What an evening. As well as inspiring presentations from the content team responsible for the great work at www.gov.uk, last night's London Content Strategy Meetup treated us to a Q+A session with Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic and author of Content Strategy for the Web, the book that inspired many of us to get involved in this CS lark in the first place.
One of the conversations focused on the professional journey from content producer to content strategist. That’s a topic very close to my heart and relevant, I’m guessing, to many in last night’s audience who are also moving from one role to the other.
From my own experience, the route from production to strategy is far from simple, but here are five ideas that can help accelerate the transition. Some of these were inspired by folks who presented and took part in the free mike sessions last night and there are hat-tips wherever possible to those who contributed and inspired me at earlier events.
1. Learn how to talk about value: From my own experience clients, as well as agencies and in-house teams, get the value of content. But they struggle with the effort involved producing enough material to satisfy today’s monthly, daily or even hourly publication cycles.
For instance, if a business has to produce five times as many words or video minutes to keep up with today’s unforgiving publishing cycles, does it have to pay five times as much in terms of budgets and resources?
The answer, of course, is no—as long as you can intelligently audit and repurpose existing materials aligned to a editorial calendar that includes key company, personnel and industry milestones.
In short, audit + calendar = is a good step towards articulating value as part of a content strategy.
2. Speak the language of business. As Kristina Halvorson put it yesterday evening, much of business comes down to the bottom line. And yes, you need to contribute.
Taking the example outlined above, compare the cost of independently commissioning, producing and publishing a white paper, blog, news article, press release, Facebook post (you get the drift). Now work out how much you would save by producing and distributing the same items derived from one existing document (any long-form article is a good place to start).
I can’t stress highly enough that it doesn’t matter how obvious this seems. Even if the response is ‘Why the hell aren’t we doing that already’, you’ve successfully justified your first step towards strategy rather than production.
3. Describe your job. Do you know what a content strategist should do in your organisation? Course you do. But can you put it down onto one side of A4, or even a couple of PowerPoint slides?
If you’re searching for ideas, there are plenty of excellent books out there that describe content strategy. But it’s equally useful to trawl the web for job descriptions. Just dip into LinkedIn and do a search for content strategists. Find the bits that you can already do, add in the stuff that really inspires you and make sure you back it up with statements that describe the value of the role (see above).
4. Make some new friends: Nailed the job description and won the buy-in of the boss? It’s time to make some new friends. Go out and talk to the people in your business connected with the wider digital content delivery process.
I spent the equivalent of a few hours speaking with the people who lead our UX, developer and digital design teams. Another good point from Kristina Halvorson: Get inside the heads of these folks, understand what makes them tick, and get a grip of the issues that keep them awake at night.
Be a good listener first of all. Then go away and think of practical ways that can help solve their issues. Next set up a time to present back your advice. Remember, you’re not just trying to make their lives easier; you’re there to make them look good to the business – an important part of content strategy that is often overlooked.
5. Be a better sales person. For creatives and even consultants, the notion of selling sometimes sticks in the throat. But if you can lean down a moment from your tall mount let me pass you up an aromatic espresso. You are going to have to sell this stuff. To your boss, to your clients, and—most of all—to yourself.
On a serious note, I know that many content creative-production types aren’t natural presenters. So get practising and remember there is absolutely nothing wrong with ‘fake it to make it’. Start off by presenting to friends, move on to close colleagues at work and, when you’re ready, get in front of your boss. (Thanks to Barry Furby for this one).
Better still, sign up for one of the Lightning Talks at the next London Content Strategy Meetup on May 29. Speaking from experience it’s a great way to earn your spurs in front of a friendly audience – and get plenty of feedback for when you next present to colleagues and clients. Deadline for submissions is Friday 27 April. See you there.
