Content Modeling

Content modeling revisited

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I miss writing about content design. However, when I wrapped up my content modeling series four years ago (Oct 2016), I started getting mail. A lot of mail. From practitioners to managers, and the odd executive. All asking the same questions. So today, let’s revisit content modeling to see what was on their minds. Advertising … Read more

Content Engine Operationalisation

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Well, thank you for sticking around for the third and final post in the series where we share a few tips on content engine operationalisation.

 

The first post in this content engine series highlighted the top ten content challenges faced by organisations looking to deliver scaleable personalised experiences. We followed up with a second post that outlined a content engine blueprint to address those challenges. We conclude the series with a few practical tips to operationalise your own content engine.

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Content Engine Blueprint

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If we can address the content challenges that exist within brands, what opportunities can organisations capitalise on now to deliver personalised experiences?  We asked that question to a mix of agencies, brands and partners that attended a WPP European Summit back in June 2015.  Here’s what our summit delegates prioritised as the three key areas for serious consideration by the business. In this post, we’ve  pulled them together into a draft content engine blueprint:

  • Show tangible business value and success.  Understanding what content exists within the enterprise.  Continually show its value, impact, and return back into the business. What if they was a workable content performance framework that continuously linked and tracked the investment case for content as a practical and pragmatic set of KPIs and objectives that quantified success? Imagine that.
  • Manage content as a product.  Move beyond episodic campaigns and projects.  Focus on assembling brand communications, using blocks of reusable content that’s accessible across the enterprise.  What if content architecture applied end-to-end product management principles to the design of strategic content, from ideation to expiration, based upon transparent and agreed investment cases? Imagine that.
  • Content lifecycle management.  There needs to be clear separation between content products and the services people use to operate them.  What if the content operating model surfaced the processes and overarching governance framework for getting content into and out of the enterprise to drive real-time personalised experiences? Imagine that.

Forrester predicts that the volume of unstructured enterprise content is growing at a rate of 200% annually.  Content is communication.  How well it is designed, managed and measured directly impacts on our ability to engage effectively with customers.  The content engine looks to address our content challenges and turn them into opportunities by consciously stepping up to manage content as an enterprise-level strategic asset that drives competitive advantage.

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Content Engine Explained

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What content challenges prevent you from engaging in broader and deeper customer relationships?  Broader with more channels and deeper through personalisation.  It’s 2017 and we continue to fight the good fight to deliver the most basic personalised experiences within a responsive web channel.  Why is that?

Because it’s hard. It’s not easy to create, manage and deliver content in a predictable, repeatable and scalable manner.  However, that’s precisely what we have to do for omni-channel personalised experiences.  So what if we designed a content engine to do just that? What might that look like?  In this three-part blog post series we explore just that.  Starting with the challenges in this post, we move onto a blueprint for a content engine and before operationalising it in the final post.

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Content Modelling Series – Done

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KristinaAndCleveIt’s been fun few years, but my content modelling blog post series has come to an end. I started it to amplify what others were saying about structured content, and to make it accessible. When I started, there was gap: everyone knew structured content was important but there weren’t many places to go to show you how to approach it.

Content modelling is important.  It’s about designing content together, as part of a cross-disciplinary team.  Not from the tech up, or from the business down, but as a joined-up, sustainable team across the organisation.  

A content model is a communication vehicle.  Content modelling is the process to facilitate that communication. Value content modelling over the content model.

As I close out this series, I want to review where we’ve been, what we’ve learned and start to think about what comes next.

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The Connected Customer Journey

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Last week I had the good fortune to attend an unconference session run by Chris Satchell.  He’s ex-CTO of Nike. He understands customers. Now as Chief Product Officer over at Comcast, he led with this thought provoking one-liner:

Your brand is your customer journey.

Think about that for moment.

We’ve all heard that your brand is not what you say it is but how others perceive it.  Brand perception boils down to how your customers engage with you. The journeys you take them on.  It’s the sum total of all customer experiences – for better, for worse – across all touchpoints.  Your brand is your customer journey, but they must been connected.

 

 

The challenge lies in mapping out these interconnected customer journeys.  They are hard to create in the first place and really difficult to sustain ongoing success.  Continuously changing over time, connected customer journeys require so many people across the business to collaborate.   But that is exactly what success looks like for those companies building superior brands.  The ability to design and deliver connected customer journeys is a critical component of competitive advantage in digital today. No longer an optional, connected customer journeys are the new norm.

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Content Modelling Series – Update

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Short update.  It’s been a little bit hectic over here in the content modelling series.  To summarise what we did: Outlined the key elements of a content model: types, attributes, relationships, modules, items and packages. Explained the difference between content types and content items: content items are instances of content types. Introduced the notion of … Read more

Content Modelling Series – Rebooted

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ShaftShootingI’m currently sitting at home listening to the ‘Theme From Shaft’.  It soothes the soul. More importantly it has helped me make an important decision.   Let me explain.

I’m sitting on a shed load of content modelling material that will most likely never see the light of day.  Not to mention grow old, stagnate and ultimately become completely useless.  Gathered from project work, workshops, presentations, conferences, talking with smart people, and a even a book that I started but had to put down for work commitments.  Instead of taking another year to try and reshape it into something, why not practice what I preach, test and learn, and get some immediate feedback.  So I’m hoping what I share today will be useful to you tomorrow.  I promise to share little and often over the next few months through my content modeling series.  I think that makes sense.

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No model survives first contact with real content

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At Content Strategy Forum 2013 in Helsinki, in a great presentation on “Deblobbing in the Real World”, Jeff Eaton said something that resonated deeply with me:

No model survives contact with real content.

explosion

I whole-heartedly concur.  But, something was still not right.  A week later, all became clear.  I  needed to tweak the sentence, just a little, to make things right with the world again. So here goes:

No model survives first contact with real content.

Better. Definitely expand “first contact” to mean the first few encounters with real content, but it’s an important distinction to draw out for anyone designing structured content. Why you ask?

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Content Management: Back to Basics

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One of my clients is about to go-live with the first phase of their content management programme this Summer. It’s not called that of course, it never is, but that’s what it really is. I’m made up for them. And after three hard years defining, crafting, and defending their business case, it took only one … Read more