Web Content Strategy – How to Plan for, Create and Publish Online Content for Maximum ROI

Joe Pulizzi, a thought leader, speaker, writer and evangelist for content marketing, is founder and chief content officer for Junta42, a content marketing/custom publishing community search engine and resource, helping businesses of all sizes learn how to create valuable, relevant and compelling content. Joe has authored several useful resources, including a free eBook and several articles on his blog.

His presentation titled Web Content Strategy – How to Plan for, Create and Publish Online Content for Maximum ROI on slideshare contains concise and powerful hints on planning your web content strategy.

Some salient points from the presentation:

What is content strategy?

• Content strategy is planning for the creation of useful, usable content.
• Not just WHAT you’re going to publish and WHERE, but WHY.
• Content strategy isn’t just deciding what you’re going to include. It’s deciding what you’re going to leave out.

Website Foundation

• What are my business objectives?
• What are my users’ (customers’) goals?
• Any content that doesn’t meet these needs is just getting in the way.
• Avoid wasting money on designing, creating and maintaining unnecessary content.
• Keep project teams aligned throughout the process.

Website Content Strategy

• What content do we want to create, and why?
• How are we going to create it?
• What will happen to it once it goes up on the site?
• Plan strategically for required content, scope realistically, then scale according to time and budget.

Website Content Strategy: Content Audit

• Possibly the most important thing you can do to avoid scope creep and minimize risk
• Catalog web pages, print materials, all communications
• Conduct a gap analysis
• Don’t commit to content you can’t create or maintain

Content Specifications and Creation

• Get real-world content specifications as early as possible
• Identify who is responsible for providing, reviewing, and approving the content before writing begins
• Train or hire web writers … it’s a very, very different process and medium from print
• Keep the content audit up-to-date to eliminate redundant workflows among various communicators
• Ensure quality and quantity control, informed by clear recommendations and overseen by dedicated resources

Business Impact of a Content Strategy

• QUALITATIVE
  • Engages all stakeholders early in the website project process to ensure alignment, investment, and accountability around content creation and maintenance
  • Provides accessible documentation for all project team members to help judge proposed content effectiveness with regard to business objectives and user goals
  • Results in higher quality content, which improves customer satisfaction, sales leads, online service and support, trust in brand, and so on
  • Creates true content accountability for all project members early in the process
  • Facilitates future state content planning (editorial oversight, expansion, maintenance
• QUANTITATIVE (anecdotal)
  • Projects driven by web content strategies are completed in up to 25% less time than design-centered projects
  • Assuming stakeholders and business requirements remain the same, scope changes during content creation phase happen less than 10% of the time
  • Client satisfaction with final product is close to 100%
  • Measurable project objectives are realized within 3-6 months post-launch (with appropriate supporting communications)

Do not miss the opportunity to download his free eBook titled “Seven Content Strategies to Build Trust with Today’s Savvy Consumers”

Related posts:

1. B2B Marketing – a four-point transformation strategy Laura Ramos – VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research focuses...
2. Leveraging the Web – How to get your web site to work for you! A presentation made to a group of enterpreneurs to highlight...
3. Why software projects fail – and how we make them work Software development projects have a high risk of failure. A...
4. Business Scalability With the booming Indian economy, every business is looking at...