content strategy mooc 2 toolkit (1)

TAKE BACK TO WORK TOOLKIT

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John Lavine Professor & Director,

Media Management Center

Welcome to your Content Strategy Toolkit!

This resource is meant to help you apply your newly garnered skills from this, the second Content Strategy MOOC, to help propel your professional career forward. Please feel free to share this resource with the people across your organization.

The Toolkit is a quick-reference resource for you to use when you are back at work. It provides quick tips and tricks for many of the topics addressed in the MOOC. You can find a listing of all the topics in the Table of Contents on the next page.

Thank you for participating in the MOOC and for downloading this resource!

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Content Strategy for Professionals 2: Expanding Your Content’s Impact and Reach Toolkit

Table of Contents

[5] John Lavine:

a) Put Strategy in Your Content Strategy

[6-7] Candy Lee:

a) Content Curation

b) A/B Testing

c) Professor Lee’s Trendy Content Checklist

[8-9] Randy Hlavac:

a) Social Networks

b) The ROI in Social

[10-11] Emily Withrow:

a) Tips for Designing with Interaction in Mind

b) Two Opportunities to Build Interactive Story3


Table of Contents Continued

[12-13] Zach Wise:

a) Gestalt Theory

b) Tips for Shooting Great Photos and Video

[14-15] Randy Hlavac:

a) Types of Social Communities

b) Methodologies to Engage a Community

[16-18] Rich Gordon:

a) Why it’s Important to Measure

b) Tracking Engagement

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John Lavine Professor & Director,

Media Management Center

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Strategy

Strategy is a plan to achieve an organization's goals, usually over a period of time.

What strategy does is say, if we're going to succeed at the organizational level, at the division, at the department, at the team, or even the personal level within it, everyone has got to be working towards common goals.

You must communicate in a prioritized way, what are the two, or three most important things I'm going to communicate from my role in this organization that will contribute to that strategy.

Have deep knowledge of your audiences – both internal and external – and deliver your content to them in a way that they want to receive it. Convenience is key for getting and keeping their attention.

Utilizing Content Trends in Your Organization

Candy LeeProfessor, Medill

The Trend: Content CurationHow to Apply It? Curate Content from a number of different sources across the web that relate to a topic important to your audience. Caution: This may drive traffic away from your site. Find a balance between curated content and other types.

The Trend: A/B TestingHow to Apply It? Testing in the digital space is just as important as testing in analog. Apply A/B Testing to random sampling for headlines, email subject lines and social messages. Caution: Only test one variable at a time.

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Professor Lee’s Trendy Content Checklist

Design with links

Add multi-media (video and photography)

Ask questions; encourage dialog

Use badging and leaderboards to reward user

generated comments

Feature popular content

Feature shared content

Utilizing Content

Trends in Your

Organization

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Social Networks

Randy HlavacLecturer, Medill

We need content strategies which cut through the clutter to our desired audiences to engage them in a long-term dialog.

An effective content strategy answers these 3 questions for a defined audience:1. How will we create value?2. How will we deliver value?3. How will we capture value?

Knowledge of our audience defines the value they will receive:1. Identify topics the audience discusses.2. Connect with the influencers.3. Use advanced social monitoring tools to deeply

understand them.

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Social Networks

Where is the ROI in Social?

1. Login• Logins allow you to track behaviors on

your private social site.• Email links to your sales and marketing

system.

2. Profile• Profiles allow people to tell you more

about their needs, wants and desires.• It lets them tell community members, too.• Many uses for your organization.

3. Remember – Engagement is multimedia! • Don’t focus on specific media or media

defined roles.• Think about the mission you will play with

the audience. 9


Interactivity and Gamification

Emily WithrowAssistant Professor, Medill

Interactivity (n): An exchange between two things that influence each other

…between you and a device, person, or brand.

Tips for Designing with Interaction in Mind:

• Design for mobile first, and then scale up.• Don’t place unnecessary barriers between your audience

and your content.• Don’t hide information from your audience. If it’s essential,

give it top billing.• Create an experience that’s squarely centered on the

individual connecting with your brand.

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Interactivity and

Gamification

Two Opportunities to Build Interactive Story

1. Building user information into the story itself• Lean-back experience: Users are ready for you to guide

the experience, and be hands off.

2. Having users drive the narrative experience• Lean-forward experience: Users are engaged in the

material, primed for interaction with content.

Keep in Mind:• Tailor content to the individual. Demonstrate relevance.• Choose a platform that makes sense for your audience.• Know your audience and meet them where they are.

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Visual Communication

Zach WiseAssociate Professor, Medill

Visual messages become a language when read in the mind.

For pictures and words it is clear that the medium and the message form one symbolic statement.

According to Gestalt Theory, visual perception is a result of organizing sensory elements or forms into various groups:

• Objects that look similar will be automatically grouped together by the brain.

• When we are made to look at something unfamiliar, especially if it is a designed page, figure ground relationship clues determine the success of our experience.

• A distinct shape and color palette can help us immediately perceive information.

• On the web, impression is reinforced by user experience: similar elements should have a consistent behavior when a cursor hovers over them. 12


Visual

Communication

Tips for Shooting Great Photos and Video

Great photos use at least one, if not more, creative devices such as silhouette, juxtaposition, or selective focus.

Hierarchy of good photography: • Informational• Graphically appealing• Emotional• Intimate

When shooting video:• Shoot sequences – think of shooting video as a

patchwork quilt that has many different pieces of tiny fabric.

• Vary your focal length.• 4-8-12, keep it short, keep it tight.• Lock it down, keep it steady.• When framing subjects, use the Rule of Thirds.

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Social Engagement

Randy HlavacLecturer, Medill

Consumers seek communities for two reasons:1. Passions

• Passion communities address topics we personally care about.

• Passion seekers want to hear the “newest” from the influencers.

• They also want to engage with peers to discuss their opinions and input on community subjects.

2. Trigger Events• Life stage changes drive us to seek communities

which can help us address them.• In a trigger event relationship, we want guidance

from experts NOT from our peers.• Trigger event communities have a start and a finish

to the relationship.

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Social

Engagement

Methodology to Engage a Community

(with thanks to Stanford Smith)

For your first community content, use the experts to help you establish your expertise.

Build on their expertise to establish yours:• Find two articles by experts.

• Can be complementary or opposing.

• Summarize the articles for the readers.

• Develop three action items for the articles.

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Measuring Your Content

Richard GordonProfessor, Medill

Why it’s important to measure:

• Every organization is now a publisher – media companies of course, but also businesses, non-profit organizations and government agencies.

• Only way to tell if content is working is to measure engagement.

• The internet is the most measurable medium ever.• You can find out:

• How often content is viewed.• How many people were exposed.• How much of a video or text article was consumed.• Whether users come back for more.

Remember – In every category of content, only 1-2 “big winners” in the competition for attention. You’d think that audience attention would be dispersed more widely – but it’s not!

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Measuring Your

Content

Track Engagement: Keep a Spreadsheet for Key Performance Indicators

For each DAY, a site manager should keep track of:• Time spent• Visitors• Pageviews

• For different areas of the site• Pageviews generated by search engines• Pageviews and visits from different devices

• iPhones, Android phones, tablets, etc.

For each MONTH, a site manager should keep track of:• Visitors• Visits• Visits per visitor• Pages per visit• Mobile vs. desktop visits• Visits for different types of devices

Then these metrics can be totaled up annually to compare them over multiple years. 17


Measuring Your

Content

Example Spreadsheet

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content strategy mooc 2 toolkit (1)

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