Content (strategy) is king at Confab 2011

Minneapolis, Minn. — Content strategy consultants, Brain Traffic, wrapped up their first content strategy conference on Wednesday. Dubbed Confab, the conference brought web writers, designers, developers and architects together to talk about how to plan, execute and govern website content. Helmed by Brain Traffic’s Kristina Halvorson, who I saw at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in 2010, Confab is a community that asks the simple question ignored in interactive project creation for far too long: What about the content?

What is content strategy?

Content strategy as a discipline is still fairly new, so definitions vary among the agencies, consultants and brands that are hep to the concept. One definition that resonates for me is that content strategy is the best way for content to help the business achieve its goals. Strategies vary from project to project, but at its core, content strategy is about creating a plan to produce, manage and govern the best content that sells your product, supports your customers, builds your community or achieves the intended business objectives put forth in your or your client’s web strategy.

Seriously, though–what about the content?

The copy that was lorem ipsum moments ago or was tacked-on, jammed-in or just plain shot-from-the-hip when the project was about to go live? That’s content. It’s what you or your client is relying on to achieve the aforementioned business objectives. Make no mistake, it’s why people visit your website.

Content strategy was born out of the frustration that web writers and other content champions experience when a business uses a “fix it later” or “pour the budget into the design” approach to populating their website. Design, navigation, rollovers, color palettes, CMS, architecture and every other component serve to support the content. Without quality content that engages website visitors, you are just building an expensive, useless webpage.

Ignoring this fact is one of the reasons that the copy usually winds up packed with marketing drivel like “leverage”, “market leader” and “next-generation”. There was no plan for what the copy is supposed to accomplish, if it or the page was even necessary, so the writer just does what everyone else does. Fill it with marketing-speak.

The folks at Confab, especially Halvorson, argue that the stuff you’re putting on the page to support the copy is also content. Graphics, video, menus, site map (to which copywriting and usability demi-god, Ginny Redish, would say lord help you if you rely on a site map to help people find specific information) are all content that needs to be planned, managed and governed after launch. When content strategy is done right, graphics are informational, videos achieve specific business goals and widgets serve a function beyond fulfilling the boss’s or client’s request for a social media app.

Why should I care about content strategy?

The 450 plus people attending Confab came from businesses as diverse as retail, media and publishing, design and healthcare. But there were some interactive agency people there, too. I met someone from the San Francisco-based digital agency The Barbarian Group, as well as Culver City-based interactive agency Genex.

To borrow a prevalent advertising-centric phrase, these people get it. They understand that creating a client website as part of a campaign or as a standalone project isn’t enough. You have to set your clients up for success after the launch. Attending Confab shows these agencies’ commitment to gentrifying the content wasteland known as the World Wide Web.

Lastly, if you believe all the hype from the last few years that the traditional agency is in either a die or adapt-to-digital mode, then offering content strategy as part of your service may be something that sets your business apart in a very competitive landscape. Do you produce video for or that might end up on the Web? Does your campaign need to include mobile users? Are you clinging to broadcast television and trying to figure out how to stay relevant as the Internet continues to demand consumer attention? You might want to think about jumping on the content strategy bandwagon. Just sayin’.

So, what did I learn at Confab? I brought home some ideas on helping Wiredrive better serve our customers through stronger content. I also learned that we are just seeing the tip of a discipline ripe with opportunity and the potential to make the Internet a useful place again, as opposed to the digital dumping ground it has become. If the last 10 years has shown anything, it’s that publishing content to the Web has become so simple that anyone can put anything up at anytime. And as democratizing as web publishing has become, it has also fostered problems that we are in a position to fix.