The Digital Crown

Winning at Content on the Web

Ahava Leibtag

• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780124076570
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Human-Computer-Interaktion

In 1997, Bill Gates famously said "Content is king." Since then, the digital marketing world has been scrambling to fulfill this promise, as we finally shift our focus to what consumers really want from our brands: a conversation. The Digital Crown walks you through the essentials of crafting great content: the fundamentals of branding, messaging, business goal alignment, and creating portable, mobile content that is future-ready. Systems create freedom, and within this book you'll learn the seven critical rules to align your internal and external content processes, including putting your audience first, involving stakeholders early and often, and creating multidisciplinary content teams.

Complete with case studies and experience drawn directly from global content projects, you are invited to observe the inner workings of successful content engagements. You'll learn how to juggle the demands of IT, design, and content teams, while acquiring all the practical tools you need to devise a roadmap for connecting and engaging with your customers.

This is your next step on the journey to creating and managing winning content to engage your audience and keep them coming back for more.

• Discover easy-to-follow, simple breakdowns of the major ideas behind engaging with your customer
• Learn both the theoretical and practical applications of content and communication on-line
• Maximize on the case studies and real-world examples, enabling you to find the best fit for your own business

PART I

CONTENT IS A CONVERSATION

Outline

Introduction

Chapter 1 Understanding Branding, Content Strategy, and Content Marketing

Rule 1 Start with Your Audience

Chapter 2 Making the Case for Content

Rule 2 Involve Stakeholders Early and Often

Case Study: XONEX

Introduction

The Net is a real place where people can go to learn, to talk to each other, and to do business together. It is a bazaar where customers look for wares, vendors spread goods for display, and people gather around topics that interest them. It is a conversation.

(Levine, 2009)

Changing Patterns of Content Consumption

We live in a world of networked markets. To build great relationships with our customers, we must focus on content as conversations.

The marketplace shifts rapidly. People research everything they buy online; they can even talk to other people around the globe before they buy.

Our audiences typically have more than one device to access content. They surf multiple channels at once, having conversations on multiple devices and different sized screens, moving seamlessly from one conversation to the next. They interact and share daily with friends, colleagues, and peers within huge social networks previously impossible to imagine.

If you are the person responsible for managing content creation and execution, you may not be sure where to start. When you don’t know who someone is and you want to learn more about and share with them, where do you begin?

You begin with a conversation. A conversation is a dialogue, the exchange of information between two parties. Sometimes we listen, and sometimes we talk.

Understanding the Power of Digital Content

The axiom goes, “If you want to be treated differently, act differently.” In the case of content, we need to think about it differently so we can treat it differently. In Part 1, we’re going to learn how to think about content differently so that we can build long-lasting, true relationships with our audiences. By learning to think about content in a different way, we will break down some of the organizational barriers and silos that occur when we try to create and publish content.

So, we are going to learn how to have a conversation with our customers. To do that, we must understand:

• Our brand: Who we are

• Digital content: The most effective way to converse with our audiences

• Content drives sales: Content is a critical asset within the business

In Part 1, we’re going to cover all of the above. Together, we will also learn the first of the seven rules for creating winning content for your brand:

• Rule #1: Start with Your Audience

• Rule #2: Involve Stakeholders Early and Often

Let’s begin by learning about the interplay of branding, content strategy and content marketing.

Reference

1. Levine R. The Cluetrain Manifesto. New York: Basic Books; 2009; p. 81.

Chapter 1

Understanding Branding, Content Strategy, and Content Marketing

Abstract

The web provides an ever-changing, morphing platform for content, which is an ongoing conversation between your company and your customers. We need to keep up, not only with the technology but also the audience—who are they, what do they want, and how can we get their attention and keep it? The answers to all of those questions start with one thing—content strategy. We need to learn about our audience, figure out how to reach them, and enter into a conversation with them so that there is trust and comfort. To do that, we need a solid system that keeps us on track throughout this process. Content marketing is the tactic that will help you establish a brand audience who engages consistently with your content and recommends your brand to others via social networks.

Keywords

branding; content marketing; content strategy; corporate publishing; inbound marketing; messaging strategies; online marketing

Are you a person who is frustrated by the content process within your organization? You may be the vice president of marketing, the owner of a small business, the director of web strategy, or a content communications professional.

For a moment, I want you to imagine that instead of being responsible for your organization’s content or website, you are actually responsible for a retail store—an actual storefront with a physical address and an entrance. It’s a beautiful store, with fabulous merchandise arranged in pleasing detail to entice your customers.

However, when your customers enter there is no one to greet them. Not one person in the store picks up his head to say, “Hello, can I help you?” In some cases, the salespeople in the store don’t speak the same language as your browsing customers. When your potential buyer asks about products in the store, those salespeople are missing critical information.

Does the content on your digital properties (websites, social media channels, blogs) function like this? Does the content support the user experience? Can people find the information they need? Is the product information complete? Are there enticing stories that compel visitors to dive in deeper? Do they sign up for continued communications with your organization or do they bounce like rubber balls right off of the page?

The Problem Grows

How many times does someone call you on the phone and ask why your company is not showing up on Google as the first result of a search for a certain term? How many requests pass across your desk to change something on the website? Do your superiors tell you that this is not your problem, only to have various people in the organization then point their fingers at you when something goes wrong on the website or on social media? Are you the person consistently reporting to the CEO, or other members of the C-suite (senior executive management, so named because many of their titles begin with C, for Chief), and falling short every time? Worse, are you not able to articulate the full mess you are managing every day?

Around the globe, organizations of all sizes are struggling to communicate online—to make sales, encourage brand ambassadorship, communicate information, and persuade public opinion. The word web suggests interdependence, something large multinational organizations understand. Yet, these very same organizations do not know how to align their web operations so they are consistent, efficient and have reporting mechanisms that speak directly to the bottom line.

Before you decide where you want to go, you need vision. You must begin with the end in mind. To get there, you need a roadmap. Together, we are going to learn to create a digital strategy roadmap for your organization. We will learn about the unique interplay between people, processes, and technology that are vital for effective and successful web content.

The Challenge of the Web

In many ways, the virtual world of the Internet is better and worse than the actual physical world. In the real world, you can smell a Cinnabon. Stroke a mohair jacket. Taste a salted caramel latte. Not true online. You can’t touch products, try them on, taste them, or really discern if that shirt is teal, turquoise, or cerulean.

In the actual physical world you can’t read what others think about the shirt, if they found the fit true to size, and what color they thought it looked like when they pulled it out of the box. The web gives us the power of information through exchanges and conversations.

The web gives us the power of information through exchanges and conversations.

Marketplaces rely on conversations: the web is a modern marketplace. Conversations between people matter in ways they have not mattered before, as communication technologies facilitate wider and deeper exchanges of information than ever in the history of humankind.

The Internet was built for creating conversations through the input of real people (called crowdsourcing), which is why content has become so important in modern marketing. We are in a world of constant conversations and exchanges of information. People want to know what they want to know—and they want to know instantaneously.

Starting the Conversation: The Beginning of the Internet

There is some controversy as to whether or not the military started the Internet as a way of maintaining communication in time of war. Some say this is an urban myth. As Gordon Crovitz writes, “For many technologists, the idea of the Internet traces to Vannevar Bush, the presidential science adviser during World War II who oversaw the development of radar and the Manhattan Project. … Bush defined an ambitious peacetime goal for technologists: Build what he called a ‘memex’ through which “wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified” (Crovitz, 2012). Yet another theory is that a famous computer scientist named Bob Taylor invented the Internet so that universities could share resources.

Let’s not worry about the who, but rather, let’s appreciate what the creation of the Internet has meant for all of us—the start of our ability to engage in incredibly...