Daniel Eizans: Content Strategist, Geek

Every Wednesday morning, I wander upstairs to cheat on my colleagues in the content strategy and user experience departments to broaden my knowledge base and talk about things just as geeky as our collective practices.

You see, Wednesdays are my weekly trysts with my agency’s Content Management and Content Integration groups. I very much enjoy these sessions, not only because it provides me the opportunity to fully nerd it out on everything from asset grids to meta data, but it also affords me the opportunity to vent shared frustrations, create new efficiences and discover insights as to how we make this whole content strategy/content management thing play nice. I do this because ultimately, I’d like to better serve our clients and assist our content developers in producing more relevant and compelling creative.

Let me start by disclaiming that I’m of the opinion that content strategy is most certainly NOT content management. As strategists, we have input on how the content is produced, managed and governed, but our goal is ultimately to aid in the creation of a strategic set of best practicies and personas to be sure that content developers are creating the most appropriate content for machines and humans.

So, if content management is concerned with the cataloging, re-purposing and proper tagging of assets so they’re readily available and relevant, and content integration is concerned with making these assets usable for a variety of media channels, how do these guys get along with and provide insights into the content strategy role?

The answer that I’ve slowly been coming to after a few months of getting inside the heads of various content integration and management team members is that there is an absolutely crucial need to design a common set of systems, routines and nomenclature for an integrated content development process – something myself and two colleagues are working very hard to shape.

It seems that our separate languages can certainly be understood by one another, but somehow can become twisted in interpretations when they’re translated to those outside our happy content development cycle. So, it seems far better to step forward with a universal dialogue to properly marry content strategy and user experience to content management and integration so that POV can be articulated to the content development process laymen.

This calls for unprecedented collaboration, which can be difficult in a large agency setting. It means content managers and strategists need to work very hard to understand the other’s practice.

Good content strategists should have a strong understanding of how asset management and integration works (EVEN IN NON-DIGITAL!!), and asset managers and integration specialists have to understand the insights and data sets that influence how a content strategist develops personas, works with experience planning, determines gap analysis and creates a point of view for a given project.

If content management doens’t understand the results of strategic persona process, assets can’t be tagged properly in databases and potential efficiencies for content integration across communication and campaign platforms will most likely be missed. Missed opportunity creates a creep on scope when new projects and the potential for new content creation comes around. Likewise, if content strategy doesn’t better understand the management and integration process influence on management and evenutal governance of an asset will never be achieved.

So I’m putitng out an APB for the creation of a content development dictionary of sorts. Content producers need a common set of terms and ways to explain the roles of their colleagues and everyone needs to understand these terms, roles, processes and routines through a common nomenclature.

Big agencies traditionally suck at this, so I’m especially interested in what you strategists working within this environment are doing to combat it.

I know it seems silly to have to tell people to integrate into a process for content development, but as agencies and organizations attempt to become less siloed by re-aligning as content production houses, they’re effectively creating new silos by coming up with their own language, process and routine for handling individual steps to creating the work.

So strategists … have you hugged your content manager or your integration team today? If you haven’t head upstairs and do so. They’re smart and insightful people who will make you think more deeply and cause you to write better strategies.

Drop thoughts below in the comments and check back for periodic updates to my attempts to write the Content Development dictionary.

Disclaimer: The opinions reflected in this post ARE NOT necessarily those of my employer. These opinoins are strictly my take on the content development process.

Whether you’re relatively new to search engine optimization and search marking or an old pro, you’ve probably heard someone say “ Content Is King,” more times than you can count. It’s not just apples and oranges anymore, because someone (or in content’s case, something) won’t like either. So, allow me to reiterate the point one more time – just in case you weren’t paying attention.

Content is king when it comes to search engine optimization.

Bottom line, if you have strong, engaging web copy, you’ll see increases in search engine rankings and traffic because there is a greater likelihood you’ll be linked by other sites and be fodder for discussion. While human beings might love your content talking about apples and oranges, SEO content has to target search engines as well, which loves Kiwi.

As Erik Cisler of Wpromote Search Engine Marketing points out, SEO content must ultimately target human beings.

“Good content means targeting not just keywords, but key ideas that appeal to people. A lot of SEO content is written under the guise of being a ‘How To’ guide or an FAQ on a company’s site. That’s cool, great idea – but what if, I dunno, you actually approached those articles as legitimate sources of information,” Cisler says. (Unfortunately I lost the link tot he blog entry he posted this on!)

The point he’s really making here is that while writing optimized content that search engines will understand is all fine and good, there is absolutely no reason not to try to sell the readers while targeting a particular search engine’s algorithms. That’s where great copywriting enters the equation.

Let’s just face it. The copy on your Web site has to be able to persuade leads or consumers that your firm has what they need after the eyeballs hit the page. Sure, you may have copy jammed with keywords that will bring in the masses, but it’s just as important to have that copy persuade them that you’re better than your competition, who very well could be offering your same services at a considerable value. In order to land that consumer’s time and pocketbook, your site has to prove why someone should by from YOU.

And yet, brands seem to have a particularly difficult time grasping this idea. Many companies are depending too heavily on the popularity of their brand to drive traffic, as opposed to providing engaging content that happens to be laced with the right keywords. It’s truly a balancing act, and unless you can say your company happens to be a computer and software giant named after a piece of fruit and has a rabid consumer base that will buy anything and everything you offer, you need great copywriting and great content strategy.

Only an overarching content strategy, based on your business’ marketing goals as well as the needs and habits of consumers, will provide you with SEO friendly copy that will engage consumers.

In other words, avoid single pages that only use keywords that make the search engines go ga, ga. Provide content and product descriptions that do the same thing for your customers. Give them the facts to make an informed decision and a reason to come back. If that copy is sharable, something your customer would feel comfortable passing along to a friend, even better. Make your engaging SEO content sharable, embeddable. Most of all, it should inspire a reaction.

Chances are, you’ve received this type of copy for years in direct mail pieces and still see it everywhere you look.

“Don’t miss out on this exclusive, special, once-in-a-lifetime offer…”

You can laugh, but this form of content can and does work. It works even better if you have a product that consumers actually want.

Whether you’re doing it yourself or working with an agency, remember that SEO content is not about writing to make the search engine happy. Your SEO focused content should never undermine the legitimacy of your product or service. Yes, weave in the key phrases, have solid code and lots of title tags, but remember, the search engine isn’t going to buy anything from you and it won’t go out and share your site and product with its friends on Facebook.

Persuasive writing creates engagement. Engagement means more comments, pass along value, and assures that your content is being tweeted, posted, dug, stumbled upon and indexed by spiders that aren’t just from search engines.

Engagement plus persuasive writing, plus SEO friendly will ultimately yield a better page rank and get your site higher in those all too important organic search rankings.

So, embrace the fact that SEO content is more than just apples and oranges and stuffing pages full of keywords. Eighty percent of your battle is selling your customer once they get there. When you have better content, you’ll have a better ROI.

Photo: Meliha Gojak

When people ask me what I do, I sometimes struggle to come up with a definition. During the course of my career, I’ve been a lot of different things. I’ve been a newspaper reporter, a Web designer, a programmer, a marketer, a strategist and probably a slew of other titles that I can’t recall. My favorite title is probably “husband.” While I wear this one full-time, I sometimes wonder if I’m cut out for the job. Thankfully, I have the best co-worker a man could ask for. But I digress.

Despite my career meanderings, the thing that has never changed is the fact that I’ve worked to produce engaging and meaningful content. It’s exactly for that reason I redesigned my Web site. The previous two versions of my site were creatively driven. I used this space to showcased my design skills, my creative portfolio and my love for music and art. I maintained a blog that largely came second.

As I have become more interested in social media and in developing content solutions for clients, I’ve realized it’s time to take my own medicine. It’s high time I start being more congruent – to practice what I preach – and to produce some quality, engaging content of my own. And with my redesigned site, powered by Wordpress, I believe I have the right tools in place.

Hopefully, we’ll have some interesting conversations and we can learn from each other. I’m looking forward to a more frequently updated, more usable Danieleizans.com. I’m open to your thoughts and suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments below.