Structuring content, about structuring content: Content Strategy workflow
It doesn’t make sense to churn out poorly planned content about making content.
Earlier I wrote about transitioning into digital content strategy. But, aside from content strategy — there’s also content planning. Sometime in 2013, my boss kept asking my team to draft a content plan, and this is how we made it into a system.
As a content strategy team, our documentation has to be, at the very least, usable and comprehensive, if not engaging.
Our team looked for pegs and best practices from A List Apart, A Book Apart, Intercom, and just plain Google. But other than Mail Chimp’s impressive Style Guide, there isn’t much on the web in terms of Content Planning templates.
So…what did we end up doing?
TL; DR outline:
I. Overview of an MVP content strategy workflow: Objectives, Inventory, Content Sourcing
II. Workflow and Deliverables list: See images below.
III. Content Strategy Documentation: Adapted from Web Standards Sherpa
IV. Content Audit checklist
I. A case study: Bare minimum Content Planning for a One-Day Project
(This was helpful because it made me realize what was essential.)
Last year, an especially violent typhoon struck the Philippines.
Our digital strategy team worked with the news editors and marketing team of a popular news publisher to create a website for gathering and disseminating information on volunteering for the relief efforts.
The website had to be launched the next day.
Process Post-mortem: Finding out what worked
After the site was launched, I reviewed the documentation we needed to push the project through the one-day pipeline — a Minimum Viable (Content) Plan, so to speak.
I was able to outline a workflow that was both
- necessary (i.e. gave the design team what they needed)
- and feasible (i.e. wouldn’t cripple the Accounts management team, or take too long for Clients). A workflow that I hoped our team could use for upcoming projects.
II. An Adaptable Workflow and Deliverables List
I arranged what we needed to accomplish, according to the different stages of planning:
We also made an outline of the deliverables needed to push the project along.
This was for us to formally communicate: 1) what we needed from the Accounts teams, and 2) advise the Design team about what they should expect from us.
(Nice-to-haves in grey; necessary deliverables in black)
Even after having mapped all of this, it still begged the question, though:
III. How are we supposed to document “content strategy”?
Well, I learned this really straightforward template to kick off content planning, from Web Standards Sherpa’s practical article Designing for Content, Creating a Message Hierarchy:
- List Target Actions,
- Then, the corresponding Objectives (that each one fulfills for the business or brand owner)
- and What The User Needs To See (To reach and accomplish the action).
For my own projects, I learned to add another column — with a more detailed listing of the kinds of content that are needed to fulfill the objectives. (Because our team needs to think of whether the information would be best conveyed through images, video, text or animations).
This can be an initial overview, for Clients to understand the content they would need to deliver.
Plus, it helps give them a clearer picture of what they’re really getting/ asking for. It’s just a bit of a struggle to go through for large projects.
IV. The Content Audit: Do we have everything we need?
To validate the inventory, it’s best to have a content audit (if you have time).
For our team, we do two kinds of content audits:
1) External audit
- Best Practices: Given the product objectives, choose two sites that you feel achieve those same objectives well. Look at their site architecture and the content structure for the pages that achieve those objective.
- Direct Competition: Look at the current digital presence of the brands your Client considers its direct competitor.
Especially important for redesigns and planning for products that already “exist”:
2) Internal Audit
- What does your brand currently have? or have online?
These are the processes and documents I’ve proven to be useful, after multiple content publisher projects. But, I’m sure other teams have their own.
I’d love to learn from what your team uses to document its content strategy. Feel free to share your own points, and leave links in responses.
Have you also found any content planning templates for web development?
Postscript: I recently came across Quicksprout’s Advanced Content Marketing Guide, and it contains a flow and template for distilling and operationalizing content messages. I recommend it to you, if you’ve read this far, since you may want to see a useful and more elaborate content plan.
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