Content Strategy
People come to your site and read your documentation for various reasons. Maybe they found your site in search results and have come to explore. Maybe they are already using your products or services and need help. Regardless of their intent, they want answers quickly.
To attract visitors and keep them coming back, your content needs to send a distinct message about who you are and how you can help. It needs to be clear, concise, and well organized. Truly servicable content combines strong information architecture and user experience design with an effective content strategy.
Many organizations assume that purchasing and implementing a content management system (CMS) will solve all of their content problems. While a CMS can help you store, organize, and serve content, it has no bearing on the quality of that content.
Don’t focus on evaluating and adopting an expensive CMS until you have completed the following activities:
- Auditing your existing content to determine what you have
- Analyzing your content to evaluate its current state. Is it meeting your business goals and your customers’ needs?
- Developing a content model to determine how you might best structure your content to meet the demands of your customers
- Establishing a process for editorial oversight of content
- Establishing workflow processes for content creation and review
- Establishing a content maintenance and governance strategy
- Ensuring that you have enough staff to cover all content-related activities
You can accomplish much of the content strategy groundwork using your everyday office productivity tools. You can make great progress with simple spreadsheets.
Services
I can help with all of the activities described above, plus the following:
- Ensuring that your site foundation is based on a solid information design and architecture
- Ensuring that your site taxonomy and metadata facilitate easy access to information
- Developing effective help solutions for your customers
Solutions
Here is a sampling of my past and present projects:
- Office of the Chief Technology Office (OCTO)
District of Columbia Government:
Provide architectural and editorial guidance to DC Government agencies who are migrating their existing sites to the Drupal platform. I advocate an information architecture that promotes agency services and downplays the emphasis on the org chart. - Department of Veterans Affairs:
Provided content oversight for the eBenefits Portal, a joint initiative of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. I identified content requirements; worked with stakeholders to establish content for feature promotions; maintained an editorial calendar; monitored the status of content development and workflow; wrote and edited site copy as needed; developed strategies for help and messaging; maintained a site style guide; helped write requirements for a new content management system; and worked with UI designers to integrate content and design that support an optimal user experience. - The National Cancer Institute Center for Biomedical Informatics
and Information Technology (NCI CBIIT):
Developed wiki-based help and knowledge bases supporting the Enterprise Vocabulary Services group. - The National Science Foundation:
Developed a support site for a proposal submission and tracking system; worked closely with software developers to build better help into the product design by improving application labeling, instructions, and system messages. - The United States Mint:
Developed help for the Mint’s online coin catalog. - The World Bank:
Developed help content for a correspondence management application used by the president’s office; contributed to the development of a large-scale knowledge base by creating a site index, assisting with development of a business classification taxonomy, and conducting a workshop on writing effective help content.
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I can provide these services, too:
