For the Content Hungry: The Eat Media Blog

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

If you have ever heard, “Throw your hands in the air, and wave ‘em like ya just don’t care,” you know the next line is, “Oh yeah!”

DJ Hollywood originally coined the call and response that happens between a DJ and the crowd as “conversations.” Hollywood’s “conversations” with his audience completed a circle and cemented a relationship that built trust, extended the depth of the experience and established Hollywood as the hottest DJ in New York.

Today’s digital landscapes too often forsake the conversation and treat experiences like shiny IP assigned megaphones—statement amplifiers—rather than introductions to converse. Dan Brown says very early in his book Communicating Design, “The people who will be visiting and interacting with your web site provide important context to the design process.” If Dan would permit me to replace ‘design’ with ‘conversation,’ I’d leverage his statement to offer that companies should be paying more attention communicating with web site visitors and creating designs/experiences that introduce and inspire conversations, rather than simply collecting data and prompting to purchase their wares. An incredible experience is not enough anymore, it feels both obvious and static without a conversation. (A conversation is not an email address, a pop-up chat window, a comment field or even a “like” button.)

Collect = Confero in Latin, meaning to “bring together.”
Buy = Paro in Latin, meaning, “to prepare or get ready.”

I’d like to think we can tailor experiences that confero better than a plain old form submit—like this from uber-designer Jessica Hische. Or as a broader in-person experience like the Donahue App from arc90 and Behavior.

I also think we are capable of helping customers paro. Like Warby Parker’s virtual glasses tool.

Virtual realities, GEO-located inspirations and social media are great tools with which to create experiences, but only if they are part of a larger conversation with the user. Only if they are committed to an open loop where the experience wants to both talk and listen.

Oh yeah.

P.S. — Interested in more Hip-Hop and Content Strategy analogies. Come see me speak at Confab.

—Ian

Every great idea is not great feature. And every feature isn’t a great idea. Gold plating and coming soon both have the same ally — the story. If your story is strong, your product/service has a much better chance of success. Unless you have an undiscovered truckload of viral pixie dust in hiding in Iowa, let your product build on story.

The Big Four

Be prepared to change all of these items:

Story: Your story creates and enforces your message — messages are shared.

Features: Features either work or they don’t, but rarely are they shouted from the rooftops unless they are accompanied by a great user experience.

User Experience: User experiences can be exciting or invisible but always include aspects of both your story and your features.

Customer Development: Customer development is the “Will it Float” moment? Will customers bite? Do you know who they are? How will you reach them? What features do they need to adopt your product/service?

Everyday we tell stories. Build on that.

— Ian

It’s the kind of letter you always hope to get–some evidence of making a positive impact on a young employee’s career.

In this case, he was fresh out of college and I hired him to be an editorial assistant for a regional magazine group. He was probably there less than a month when I was up against a deadline for our annual food issue–with no cover story. I took a chance and assigned it to him, and he nailed it. I’ve never seen a story about french fries tackled with such sophistication.

I received this thank you note last week after writing recommendation letters for his MFA applications.

It not only made my day week month, but it inspired me to reach out to some of the managers who made a big impact on my career.

Because when it comes to being an editor/manager/employer, isn’t that what it’s all about?

Too many companies fail to seek change until after a brand or product is declared broken. Then change is ushered through at a breakneck pace fed by panic and profits. And even after broken pieces are identified, the focus is often on plugging the dike rather than seeking opportunities to improve the entire process.

In other words, maintenance often trumps improvement. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The problem

The distance and prerogatives between “change” and “improvement” often creates organizational pressure. The greater the pressure, the more likely employees are to play it safe and the more predictable a brand story becomes.

“But we make site changes every day.”

Don’t confuse maintenance with change. True change is made with the intention of moving the bar forward.

What’s the root of the problem?

• There is often no process for suggesting change.
• There is often no process for initiating change.
• Change sparks questions that organizations aren’t ready to answer.
• Managing change challenges systems that are already in place (whether they are efficient or not).
• If the mechanism for change isn’t in place and isn’t embraced, people will only push creative they know will get approved. Which means there’s not a lot of opportunity for brand evolution.
• If employees are shot down (or considered “rocking the boat”) for trying to create spearhead change, they’ll go back to pushing papers.
• Change is usually brought on due to a lack of sales, a problem with an existing product, a product launch or new management. In other words, when you’re up against the gun.

The Opportunity

Effective change management is a brand’s greatest asset—if you don’t have the mechanisms in place to effect change, your brand story goes stale.

Ready your brand for change. Prepare your organization to be more nimble. Create systems for gathering input. Map processes for initiating cross-departmental change. Empower your management to move quickly and efficiently.

Why?

Change saves money. Change gets people excited (once they get past the fear). Change broadens your audience. Change evolves your story. Change rocks.