The Importance of Being Consistent
iGenius UX writer, Camilla Maccaferri, explains why a coherent content strategy is crucial for representing a product and a company
If you’ve ever worked in an agency or with clients from small and medium companies, you’ve probably witnessed pushback from management on the idea of hiring a content expert or copywriter.
“We don’t need to pay for that. Anyone can take care of a couple of written lines”, they might have said. Or, “Gina from Marketing has a Literature degree, she can handle the newsletter”.
That’s because, while paying for a UI designer or a developer is normal, content is perceived as something that can be handled easily by anyone who can write.
I mean, not everybody can use Sketch or knows a coding language, but all of us are familiar with Microsoft Word, right? We don’t need a professional to take care of newsletters, site content or microcopy. And this is where the bias begins.
The Reign of Amateurs (and the Painful Consequences)
We all have a friend who’s a total master of something, but willing to work for free or a ridiculously low amount of money. Though when a company decides to hire a non-professional, it is simply ignoring the consequences of this choice. Which might be seriously bad.
And not even the dramatic growth of digital services brought by the pandemic has changed bad habits.
The 2020 PMI Digital Index monitors the digitalization level of Italian small and medium enterprises and states that only 41% of micro-businesses are currently online, among which only 27% have more than 500 unique visitors per month.
Just 10% companies significantly invested in their digital presence during the first lockdown.
This shows that most small companies still don’t believe in the importance of having a consistent online presence or a recognizable brand identity — let alone a coherent content strategy, the least considered practice.
But why is the lack of a solid content strategy, along with bad design and UX, poisonous for a company?
Because bad content, with its many definitions, simply pushes away any audience.
Inaccurate content, for example, with typos and mistakes, will make the user feel neglected and irrelevant — all because no one in the company took five minutes to check their work.
Content can be ambiguous and confuse the user about what to do and what the message is, leading to them abandoning the online journey.
When bad content meets bad design it might become impossible to read and negatively impact brand perception.
Check out some excessive stuff made on purpose on The World’s Worst Website Ever to have a glimpse of what this means.
Bad research on target audiences might lead to bad targeted content. Lately you can see a lot of brands that forcefully try to sound young and fresh, leading to an explosion of cringe.
Bad content can be extremely manipulative, ineffective, thin, inconsistent, incoherent, boring, irrelevant, unoriginal, aimless… all of these issues make the user not want to stay with your brand anymore and eventually leads to a loss of money (not to mention the reputation damage: try Googling “social media fails” for a good old laugh).
Words are free. But the way you use them can either make you rich or cost you a lot of money. That’s why a consistent content strategy is necessary to any business.
Content Strategy (What it is and Why it’s Essential)
My designer friends won’t like this, but we can say that design without content is just decoration.
A lot of fancy colors and interactions, but what’s the message in the end? Content is king (check Craigslist, proudly ignoring any design practice since 1996 and still rocking).
It’s not me who said this, but Bill Gates in a very famous 1996 essay.
“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting […]. For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time.”
And here we are, 14 years later, still trying to evangelize managers and investors on the importance of good content strategy.
What is the Secret of a Good Content Strategy?
Adopting a content-first approach means working in parallel with UX designers to guarantee consistency and effectiveness.
A content strategy, like any design system, should rely on strong research (benchmark, persona definition, targeting, user test, all the classics) that leads to the definition of a strong concept.
The pillars of our communication strategy are the objectives we want to achieve through some drivers, or channels, we want to use (eg. website, app, social media, newsletters).
Having the right tone of voice and editorial guidelines to guarantee consistency on all channels and products (or services) is the last step you need to take.
There is no coherence without a defined tone of voice or some fixed guidelines that all collaborators must follow.
Professionals 1 vs. Amateurs 0. Content that rocks!
What happens when we meet a company that is eager to hire some professionals to take care of their content?
Their brand is enhanced by some fresh and accurate examples of content that’s sure to please users and boost their reputation.
For example, during lockdown some companies made a real effort to invite people to stay inside through quality content, such as Nike:
Or Netflix, that spoilt a season’s finale at bus stops to encourage people to stay at home:
But if it’s easy to notice big companies’ viral campaigns, it might be harder to focus attention on microcopy and UX writing, which is fundamental for a satisfying user experience.
And, of course, for making clients come back again.
That’s why a well-crafted message, such as the one that Slack sends (below), is always appreciated.
Does aggressive communication work? It depends on your target, of course.
In this case, as the average audience is millennial freelancers with digital-related careers, the slang on Fiverr’s CTA (below) is totally cool.
And what would you say to a lost user if you were an animal rescue association?
Of course.
There are plenty of excellent content examples and business studies that show that effective content is no luxury for a company, but rather a necessity.
And while we wait for the world to understand that content is king, we can still remind our designer friends that LOREM IPSUM is absolute evil.
