Tim Jones

Learning the principles behind creating and sustaining effective web content is important, but it’s always helpful to see how someone else has put them into practice. With that in mind, we reached out to Tim Jones, executive creative director at North Carolina State University, to talk about how he is using content strategy at his institution.

Jones came to content strategy through journalism, working as a newspaper reporter for almost a year after college. In 2001, he took a job as an information officer at the College of William and Mary in 2001, arriving just as the college began transitioning many print publications to the web.

In 2007, Jones came to North Carolina State University as the director of web communications, leading a new group created to support a recent redesign. Last year, he spent seven months as interim chief communications office before assuming his current role, where he oversees web, print, digital, photography and video.

“We do a lot of marketing and communications, which is a really great vantage for content strategy, because you are looking at how all of these things fit together,” Jones says of his current role.

In a wide-ranging discussion, Jones touched on editorial process, mobile, multichannel publishing, institutional buy-in for content strategy, advocating for content, embracing a strategic approach and much more. (Please note: audio transcripts are available by clicking through to the SoundCloud page for each audio clip.)

Establishing an Editorial Process

MC: You mentioned that you came on in ‘07 to take the reins after this redesign project. And so, obviously your background in content came to shape the direction that communications at NC State took. Can you talk a little bit about how that came to be?

Jones: N.C. State had a pretty understated web presence before they went through the redesign process, and a big focus for the redesign that I inherited was improving the value of the homepage real estate.

It was a content-heavy design. So, we took advantage of that and really tried hard to define clearly what we were doing from an editorial perspective, spending a lot of time outlining the kinds of stories that we were using, why we were choosing those stories, and what we hoped we could influence as a result of those decisions.

When you manage the central homepage there is a lot of interest in the way that you make decisions about what content you choose and what you choose not to use. We learned early on that consistency in editorial judgment is really critical, and to do that we needed to put it in writing at least internally. So we had a guidebook on how we made decisions about what kind of content we were going to promote, what we were going to use where and also providing those outlets for content that wasn’t going to make the homepage cut. And that process is enlightening. You learn what your university values are, you learn what people find important, who your audiences are, and you really have to spend some time and commit to those kinds of decisions.

We spent a good bit of time on that, and using that as a real educational opportunity. Just sitting down with the communications folks and talking through what works in the digital space, what’s not going to work, what we’re trying to do at the university level in terms of recruitment or fundraising or general support and awareness efforts and how we were going to go about that. And then really trying to work with folks to bring them along and get them engaged and helping contribute to that process.

The Mobile Impact

MC: Tell me a little bit about how N.C. State’s focus on content has evolved with the emergence of mobile and the emergence of location-based services, and what new considerations you’ve had for content in the context of these new platforms.

Jones: We started working on a location-based services tool sort of at the height of the Foursquare and Gowalla check-in [craze], really trying to get in on that identity. We got the check-in working, we got the geolocation stuff working, and we got all that working, but we had nothing in the tool or no real reason to have it outside of it being a nifty tech trick.

We came to the realization that we needed a content first approach there. Once we took a step back and moved in that direction, we spent a lot more time deconstructing our existing content, looking for sources of content that might populate and feed this tool, things that might make the most sense in the mobile context. And that process alone was therapeutic in a lot of ways and really enlightening. We were able to evaluate what we have, what works and what doesn’t in certain contexts, how to structure better, what technologies we needed to put in place to improve that process. The calendaring system that we had wasn’t producing the kind of code that would work in this context, so we had to make some adjustments.

That whole process, just evaluating it from a content first perspective, changed the entire project. It’s been a long process. It’s delayed it quite a bit, but I think for the right reasons. Now we have a tool where it’s a lot clearer what we’re trying to do with it—we’re trying to get people to contribute content, but also the opportunity to deliver content in the mobile space. We focused a lot on events early on, because of talking to students about what would be most useful in the mobile context: “I just want to know what’s going on around campus.” It’s a big, sprawling, 2,000-acre campus, and so if I’m in the library and I want to take a study break, I need to find something to do. And mobile context is perfect for that, but not all event-driven content is perfect for the mobile context.

There is this moment where you look at this thing and say, hey, we’ve done some awesome work with this content. We can use this in our social space, we can use this in our homepage, and we provide this to the other colleges and units, and we can do it all because we spent the time analyzing and structuring our content to be effective across the platforms. And that really sort of shaped the direction we moved with the location-based services, with mobile and ultimately with our broader web strategy.

Content Strategy for Communications

MC: Can you talk a about communications—news, media relations, social media—and how the content first approach has influenced those communications channels and how you’re telling N.C. State’s story to a range of audiences?

Hear Tim Jones’ response:

Multichannel Management

MC: Can you go a little more in-depth about planning for multi-channel content and how that is managed on a day to day basis?

Jones: As we’ve improved and increased the number of properties we manage—Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, central web presence, media stuff, all across the board—we look for places where we have the highest potential for reuse and impact. I think it is important, when you don’t have a lot of resources, to take a hard look at what you do have, figure out what works and then do more of that. Just do that better and do it more often and more frequently and not focus so much on the holes you have.

Hear more from Jones about this process:

The other thing that has been really helpful in terms of reuse of content is a well-defined messaging architecture. I cannot say enough about that part of content strategy. Identifying your key messages, prioritizing them, and then figuring out how to tell the story of those objectives is a really key piece of content strategy. So we’ll sit down with our writing team and say, “Here is the messaging architecture in an actual document. Here is what we’re looking to do. We need some stories that fit this. Come back with ideas for stories and give me a headline, give me a short headline. Give me a Facebook teaser, and give me a question that goes with Facebook and give me an interactive element.” That’s part of our story brainstorming.

And when we keep an editorial calendar, we require all of our contributors to identify which business outcome or which bottom-line action their stories or their content is going to support. We require them to identify if it is apply, support, or contribute, and they have to identify the audiences and the targets in order for it to be included in our editorial calendar.

Getting Buy-in for Content Strategy

MC: You mention how there are a lot of people across N.C. State that have some communications role, whether it’s their full time job or it is part of their job, and you talked about how educating people is a huge part of that. Can you talk a little bit more about how you do that? How do you get people invested and involved with the content efforts?

Jones: We do a lot of work leading by example. And what I mean by that is, we develop things internally that we can point to as we talk to our constituents and our groups around campus to say, “See, we had this story and we took it here. And then we did this with it and this is how it is influencing our ‘apply, support, contribute’ [model]? Do you have anything that can do the same kind of thing?” And really putting them in a position to inform, advise and contribute and help advance the university’s broad messaging initiatives and the outcomes we’re looking for and turning to them for their expertise and empowering them to contribute.

Hear more about how N.C. State’s 125th anniversary has provided a platform for getting campus content contributors aligned with university messaging and goals:

Outcomes from Content Strategy

MC: You talked about this “apply, support, contribute” model to which all content should tie back in one way or another. So, I was wondering if you have any examples of ways that has come to fruition—tangible outcomes from this great content strategy approach.

Hear Jones’ response:

Overcoming Challenges

MC: We talked about the success you’ve had in getting people on the same page and really creating and managing content in a way that’s driven by those three core goals, and tying that back and driving action. I was wondering if you could talk about some of the challenges that you’ve encountered in getting this across.

Jones: When you simplify something to three words, there is a lot of disagreement about which three words you choose. So, agreeing on “apply, support, contribute” has been a challenge, but as you talk about it and realize how broad those objectives are, particularly “support,” you can bring people along.

I think decision-making is always a challenge. Just committing to a consistent approach that fits neatly with the university strategy can be a pretty big challenge, and we’re lucky that we have very strong leadership at N.C. State. We have a really good, solid strategic plan, and people laugh at me when I say we read and rely on the strategic plan to guide decisions, but man, we actually do. And I think from a communications perspective there’s no safer thing to do than use the university’s strategic plan, but it also provides a lot of interesting insight into where the university is headed and gives you some creative freedom to advance those goals in ways that you see fit.

I think our challenge is getting people to think strategically. To think about university objectives first. Really trying to bridge that gap and provide the opportunities for mutual benefit.

Hear more about Jones’ approach to being strategic:

Advocating for Content

MC: You have been lucky in being able to advocate for content for a leadership role. How would you advise people at other institutions who may not have had as much success in advocating for content or maybe want to do all of the things you’ve talked about but don’t have that leadership role or maybe need to find a way to get a seat at the table?

Jones: Stop thinking about it as property of the web or property of the print or property of marketing. Content strategy is an institutional thing. The best content strategy is institutional and it’s multiplatform. So, whatever it is that you can control and whatever it is that you can influence, be strategic about how you do that and build a case over time.

Hear more from Jones about how to advocate for content:

Content strategy should always be a work in progress. It should always be evolving and always be a goal to improve it. I think that’s important. I encourage people to not lose hope if it doesn’t seem like it’s going quickly. Every time your content becomes more strategic, the better your university gets.

Make web accessibility a priority

Our top concerns in planning web content should be our goals, message and audience. What are we saying, who are we saying it to, and why?

But with regard to our audience, we also need to consider the “how.” What devices are they using the view the content? Do they have limitations in perceiving certain content, such as visual or rich media? How do we publish content in a way that makes it available to the full range of our audience?

When we talk about web accessibility, we’re referring to the pursuit of giving users equal access to website information and functionality. If we want to communicate effectively, we have to publish web content in a way that prioritizes accessibility to as many audiences as possible. However, despite legal obligations and other pressing considerations, our organizations are often not structured to accomplish this. But just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing to pursue—or have additional benefits that we may not initially perceive.

With these concerns in mind, how can we best plan for accessible web content? Meet Content reached out to four higher ed web professionals trying to make accessibility work at their institutions and asked them to share their perspectives.

A Tough Road to Hoe

1. What are some of the major obstacles and challenges for publishers in creating accessible content?

Chris Nixon, Director, Digital Design & Development, University Relations, University of Arkansas: The first step is really understanding what ‘accessible content’ means. The historical definition revolves around visually and hearing impaired, but I think we need to rethink the definition to include machines, those with rudimentary education and non-native speakers. The easy part is getting content on to a webpage. The hard part is training, or retraining, content authors to think about their content in a different way such that it makes sense to more people.

Terrill Thompson, Technology Accessibility Specialist, Information Technology University of Washington: The greatest challenge is that accessibility doesn’t happen automatically. Anyone who publishes content on the web needs to be familiar with accessibility principles and techniques. Otherwise, even if they choose a highly accessible delivery format such as HTML, their product isn’t necessarily accessible.

To meet this challenge we need to work diligently to build up an infrastructure that supports accessible publishing. We need to choose and use tools, including authoring tools, that support accessibility; we need to provide accessibility training to everyone involved in the publication workflow from authors to designers to developers; and we need to designate specific individuals or groups to acquire a relatively high level of accessibility expertise so they can provide support to the rest of the community.

Making Content Accessible

2. When planning web content projects and developing a content strategy, what accessibility issues should be taken into consideration and at what phase?

Nixon: Issues such as topic complexity, language and length are good starting places. If these areas are identified up front, then drafting and editing can be tailored to these considerations. Some content, like a research piece, needs to be somewhat complex, and typically includes videos and diagrams. Incorporating the gist of these multimedia components into the content can help readers get the full context without needing access to the multi-media components.

Thompson: Very early in the process of developing a content strategy (from the
moment an idea is born), we should already be asking: Who is the audience for this content? As soon as we ask this question, we need to consider the diverse characteristics of that audience. We might be able to make certain assumptions about their interest in the topic and their expected level of preexisting knowledge, but we can’t assume they all interact with content in the same way that we do, using the same devices and configurations.

• Our audience might be using a desktop or laptop computer, a tablet, or a phone; they might be using any of a huge variety of screen resolutions, default font sizes, and custom color configurations.
• They might be operating their device with keyboard, mouse, stylus, touch screen, speech input, or using various other “assistive” input technologies.
• They might be perceiving the output visually, audibly using screen readers or text-to-speech software, or through touch using a Braille output device.
• If there’s multimedia content they may or may no be able to hear the audio, either because they’re deaf or hard of hearing or because they didn’t bring their headset.

If we don’t consider diversity early on, it is typically much harder, and more costly, to change course and correct the problems later.

Rich Media Content: Thinking Beyond the Transcript

3. What accessibility considerations should we have in mind when planning rich media content (video, audio, etc.)?

Nixon: We need to think about alternative languages. This needs to be addressed based on who we expect our viewers to be beyond the obvious. We need to also think about the content that accompanies the video, thinking about SEO or any metadata that might help us related like media together. If we are publish music, what benefits might come from also publishing lyrics and sheet music?

Thompson: Another consideration is that video content needs to be accessible to people who can’t see it. Often they can get most of the content just by listening to the audio or reading the transcript, but if there’s important visual content that non-visual users are missing, that needs to be provided to the user in some way. There are various techniques for delivering that. It could be described within the transcript, but ideally a separate narration track will be produced that overlays the program audio and describes key visual information. This is called audio description, and there are media players out there that support it, but not all do.

Susan Ragland, Manager of Web Communications, Tarrant County College: I often remind our clients that accessibility is not only about visual impairments. Users may have dexterity disabilities, or need other assistive devices. Providing a transcript may legally keep us in compliance, but I think we need to be able to provide rich experiences on our site whenever possible. I think we’re currently limited by tools, resources and client understanding.

Stephani Roberts, Web Accessibility Consultant, Information Services and Technology, MIT: Transcripts are great for audio but video should have full captions. And if you’re starting with a transcript, creating captions is a lot easier to implement. They benefit a wide audience serving non-native speakers in addition to deaf and hearing-impaired people. They also reinforce key learning concepts by tying together aural and visual understanding and give students the opportunity to stop and review the content.

Here, departments who’ve added captions to their videos have found that people are staying and watching the captioned videos longer than their uncaptioned video. As a bonus, search engines can index the full content of videos rather than just their titles or key words; so, rich media that’s captioned is more likely to be found via search.

Case Studies

4. Can you share an example of a successful effort to increase web content accessibility and how that was achieved?

Thompson: The example that comes to mind isn’t an individual website, rather
it’s our overall effort to increase web accessibility at the University of Washington. We still have a long way to go before we’re fully accessible, and 100 percent accessibility is probably an unrealistic goal for any large decentralized institution like ours. Nonetheless, I do consider our efforts to be successful so far in that we’re making progress, and more and more people are getting involved in the effort.

In 2003 we launched an email-based discussion list called AccessibleWeb, which provided a channel for discussing web accessibility. That was a small niche group at first, but now there are over 160 people subscribed to that list from across the university. There’s also a face-to-face university-wide meetup once a month to discuss accessibility topics, share ideas and techniques, brainstorm and collaborate. For a while we were using that venue to host “Access Hack” sessions, where people would submit their website and the community would provide friendly but constructive feedback on the site’s accessibility, including code-level solutions.

I think for an organization to integrate accessibility into everything it produces, universal design has to be part of the culture, and supported by the community.

Roberts: We had an international non-profit site that contained important statistical
information in the form of graphs and pie charts. Donations hinged on understanding this information, but it wasn’t very clear due to color issues and labeling. We were able to come up with a color scheme that worked for people with color blindness and we added better labels to help clarify and give context to the data presented. This reduced email questions about the site’s content and allowed for improved translation to other languages.

Ragland: We’re often required to publish PDF forms and other documents, especially regarding our Board of Trustees. When I was told we would have to begin publishing all supporting documents prior to a Board meeting, I met with the vice chancellor in charge of organizing the materials, and we set into place a process whereby the various administrators would not simply supply me with scanned PDFs of documents wholesale; if it was an internally created document, I wanted the original Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. so I could convert them myself, ensuring better accessibility.

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What else should we do to plan for accessible content? What are other concerns should we keep in mind? We hope to dig deeper into this topic over time and would love to hear your ideas about what merits further discussion. In the meantime, here are some helpful resources:

• This year’s HighEdWeb Arkansas regional conference (July 26-27 in Little Rock, Ark.) features a half-day workshop on accessibility, presented by Glenda Sims.
• In November 2010, Eric Stoller appeared on Higher Ed Live to discuss web accessibility in higher education. The post includes several helpful accessibility links.
• The W3C offers a great introduction to web accessibility.

Photo by sunraven0 / Flickr Creative Commons

Content with purpose inspires action.

What defines quality content? Does it communicate clearly? Does it attract new users? Does it engage current users? It can and should do all those things, but to what end? Ultimately, content should inspire action.

On Meet Content, we talk a lot about purposeful content — goal-driven content for users and publishers alike. I think that’s an idea most people can buy into. However, when you start talking about user actions, content contributors often get stumped.

"My content is informative. I’m not trying to get people sign up for anything."

“This is just for brand awareness. There’s nothing specific I want people to do.”

You may not have an "Apply Now" or "Contact Us" button on your page, but your content should still support your website goals. If your content has purpose, it supports action. Even if your content is informational, most likely you don’t want someone to simply read it and forget it. More likely, you want them to read it and take some kind of action.

Not all actions are immediate. Consider how many times a prospective student (or parent) browses your website before contacting you. Whether users act now or later, the purpose of your content is the same: to inspire action.

Every piece of content on your website should guide action. That action could be completing an inquiry form, signing up for an event, spreading the word about your brand or subscribing to a blog (hint, hint). Content that doesn’t support action is ROT.

No Content Stands Alone

One of the reasons I often talk about communication goals is because they help content contributors understand that their content supports more than just their department goals — their content ultimately supports their entire organization.

We all need to understand how our content fits together. Student Life may cater to current students, but it also supports the information needs of prospective students. Admissions blogs may cater to prospective students, but they also support internal community building.

This same idea — the need to recognize how our content fits together — applies to creating purposeful content. Even if the content you create doesn’t have a clear department action, it ultimately contributes to broader website and institutional goals.

Understanding the purpose of your content means being able to relate your message to content goals and actions.

Not All Actions Take Place Online

We often discuss website actions in the context of web analytics. Indeed, you need to identify actions to establish and measure analytics goals. But within this context, it’s easy to form a narrow view of user actions. Web analytics measures actions online, but not all actions take place online. Sometimes people contact you by phone rather than email. Sometimes people complete your feedback form on paper.

However, just because an action isn’t completed by a “click” doesn’t mean it can’t be measured. Ask phone receptionists to take note of incoming calls and to find out where the caller found your number. Ask event organizers to record attendee sign-ins and take note of people who showed up without RSVPing online. Where did they learn about the event? Tie these numbers back to your website content goals to better understand their performance.

Measure goals both online and offline.

You Can’t Measure Inaction

Measurement is essential for content governance. How do you know if your website goals are being met if you don’t have defined actions to measure? If you can’t determine whether content goals are being met, how do you know if content is useful and relevant?

Key performance indicator (KPI) is the jargony-yet-important term for describing success metrics. KPIs are quantitative measurements that show whether you are meeting or failing to meet your defined goals.

For example, a web content KPI might be registering for an admission event, submitting a feedback form or viewing a policy page. Using KPIs is much more effective than evaluating content on a vague scale of good, better, best.

Numbers allow you to track performance and trends, helping to isolate problems and recognize success. But you can’t succeed in these accomplishments without first understanding the actions you want users to take. In other words, you have to define specific actions in order to determine relevant KPIs.

All content should inspire action that you can measure.

Ready, Set, Action!

Is your content taking a leading role as a call to action or a supporting role as information? Either way, you need to determine the actions you want your content to initiate to make sure it has a clear purpose.

Ask yourself, "What am I trying to accomplish with the content I create?" To keep your eyes on the prize, consider this simple framework for creating purposeful content:

How do you evaluate purposeful content? What are the top user actions you plan for on your website?

So we decided that we wanted to look past the jargon and help people better understand the things we talk about on Meet Content. To that end, we would like to introduce the What The… Files (also known as WTF). Using a visual format with a more informal tone, we want to cut away the industry babble and level with you about the best ways to communicate on the web.

For our first edition, we decided to tackle nothing less than content and content strategy. Is “content” a word that you say so often you forget what it really means? And what the heck is content strategy anyway? Hopefully, this explanation will help.

Let us know what you think! Also, what term should we tackle next?

Homepage photo by Gundars.Str / Flickr Creative Commons

Meat is critical to the nutrition of your brand.

Over the past year, we’ve talked a lot about web content and ways to improve it in higher ed. And while those conversations have been great, we think we’ve identified a more pressing topic deserving of our attention. And that topic is meat.

A highly advanced analysis of popular topics among the higher ed web community showed that bacon is among the most discussed topics. However, upon closer evaluation, we came to understand that bacon was only part of it — the juicy object, if you will. We realized that, holistically speaking, the real issue was all meat.

All meat deserves our attention, and higher ed is doing a woefully poor job of attending to this core business function. With that in mind, we are refocusing Meet Content around the subject of meat. Lamb, pork, chicken, beef — all meat is critical to the nutrition of our brand.

Here are some of the core tenets we believe should guide higher ed in creating and sustaining effective meat content.

Goals Before Tools

We’re tired of seeing people focus on the tool. Yes, bacon is great and can do many things. Same for hamburgers and steaks and bratwurst. But why bacon? Why brats? Are we not hitting our protein numbers? Is this the type of meat the promotes that most engagement? And which meat is best for which audience? There are several pressing questions such as these that we feel have not been adequately addressed, which is why we are recommitting our mission to answering them.

"Meat Content First!"

In some projects, meat planning is often put off until the very end (or, in some cases, ignored completely). This leads to an urgent, last-minute scramble for meat, resulting in highly unsatisfactory brown ‘n serve sausage procured at the corner store, or (if you’re lucky) some hickory-cured beef jerky.

We advocate a “Meat Content First” approach. When planning meals, place meat at the top of your list.

Develop a Meat Content Strategy

There are several components to an effective meat content strategy:

• Conduct regular refrigerator audits to assess the state and quality of your meat. (How can you know what to prepare for dinner if you don’t know what you have in the freezer?)
• Use a calendar to ensure you are consistently preparing relevant meat products for all meals—breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, supper, midnight snack and elevenses.
• Measure the effectiveness of your meat, but don’t take numbers like temperature at face value. Dig deeper and consider taste, tenderness and juiciness, as well.
• An effective meat content strategy will employ a variety of meat content types. With beef, for instance, consider rib eye, T-bone, top round, porterhouse and chuck. Is your meat salted, brined, barbecued, marinated, cured or roasted?

Meat Is a Process, Not a Project

After careful review of meat practices across higher ed, we have a radical theory to propose. There is a widely held belief that meat needs to be done, sometimes even well done. But meat is never done. Meat is a process; not a project.

We need to create a governance plan that ensures our meat stays fresh over time. That said, we must also keep in mind that undercooked meat can be extremely damaging — not just to your brand but to your life. How do we balance these objectives? A successful meat content strategy will address this.

The Steakholder Gap

One of the biggest problems in higher ed is a gap between practitioners and steakholders. The practitioners often do not understand the needs and motivations of the steakholders, and the steakholders often do not understand the concerns of the practitioners (or why they are so hungry).

We need to close this gap and foster understanding between the practitioners and the steakholders in higher ed. Also, spelling is important.

Well, Actually…

So, truth be told, we like meat, but not that much. (And what about our valued vegetarian and vegan readers?) We hope you enjoyed this April 1 diversion. We’ll resume our regularly scheduled programming with our next post.

Photo by sanctumsolitude/Flickr Creative Commons.

Dress your content in layers, and it will be ready for anything.

When we create content—whether it’s a tweet, a blog post or a program description—we can no longer anticipate the default experience to be the desktop web browser. Our content is going places—sometimes places we can’t predict. It could be an iPhone, a Kindle, even a Nintendo Wii.

As it is dispatched to digital corners far and wide, is it equipped to do its job, no matter the context? Will content goals and user needs remain well served?

Here’s the landscape we’re facing:

• According to a July 2011 Pew study, 35 percent of Americans own a smartphone, with a quarter of those using it as their primary internet device. Update: In a webinar today, mStoner’s Doug Gapinski shared updated Pew data (as of February 2012) indicating that 46 percent of Americans now own a smartphone. Yikes!
• According to Comscore, in August 2011, nearly seven percent of internet traffic came from smartphones, tablets and other non-computer devices.
• The 2012 State of the News Media study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 34 percent of those who consume news content on a desktop or laptop also get news on a smartphone, with 17 percent also getting it on a tablet. Twenty-seven percent of smartphone news consumers also get news on a tablet, and five percent get news from all three devices.

But lest we use these statistics to justify a wholly separate mobile web content initiative, heed the advice of higher ed mobile sage Dave Olsen, who boldly declared last November that there is no mobile web—there is only content:

Unpredictable device contexts. Users demanding content when and how they want it. This new landscape may seem harsh and unforgiving. But as we say up here in New England, just put on a sweater and you’ll be fine.

It’s up to us to prepare our content to freely, ably encounter unpredictable contexts. And freedom like that requires a little structure.

A Little Structure Will Do You Good

We may think that when we publish content on a webpage, we are freeing it to be consumed by world at large. But increasingly, planning content solely for the context of a webpage is like trapping it in amber, effectively immobilizing it.

We need to atomize our content into data, liberating it from the webpage and equipping it to be called to duty in whatever context is appropriate for the need. Laptop? iPad? Google TV? Instapaper? No problem, if your content is structured appropriately.

What does it mean to structure your content? I like to think of the concept of structured content as dressing in layers. When it’s cold, we have a sweater and a hat handy. When it’s warm, we can tie that sweater around our waist and be comfortable in a t-shirt. Sudden shower? No problem. We’ve got one of those foldable rain parkas right here.

How do we define structured content? In 2010, Rachel Lovinger of Razorfish published an important overview of structured content called “Nimble.”

“Simply put, digital content needs to be free – to go where and when people want it most,” she wrote. “The more structure you put into content the freer it will become.“

Lovinger argued for publishers to make their content more nimble, meaning it can:

• Travel freely: via social and mobile, available on demand
• Retain context and meaning: across various sources, usage and relationships
• Create new products: thanks to reusable content, finding new (and quicker-to-market) ways to engage people with a message

To become nimble, Lovinger says content needs to be three things: well-structured; well-defined; and well-described. This is accomplished through effective application of metadata standards. We already understand the importance of separating content from design through the use of cascading style sheets. Metadata is another, even more critical level of empowering content outside the context of a design, giving it definition and description that allows it to navigate meaningfully through a variety of contexts.

(To learn more about these standards and Lovinger’s three criteria for nimble content, dive into Lovinger’s Slideshare deck overview of the concepts behind “Nimble” or get acquainted with the entire manifesto. You should also explore Sara Wachter-Boettcher’s excellent primer from A List Apart, “Future-Ready Content.”)

Content as Data as Content

In our HighEdWeb 2011 wrap-up, we mentioned the presentations by Doug Beck and Roger Wolf from the University of Central Florida as one of our favorites (go listen, view the deck and read the transcript), because it got at the importance of structuring our content to turn it into a “legendary” data source, able to be pulled into a range of applications and services. News, blogs, events, photos, emergency information and campus maps (with their attendant RSS feeds and APIs) are all valuable data sources.

Be a content Batman, say UCF's Beck and Wolf. Turn your content into a "legendary" data source.

“You don’t need to do mobile,” they said. “You need to mobilize your content and data.”

We also loved hearing from Notre Dame’s Erik Runyon and Jeremy Friesen about how they are using APIs (application programming interface, which Runyon and Friesen define simply as “any interface that allows for easy manipulation of data) to de-silo content and make it reusable across a range of applications.

NPR is the king of this approach. The Create Once, Publish Everywhere philosophy embraced by NPR (and baked into their homegrown CMS) is similar to what Notre Dame does with their own applications—from their homegrown CMS, Conductor, to their events calendar and campus map application—which pull and render content from multiple databases with the help of APIs.

“Building API’s allows content producers to be much more nimble in deploying the content to multiple platforms,” Zach Brand, senior director of technology at NPR, wrote for Programmable Web in April 2011.

(As an aside, it’s worth noting that the smarter content management systems going forward are going to embrace structured content, content reuse and a semantic, COPE approach. Karen McGrane shares some insights on this matter in her slide deck on adaptive content.)

Olsen also wrote last fall about the Future Friendly web development movement, which calls on us to

1. Acknowledge and embrace unpredictability
2. Think and behave in a future-friendly way
3. Help others do the same.

In sketching his vision of the future-friendly campus, Olsen observed that “traditional silos of content and data need to come crumbling down” and “APIs are the bedrock upon which all of our solutions are going to be built on in the future.” In this respect, it seems that Notre Dame and UCF are ahead of the curve.

Notre Dame’s Runyon and Friesen made another valuable point in their presentation—open data goes hand in hand with collaborative relationships. The folks who run the CMS may be in a different group than the folks who run the events calendar, but if both sets of developers are working together and sharing data—particularly in consultation with someone from the communications group—they can make each other’s applications even more robust and effective, ultimately providing a better content experience for their audience.

Making the Case for Structured Content

From a technical perspective, this all makes sense. If we increase the informational surface area of our content with the appropriate metadata and treat it like data that can be utilized by multiple applications via APIs, we can empower our content to succeed on any device. Huzzah!

But, so what? Let’s face it: Metadata isn’t exactly shiny, or even that easy to explain. (Even I elect to defer to Lovinger’s much more informed explanation. Where my librarians at?!) How do we argue for building the systems and creating the culture where structured content shapes the backend of our digital publishing efforts?

Do it once. Do it right.

Let’s make the case in a language we in higher ed can easily understand: thrift. We don’t have the time or resources to build separate mobile sites and mobile apps, nor to re-create instances of content to accommodate different pages or sites. We have one website. Let’s dress it in layers. Let’s make our content ready to be reused in any context it may encounter. We cannot afford to do otherwise.

Here’s another language in which we can make the argument for structured content: branding. If we create multiple instances of content, we introduce the possibility of inconsistent content delivery across devices and experiences, and inconsistent messaging is frustrating for our users and damaging to our brand. Not to mention, duplicate content is going to give us all sorts of SEO headaches.

As we know, multichannel marketing succeeds on the strength of the continuity of our message. Our technology and content delivery should support these efforts. By building our publishing efforts around one core of content, ready to be dispatched to any device with meaning and message intact, we will ensure the effectiveness of our communication and marketing efforts. So put on a sweater and get to it!

Are you using a structured content approach to inform content publishing on your campus? What’s your process?

Update: Olsen and Wachter-Boettcher shared some good insights stemming from this topic on Twitter. We Storified their dialogue here.

Top/homepage photo by vatobob/Flickr Creative Commons. Bottom photo by WarmSleepy/Flickr Creative Commons

Is your content strategy working on schedule? It may be time for a content governance assessment.

During our first Meet Content webinar, an attendee asked a great question: where do you start with web content governance?

It’s a challenging question to answer because content governance requires that you first have a content plan. Content governance — a process of managing content roles, responsibilities, processes, documentation, tools and training — can’t be distinguished from your content strategy.

In order to manage the elements of content governance, you have to first define them. That’s part of your content strategy. What roles do you need to assign? Who’s responsible for content collection, creation, approval, publishing and maintenance? What are the processes for content work? And what documentation and tools do you need to get this work done?

Unfortunately, there isn’t a content governance plan template you can download and implement. Your plan must suit your organization. Your resources and requirements are unique. Heck, even the resources and requirements for departments within your organization are unique. Some departments have dedicated content managers, while others have staff assistants charged with content management on top of their other work. You need a content governance plan that works for you.

So, where do you start with content governance? (That was the question, right?) While a content governance plan relies on a content strategy, you can start by conducting an assessment of your content governance readiness. By evaluating roles, processes, documentation and training, you can determine the strength of your current content governance model: what needs to be improved and what, if any, additional planning do you need to make your content governance succeed?

Roles and Responsibilities

Identify all the of current roles and responsibilities for collecting, creating, curating, approving, publishing and maintaining content. This goes from student bloggers and those who edit their content all the way up to those who determine what content lives on your homepage.

Likely, many (if not all) of the people filling these roles and responsibilities in your organization are people in non-content focused position. That’s expected. What’s important is that you are able to identify everyone who is involved in the content publishing process. Consider your entire content ecosystem.

Roles and responsibilities assessment checklist

• Does every role have defined responsibilities? Does everyone understand his or her responsibilities?
• What are the knowledge gaps? Is there expertise that is not adequately supported by those involved in the publishing process?
• Are established guidelines and policies enforced?
• Are there adequate staff resources to support your content strategy?
• Does everyone understand how his or her work relates to and affects others? (Does Steve in Student Services know that giving you the annual student survey questions on Friday morning doesn’t allow enough time for them to be reviewed, approved and published the same day?)

Processes

Identify or document all the current content processes, including editorial and workflow. What are the criteria for creating or selecting featured content? How do news stories get written, edited, approved and published?

Ideally, your content processes are already well documented and can be referenced. However, if you’re like most, these processes are in someone’s head and not written down. In this case, you have some work to do. You can’t easily assess processes that aren’t documented.

Process assessment checklist

• Where does the content publishing process start and end? Does it start with a formal request or a brainstorming session? Does it end with a planned archive or a content assessment? Or does it start and end with a user complaint?
• What are all the tasks (steps) involved in your content publishing process?
• Are all content publishing tasks adequately accounted for, or are there gaps?
• Are there tasks that are unnecessary? Can the process be simplified?
• What are the expected timeframes for each task? Is adequate time allotted for each task? (How much time is needed to research, write, edit, publish and maintain an alumni profile? What if new photography or video is part of the process?)

Documentation

Identify and evaluate the efficacy of all documentation that supports your content plan. This documentation — including information about existing content, guides for creating new content, and methods for evaluating and maintaining content — enables people to support and execute your content strategy. We often consider these sorts of documents to be content strategy “deliverables.”

Documentation assessment checklist

• Accessibility and usability guidelines
• CMS training guides
• Communication goals
• Content audits and analysis
• Content workflow
• Editorial calendars
• Editorial style guides
• Information architecture
• Message architecture
• Roles and responsibilities
• SEO guidelines
• Social media and community management guidelines
• Success metrics (KPIs)
• Taxonomy and metadata guidelines
• Web policies
• Web writing guidelines
• Webpage template requirements (content formats, types)

Training

People don’t often associate governance with training. But if you are governing content, you are in a leading role. Content governance requires educating everyone involved in the publishing process and clearly communicating roles, responsibilities, processes and guidelines.

This is particularly valuable in the case of the person for whom content is only a minor percentage of their responsibilities — like the work study student for a department or an admissions counselor charged with managing the admissions website. Content contributors can’t be blamed for poor quality content if they don’t understand what’s required of them and how to do the work.

Training assessment checklist

• Are staff trained on content policies, processes and guidelines?
• Is there adequate documentation, including guides for editorial style, SEO, accessibility, usability, delivery methods, content types and formats?
• Are messaging and communication goals made useful and usable for content contributors?
• Are content contributors made aware of changes in web policies, processes and guidelines?

The Good and the Bad

No doubt, there are content processes and documentation in your organization that work well and ones that don’t. If you’re looking to tackle content governance but don’t have a content plan in place, an assessment is a good place to start. It’s a valuable exercise for evaluating governance problems and determining how to begin drafting a content strategy.

An assessment is also good for giving yourself credit for things that work well. In fact, you can start giving yourself credit here on Meet Content. Do you have examples of processes or documentation that favorably serve your content governance? If so, I’d love to hear them and give you a “high five”!

First #heweb11, now SXSW. Austin does it again.

I recently returned from the annual SXSW Interactive festival, which brought 25,000 nerds of various stripes to Austin, Texas, for a week of learning and networking (and breakfast tacos). There were several highlights, but two things pleased me in particular: the strength of the panels on content-related topics and the significant number of higher education professionals in attendance.

The great thing about SXSW is that, if you’re interested in content, there are lots of lessons to be gleaned from sessions outside of the content track. And if you’re in higher ed, you needn’t confine yourself to the education track. The cross-pollination of ideas at SXSW is almost delightful as a warm Austin evening. Here are some of the more notable ideas that can inform the work we do:

Making Social Media Work

In the excellent (and packed) core conversation on effective social media in higher education, led by University of Wisconsin-Waukesha’s Liz Gross and Depaul’s Deb Maue, two points stood out as worthwhile reminders. One is that much of the work needed to make social media work at our institutions is going to happen offline, through content groups and personal relationships. This is a point I emphasize time and time again, because content work is largely people work.

Second, departmental and other niche social media outlets are important for sharing relevant content to targeted audiences, with institutional social media presences taking on the responsibility of curating from those smaller accounts for a broader audience.

Check out Rob Evans’ Storify of the session.

Session overview and panelists

Libraries and Community Publishing

Libraries aren’t just buildings full of books. They are hubs of community knowledge and content—even at universities. Char Booth from Claremont College talked about her school’s effort to recognize the value of student scholarship by soliciting and publishing student papers. As Booth explained, those papers are often relegated to an old hard drive or a forgotten printout, never given the chance to become part of the collective scholarly discourse around a given topic. Thanks to efforts like Claremont’s, now they are.

While this is not explicitly communications-related, it sets a good model of how publishing efforts can serve larger institutional goals, much like brand-aligned content curation can support our communications efforts. Libraries are doing cool stuff in general and are worth paying attention to, as their work is often relevant to ours.

Session overview and panelists

Content Strategy is Super Hard

An all-star panel of content strategy professionals outlined the current issues facing content professionals. One of the central issues is that content strategy is, by necessity, an exercise in change management. (This is something we’ll discuss more on Meet Content in the future.) We need to figure out a more effective way for content decision makers and content practitioners to work together toward creating and maintaining effective, goal-driven content.

Looking to start a conversation about content at your institution? Demand a seat at the table, the panelists advised. Insert yourself into the dialogue, start talking and don’t stop until something changes. Start with a project and build up to the organization. Educate and execute. It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this point, and I’m glad they made it. Change won’t happen unless we make it happen.

Session overview and panelists

Content Strategy for the Interface

A while back, we talked about the important of microcopy. Every bit of content matters, including the content that guides the use of web interfaces—and everything is an interface, the panelists emphasized. They recommended treating your interface like a publication, recognizing the value of button text, help content and other information that helps you figure out what to do on a website. Three of the panelists were Facebook staffers, so as stewards of one of the most frequently used interfaces in the world, they know what they’re talking about.

Content, they added, is not supposed to be brief; it’s supposed to be the right content to solve the problem at hand. The popular perception of brevity as the measure of effective web content is a fallacy. It just needs to work.

Session overview and panelists

Digital Storytelling for Nonprofits

For mission-driven organizations like universities, the panelists explained, the most effective stories communicate how we meaningfully change individual lives. The web presents new challenges and opportunities for the way we tell these stories. In print, the narrative is ours to dictate and craft—it’s a one-sided communication. But on the web, the readers piece together the narrative from multiple sources and expect stories to be connected to the world beyond their pixels and margins—findable, social, current, interactive.

To achieve our missions, we need to give our stories a larger digital surface area, while making them more permeable. Given our limited resources, though, it may be better to tell a handful of stories really well across a range of platforms than craft dozens of stories and struggle to connect readers to them. As always, it’s helpful to get the nonprofit perspective on these issues, because our contexts are often so different from the B2B or B2C world.

Session overview and panelists

Open Web, Open News

Journalism is undergoing a radical transformation on the web. It is no longer just on the web, but it is of the web, and we are in “constant beta” in order to keep up. Convening a team where technical, design and content perspectives are all represented is critical to achieving this (a point echoed in multiple sessions).

Our news and stories are also not just on, but of the web. We need to increase the access points to this content, giving our audiences multiple paths to connect through location, social sharing and their own contributions. The latter point is critical—how do we embrace co-creation, bringing the audience into our editorial processes? This is a challenge in hierarchical, slow-to-change organizations like universities.

As you may know, I’ve been particularly vocal about higher ed communicators thinking more like online journalists. Content expectations are changing, and online journalism is leading the way. We need to keep up.

Session overview and panelists

Data as Narrative

One of the biggest missed opportunities in higher ed is leveraging the vast stores of data that our institutions compile and finding the stories therein. How many of us have PDFs of university fact books sitting on our websites? Those books contain the trends, patterns and statistical portaits that we—as story-savvy humans—can refine into a narrative, using data visualization techniques to present it in an appealing, accessible fashion. Can you imagine it? A useful and informative infographic? Dare to dream!

In addition, the panelists discussed content curation and the need to build attribution into our curation models, whether through application like Storify or otherwise. Besides just being good web citizenry, this can also help with community building by acknowledging people’s content contributions. As it turns out, a new code of conduct for content curation may help address some of these concerns.

Session overview and panelists

Social Role-Playing: Brands and Publishers

Halle Hutchison, senior director of brand marketing for Expedia.com, framed the whole “brands as publishers” role in an interesting way. Brands, she explained, should practice story “hosting,” enabling their audiences to tell their own stories and curating them. This is what Expedia did with their Facebook-based FriendTrips contest, soliciting and curating travel stories. There is an opportunity, the panelists concurred, to build relationships with customers through content creation, curation and sharing, and we can initiate those relationships by hosting their stories. And the same opportunity exists for higher ed.

Session overview and panelists

Second Screen Dashboard: Cover Live Events Better

ESPN and The New York Times are doing fascinating work in reaching people across multiple devices via live events like sports games and award ceremonies, creating rich, participatory web experiences. The panelists called it “creating a party on your site.” We can do this, too.

As Seth Odell discussed at HighEdWeb 2011, we have tons of live events—commencement, matriculation, major speakers, concerts—with potential audiences beyond on-campus attendees. Through live streaming broadcasts and the integration of interactive, social and dynamic web content (like curated Twitter streams, live chat and real-time photo sharing), we can reach those audiences and include them in events they may not otherwise have an opportunity to experience.

Session overview and panelists

Digital Debauchery with Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain and the crew behind the Travel Channel’s “No Reservations” gave an entertaining presentation about how they use web content and social media to supplement (and amplify) the televised show, from a photo of fish tacos that gets five-figure views to twisted Christmas cartoons on YouTube.

As Bourdain put it, the viewers that watch the show when it’s broadcast don’t mean as much to him as the viewers over time, and those viewers are reached and retained by this complementary content. The content they create around the show, driven by its personalities and moments that may not make the cut for the final program, help build that expanded audience.

Session overview and panelists

Were you at SXSW? What were your higher ed takeaways?

Time is shifting. We need to keep up.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how longform content is a growing trend that merits consideration in higher ed. A topic often discussed in tandem with longform content is time-shifted reading. Sometimes called “DVR for words,” time-shifted reading is an increasingly popular option for content consumption.

Before diving into this post, you really need to read (or re-read) Rick’s excellent overview of how we as publishers must plan for content delivery, consumption and context. Sorry, but this is one piece of content you can’t time-shift. So, go ahead. I’ll wait.

…All set? Okay, let’s go!

Shift It—Shift It Good

Content discovery can take place at any time—at work, on the bus, in the morning while drinking coffee. It can be proactive (we search for coverage of a given topic), passive (we happen to find an interesting link on Twitter) or reactive (someone forwards you the Meet Content newsletter—see what I did there?). But content consumption does not necessarily occur at that same point or same moment. It may even happen offline (hello, cross-country flight).

As Cameron Koczon explained in his important A List Apart article “Orbital Content” in April 2011, our relationship with content is changing as it sheds its constraints. No longer fixed in place, online content is both more powerful and more challenging to wrangle. As Koczon puts it, time-shifting services are “transferring the responsibility of making content flexible from the publisher to the user.”

“People don’t really want to have to be confined to a specific place, time, site or device to read content,” Read it Later founder Nate Weiner told The New York Times last February. This is the core principle behind the emergence of time-shifted reading apps and platforms. They all work more or less the same—through an app or a bookmarklet, you can save content to a queue for reading at a time of your choosing.

The two key players are Read it Later, with more than 4 million users, and Instapaper, with approximately 2 million. Readability, while not exclusively a tool for time-shifted reading, is also a popular option for time-shifted reading.

The creators of these resources and tools use the distracting contexts of the web, social media and mobile to drive content toward more focused spaces. As Instapaper creator Marco Arment told Poynter, “The best thing authors and publishers can do is give the world great content to read. Without that, all of this technology is pointless.”

The Need for Time-Shifted Reading

In a real-time world, Louis Gray contends, there is room (even a need) for time-shifted content consumption. The amount of content that actually demands real-time consumption is not as much as you might think, despite many people poo-pooing RSS readers (“Twitter is my Google Reader,” I’ve heard more than once. Harumph.)

“For most buckets of content, be they text, audio or video, the drive to be first and in the mix of the story as it is interpreted and curated, is not essential,” says Gray. He adds:

This is a commonly embraced concept when it comes to television. But television is different—it’s scheduled and predictable, for the most part. We typically don’t know what news or blog posts are going to pop up tomorrow, or even an hour from now—especially from sources we don’t habitually read.

We’re a little bit behind on this concept when it comes to web content, but we’re rapidly catching up. It’s a matter of survival, at this point—at risk of information saturation, we need ways to manage the flow.

The Shifting Sands of Publishing

Mobile, as usual, is changing everything. A few years ago, web reading happened at the desktop. But much like social media took a measure of control out of the marketing equation, mobile took a measure of control out of the publishing equation.

According to data gleaned from 100 million articles saved via Read it Later, “as devices become more mobile, it’s not only changing where we read, but when.”

We are constantly discovering content throughout the day, but we are saving it to read in comfort during our free time, typically in the evening. The iPad is “leading the jailbreak from consuming content in our desk chairs,” according to Read it Later, with iPhones providing people an opportunity to fill the gaps in their day with content. This lines up with research that suggests posting content via social media in the evening.

As I said earlier, time-shifted reading and longform content are often coupled together like peas in a publishing pod. And to be sure, much longform content discovered at work or on the bus may be shifted for later reading. However, the two need not always go hand in hand, the Nieman Lab reported in December:

The evidence seems to be that people find time-shifting useful regardless of length, and that using these tools for really long work is more of an edge case than common usage. It appears the user’s thought process is closer to “Let me read this later” than “Let me read this later because it’s really long and worthy.”

What Does This Mean For Higher Ed?

We may have a range of audiences we are trying to reach (prospective students, parents, alumni) with a variety of content types (video, longform news articles, webpage content). Different users have different habits around content consumption. Thus, the more that we equip that content to be readable in a variety of unpredictable contexts, the stronger the chance it will succeed.

For example, a parent may sign up for our e-newsletter, which we send at 8 a.m. She may receive it while buzzing through email in line at Starbucks and see an article about the major her son is considering. She is not likely to read that article at that moment (they’re going to call her venti nonfat vanilla latte any minute), but she can save it to read later, perhaps that evening at home.

Here are some ways we can plan for time-shifted reading:

Enable Content Shifting

Your news articles may feature what is commonly known as the tool box: email, print, tweet this, post to Facebook. But these are no longer sufficient. Those actions are mostly focused on sharing with others—what about sharing with ourselves? We need to add options for time-shifting, maybe even for downloading as PDF or .epub. Read it Later, Instapaper and Readability all have options for this.

Plan for After You Hit ‘Publish’

The more we prepare for content discovery and consumption — rather than just the moment of publication — the more effective our content will be over time. We’re competing for screen time with everybody else out there, and the more options we provide for allowing our audience to experience our content on their terms, the more of an edge we will have in communicating our messages and ultimately driving actions. Longform or otherwise, our readers should be able to decide when and where they want to read our content.

Structure Your Content

At the 2011 Mobilism conference, Bryan Rieger of Yiibu gave a talk entitled “Muddling Through the Mobile Web,” where he talked about creating experiences for shifting contexts. He mentioned how services like Instapaper are using code and markup to structure content to be adaptive across contexts, while retaining meaning and design. Thinking about content like an application, Rieger says, can help us make it more useful. Structuring content will help us adopt new delivery channels and contexts more easily down the road, without forcing us to reinvent the wheel—which takes time and resources we may not have.

Keep Your Users Top of Mind

When we publish content, we do not deserve attention or traffic; we have to earn it by being useful, relevant and findable. Like Rick said in his post last April, understanding our users and how they consume content is critical. What types of content do faculty and staff want during the day at their desks versus weekends or evenings? When are prospective students engaging with us on Twitter, and when are they reading content on the admissions website? This will inform how we consider time-shifted content when planning content delivery.

Do you see practical applications for time-shifted content in higher ed? Where would you start? Or, have you started?

Photo by frield / Flickr Creative Commons

From us, to you.

It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been a year since we launched Meet Content. In that time, we’ve covered a wide array of topics — everything from inline links to infographics — and have had many enlightening and inspiring conversations with you about how we can keep making content better.

To that end, we’d like to share a few new offerings from Meet Content that we hope will extend that conversation even further.

A Newsletter Your Inbox (and You) Will Love

Finally. A newsletter focused on content.

We wanted to both create a new delivery option for Meet Content and provide some added value that didn’t quite fit in the blog. After ruling out fax, we decided on a newsletter.

On the last Tuesday of every month, we will deliver a concise yet information-rich selection of content that will keep you apprised with what’s going on both with Meet Content and the higher ed web world at large. You will receive:

• This Month in Meet Content
  A recap of the month’s past blog posts.
• On Topic
  The most interesting blog posts, videos and articles by you and other content experts.
• In Focus
  A collection of past posts around a given topic.
• Spotlight
  Examples of particularly effective higher ed web content, both found by us and submitted by you.
• New Arrivals
  Helpful resources from our Library, including books, articles and blogs.
• Events
  Information about upcoming conferences, webinars or other events with a keen focus on content. Some we’ll be speaking at, but others just look awesome. We’ll also feature videos and slide decks from past presentations and events that we uncover.

Meet Content Newsletter Sign-up »

The first newsletter goes out on Feb. 28. And if you have any feedback on what else you might want to see in a Meet Content newsletter, please let us know.

A Webinar That’s Nice, as Well as the Price

In higher education, there is a strong demand for professional development, but the price point for these opportunities is often too high.

We want to change that. Today, we’re announcing a new Meet Content webinar series that is affordable, useful and relevant.

For $75, you will get an hour of practical, helpful discussion around a given topic. Some of the topics we have planned for the coming months include:

• Content Audits and Analysis
• Developing a Message Architecture for Clear Communication
• Social Media Content Strategy
• Reimagining Content
• Responsive Content

Since we’re so excited about this webinar series, we wanted to do the first one for free. So join us on March 6 at 1 p.m. EST, when we will talk about the need for content strategy in higher education. You can be a part of the discussion with the hashtag #meetcontent.

Going forward, the webinars will be on the second Tuesday of every month at 1 p.m. EST. We’ll share the details (and any scheduling changes) on the website, on Twitter and in our newsletter. Hope to see you there!

Taking This Act on the Road

Later this month we’re traveling to Austin, Texas, for the University of Texas System Seminar to talk content strategy in higher ed. We’re looking forward to the BBQ, but we’re more excited about the conversation.

Do you also want to learn how to make your content more effective? Hire us! We’re available for half-day presentations, full-day workshops, content strategy and communications consultation and anything in between.

We love talking content, but we love helping people even more. Let us know how we might be able to work together.

Photo by comedynose / Flickr Creative Commons