and is so subjective that I find it hard to believe there is a one size fits all solution that works. So if Content Marketing Strategy can live on the web, then I’m petitioning for Trust Strategy.

Perhaps content ________ isn’t about building anything but rather is just a requirement like air in your tires, ink in your pen and quality in your product/service.

A great user experience respects both the content and the reader (see Readability). A great user experience cares that labels fit inside buttons and ensures that “thanks for coming” takes precedence across all fields of practice from the first click to the last.

—Ian

At the initial Content Strategy Consortium in 2009 /IA Summit in Memphis I suggested we create a budget, a fake project and play out a content strategy budget scenario. The small group didn’t jump on the idea, but it has always sat with me as a worthwhile exercise.

So I’m offering up my experiment here to a broader audience of: Content Strategists, Design/Build Digital Shops, User Experience Designers and anyone else in the Strategic Branding, Digital Marketing space.

THE $25,000 CHALLENGE

The Challenge:

How would you use this (purposefully) limited budget to solve this hypothetical client’s problem(s)? You can focus just on your expertise or spread the budget out across multiple practices.

The Rules:

You can ask 3 questions (email ian@eatmedia.net) but you can’t say no to the job.

Industry: Financial Services

Budget: $25,000.00

Deadline: We’ll be collecting ideas until Thursday, May 5.

What’s in it for You:

We’ll be posting the best submissions on our blog sometime in May. And if we mention your submission, you’ll get a little gift from us.

Assessment of the Existing Website:

• On a scale of 1-10 the site would score a 5 (design/IA/user experience).
• Client has a 50 page website. Home/Services/About/Contact/Press.
• Client’s target audience = 23-59 year old executives looking to invest in regional, high-yield markets.
• They are only using organic search. 30 of their 50 pages are articles, press and marketing content.
• Site is not converting pageviews to leads (email and one whitepaper download).

Assessment of Newsletter:

• On a scale of 1-10 the newsletter would score a 4 (design/IA/user experience)
• Newsletter is not performing well compared to industry opens and clicks.

Assessment of Social Media:

• On a scale of 1-10 their social media interaction would score a 4 (content, frequency, relevance)
• Twitter account that they intermittently post to – 1-3x a week with prompts to check out their services as well as some industry news.
• No mobile strategy and website is not optimized for the web. All collateral is very dry and lacks a unique voice.
• How do you allocate this (purposefully) limited budget? You can focus just on your expertise or spread the budget out across multiple practices.

—Ian