Daniel Eizans: Content Strategist, Geek

For the first time in my professional career, I took a pretty big leap. I told a room full of very, very smart user experience professionals at Internet User Experience 2010 that I believe content strategists are not doing enough to adequately prepare for the next big thing. I also mentioned that I believe that Context, not content, is the real king when it comes to the web.

I’m happy to report that my thoughts and early stab at setting up the foundation for Context Strategy were both well received (see slides below).

Still, I’d like to reiterate that this process still needs refining and that we need to start finding better ways to account for personal behaviors (personal behavioral context) and personal situations (personal situational context) in order to take content strategy to the next level. When we combine personal behavioral and personal situational contexts we have the basis for what we’d potentially need to create a contextual based content strategy.

My next steps are to start exploring fields for content audits and persona development to begin accounting for context, while researching tools (including Eye Tracking, Functional MRI and biometric data) that can be synthesized on a project by project basis. Like I say in my presentation, I really need help formulating this discussion to get to a place where we can all start creating more meaningful content for users on the Web.

Comments on my presentation or the idea of Contextual Content Strategy in general are more than welcome. Let’s hash this thing out people!

I’m very excited to be able to announce that I’ll be a presenter in the Content Strategy sessions during the sixth-annual Internet User Experience Conference this July. While I’m speaking as a member of the content strategy community, I’ll be providing a heavy dose of context as the focus of my talk will be “Context as a Content Strategy.”

Basically, my presentation will attempt to shine more light on content’s oft overlooked spouse, context.

As web designers and user experience professionals we are all aware of the importance of content and we consider how this material is used, but more often than not we don’t consider what actually makes it up. Is the material too difficult to understand? Have we provided adequate background information on the topic? Is there another piece of content (even if this content doesn’t belong to us) that helps to support it and give it relevance?

These are the questions all content strategists and content developers need to begin considering prior to the onset of production. In order to achieve this process, content strategists and site owners must begin to be more critical of content during heuristic reviews, content audits and gap analyses to account for contextual improvements that will make content more relevant for visitors.

My IUE presentation attempts to begin to define how content strategists can evaluate and plan for content through a more specific contextual lens through examining how the brain processes, accesses and stores information and what factors content strategists can begin to consider when planning for supporting content and creating deeper, more meaningful content plans across multiple devices (iPad, Smart Phone, Laptop, Desktop, Etc.).

If you’re not familiar with IUE, the multi-day event covers most aspects of web site design and strategy, including user experience design, graphics, branding, social networking, accessibility, effective web writing, the migration to mobile, and enhancements that drive customers to your site.

I’m absolutely honored to have my own little spot and will be joining a panel discussion on content strategy as well with a bunch of smart cookies that include Chris Moritz (digital content strategy manager at C-E, Shauna Nicholson and many more. If you’re interested in attending my talk, I’ll be speaking Monday, July 26 (time is still TBD). Following my presentation will be the content strategy/content management panel. I’ll announce those details as I get them.

There’s still time to register, and if you can make it, you’ll no doubt be treated to a lot of interesting talks and learn a whole lot more about some really innovative things going on in the digital space.

Hope to see some of you there!

I have a confession to make. I’m starting to care less, and less about creating content strategies for marketing campaigns and Web sites and starting to care more and more about how the content we produce is computed by the brain.

Today, I’d rather eschew my marketing hat entirely and focus on something I’d ultimately like to take on through research – the creation of an entirely different form of content strategy that shapes content planning, creation plans and governance models based on data that comes from how the brain processes, learns, stores and utilizes information that publishers present to it.

I’d loosely definine this practice as “Contextual Content Strategy.” This goes so far beyond the idea of creating useable content that I wonder if its something that can be taken on with sincerity. To be honest, without extensive neuropsychological study or neuroscientific discovery, I doubt that the level of detail I’d want to achieve could be obtained, but I have always contended that true “contnet strategy” must look beyond the web and focus on how people learn and put information into context. I contend that that context should be brought down to the most specific of levels and appeal to individual brain functions.

I was first inspired to start looking at content in this different fashion after listening to a Tom Wujec talk about “three different ways the brain creates meaning.” Wujec gave this talk in February 2009 at the annual Ted Conference. He highlights a variety of brain functions throughout his discussion but nets out on the point that while we can comprehend and take in data through seeing or through discussion, we make meaning by seeing. Meaning, for most people as he puts it, is derived from an action of “visual interrogation.”

Three key takeaways:

1. Images (I’ll interpret these as being either static or motion assets) should be used to clarify meaning
2. Create Interaction with images to create relevance
3. Augment memory with persistance

This certainly isn’t a new concept, but it does call to attention a different reason for carefully selecting a graphic, illustration or animatic in that the visuals, coupled with copy can create deeper meaning and create a higher level of contextual relevance. More often than not, I’m finding that most content strategists become bored down with a metric rather than trying to determine if something is actually effective in its purpose. This is perhaps the most troubling thing for me to overcome when it comes to content strategy.

To me, it doesn’t seem ridiculous to believe that we’ll soon begin focusing on creating content based on how we know that it will be processed by individual clusters of firing neurons and the brain based on where it is consumed, the time of day, the type of device it’s delivered upon, the consumer’s physical location, cognitive state, etc. For the most part, all of these things are readily available to be indexed in databases. We can store that information, parse and compute it and create a custom set of delivery options that will resonnate directly with the way a particular individual learns, stores and connects with content. At this level, we’ll be able to be relevant to a consumer by understanding individual needs.

At the very least, we need to start thinking more proactively about versioning our web content based on devices beyond laptop/desktop/mobile/tablet technology and taking the various states of the user into mind when we’re creating contextual support for the content we’re producing.

These are the questions that good contextual content strategists will need to be answering in the future. The marketing persona and SEO can only do so much. Eventually we need to start thinking much deeper, into the way people consume information on the micro level in order to be truly useful, and in my opinion, the time for planning and worrying about those things starts now.

Brain Image used under GNU Public License. Source : http://www.loria.fr/~rougier

There is probably no SEO misconception that I despise more than the “more is better” argument. A good rule of thumb when it comes to content on your web site? If you’re feeling tired (and full) when you’re reading your content, stop feeding it to your visitors.

A very wise woman recently wrote:

“Online, when it comes to informational, marketing, or promotional content, more is almost never more.”

We need look no further than a pair of popular cleaning product makers to see this process in action. When we examine the homepage for Lysol and compare it to Clorox, a few clicks will show just how much more content is jammed into one versus the other.

As you can see below, Lysol’s site is jam packed with Did you Knows, Germ Information, PDFs, menus, sub-menus and enough cookie crumbed pages to choke a small child.

Conversely, the Clorox page features a great deal more whitespace, has fewer downloadables, and no submenus linking into deep pages. It also segments users based on their cleaning locales of interest (someone did their personas!).

So, who has the better SERP ranking? Clorox beats the crap out of Lysol with far less content.

A Google search of the keywords “Cleaning Products” put Clorox.com number one in the sponsored links and the top result of actual products (7th in the organic list). Lysol didn’t appear in the organic search on the first page, nor did it on the next 20. While it appeared in the sponsored links underneath Clorox, I didn’t have the heart to keep digging to see if they made the organic SERPs within 40 clicks.

Not only are the Clorox.com search results better, it’s also far easier to find the information you’re looking for. The fonts are larger, the headlines are shorter, written specifically for a web audience and sub headlines provide an accurate description of what we’ll find within a link or article page. Product information is weaved in nicely with informational articles, there are graphics that engage users while informing and useful tools that help decide the best way to treat stains.

Bottom line, good content helps improve search ranking, but it has to be useful, tagged and relevant.

So before you go off and publish a mammoth Web site with tons of pages, articles and information, with high hopes of a higher SERP ranking, ask yourself a few questions.

• “Does this information add to my brand story, user experience or increase engagement?”
• “Would I lose anything if this content wasn’t here?”
• “Can this information be better organized, bulleted or edited down?”
• “By including this content, am I preventing my users from getting content they need?” (THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE!)

Useful, usable Web sites are not not about providing every single piece of information that anyone could ever think of. It’s about providing solid content that is on strategy, that means something to your visitors and that is properly tagged optimized and placed to be useable for machines and humans. Tag better, write better, and spend more time optimizing and editing less content to get more of a result.

If you get overwhelmed and feeling too full looking at your site, chances are your users feel exactly the same way.

Photo: Sandeep Nair