We live in a world of open broadcasting where everyone has their own publishing outlet—every brand is a publisher, every individual a broadcaster. This has amplified the importance of quality content to connect with users. Content educates, sells, amplifies, and helps build lasting influence.
This has, in turn, led to a hyper proliferation of content, creating an unprecedented noisy media landscape and further pushing up the importance of quality content. A crowded marketplace means only highly distinct content will attract an audience.
However, consistently delivering high quality content is difficult. More so because content marketing as a discipline remains fluid and in constant flux.
Misunderstanding what is good content for a company is common. Most companies lack understanding to measure the quality of the content they put out. Many companies produce content without a strategy and without an awareness of why they are doing what they are doing. A lack of useful knowledge on the subject further complicates this challenge.
At Future Startup, we have been running a narrative building studio for several years now, helping companies with content marketing and narrative building. The above mentioned challenge is something that we face daily. Lack of coherent strategic thinking behind content efforts and putting out content for the sake of doing it without thinking about quality or outcome.
This was the context I came across The Elements of Content Strategy, a fascinating short book by Erin Kissane on the subject. Extremely well-written and to the point, the book provides a comprehensive guide to think about everything content strategy.
While the book is quite comprehensive when it comes to understanding content strategy, the first chapter titled “Basic Principles” offers a set of fundamentals that can help companies and practitioners think more effectively about content. Kissane writes:
“Our discipline rests on a series of core principles about what makes content effective—what makes it work, what makes it good.”
I have found the principles clear, practical, and immensely useful to think meaningfully about content and content strategy.
Principle 01. Good content is appropriate for the users and the business
In the first principle, Kissane suggests one should “publish content that is right for the user and for the business”. This principle kind of encapsulates the entirety of the content strategy. When you are producing content, it has to be right for your users. Otherwise, they will not read it and your exercise of producing it will be meaningless and a waste of time and effort. At the same time, it has to be right for your business, meaning when a user reads it, it should tell something about your business. You produce great content and your users love it, but it is completely disconnected from your business, it is also a waste of time and effort.
Kissane writes: “There is really only one central principle of good content: it should be appropriate for your business, for your users, and for its context. Appropriate in its method of delivery, in its style and structure, and above all in its substance. Content strategy is the practice of determining what each of those things means for your project—and how to get there from where you are now.”
Kissane explains a content is right for the users (and context) “when it helps them accomplish their goals.” This makes sense. We read an article or watch a video when it has something to offer and helps us meet some sort of need.
“Content is perfectly appropriate for users when it makes them feel like geniuses on critically important missions, offering them precisely what they need, exactly when they need it, and in just the right form.”
But how do you produce content that is right for the users is an important question. Unless you understand the mechanics of producing quality content you will likely produce content that will fail to produce expected results.
Kissane offers a strategy:
“All of this requires you get pretty deeply into your users’ heads, if not their tailoring specifications. Part of this mind reading act involves context, which encompasses quite a lot more than just access methods, or even a fine-grained understanding of user goals. Content strategist Daniel Eizans has suggested that a meaningful analysis of a user’s context requires not only an understanding of users’ goals, but also of their behaviors: what are they doing? How are they feeling? What are they capable of?”
This is powerful. Content proliferation has created a condition where most people think we just need to dump something and readers will come. But this is a mistake and often a colossal waste of time, energy, and resources. The only meaningful strategy that works is producing quality content that meets what your users are looking for.
The second aspect of this principle is that good content has to be appropriate for the business. Now, if the content you are making serves your customers well, it should automatically serve your business well, unless you are doing something completely outside of your domain.
Kissane writes: “Fundamentally, though, “right for the business” and “right for the user” are the same thing. This principle boils down to enlightened self interest: that which hurts your users hurts you.”
That being said, there are instances where this connection might not exist. You might produce content that your customers might find interesting for reasons that wouldn’t benefit your business. That’s why it is useful to explicitly understand what you are seeking to achieve from a content for your business.
Kissane explains what “right for the business” means: “Content is appropriate for your business when it helps you accomplish your business goals in a sustainable way. Business goals include things like “increase sales,” “improve technical support service,” and reduce costs for educational materials,” and the trick is to accomplish those goals using sustainable processes.”
Principle 02: Good content is useful
The second principle says good content has to be useful. “Define a clear, specific purpose for each piece of content; evaluate content against this purpose,” explains Kissane.
The web is full of useless, low quality content. While it might appear that making low quality content has no cost and all the upsides of putting something out in the world. But it is wrong. “This sort of content isn’t neutral either: it actively wastes time and money and works against user and business goals,” writes Kissane.
But how do you know which content is useful and which is not. Kissane suggests: “To know whether or not you have the right content for a page, you have to know what that content is supposed to accomplish. Great specificity produces better results.”
Don’t say you want your content to sell products, rather be more specific such as you want to explain 5 reasons your product solves a particular problem of your target customer or how you deliver quality, etc.
Principle 03: Good content is user-centered
In this principle, Kissane goes deeper into what she partially discussed in principle one—good content is right for the users and the business. In order for a content to be appropriate it has to help readers achieve their goals. In this principle, she explains how to achieve this goal by creating user-centered content: “Adopt the cognitive frameworks of your users.”
The core idea is that to develop content that is useful for the user, you have to understand their psychological landscape.
Kissane writes: “When it comes to content, “user-centered” means that instead of insistently using the client’s internal mental models and vocabulary, content must adopt the cognitive frameworks of the user. That includes everything from your users’ model of the world to the ways in which they use specific terms and phrases.”
When we are writing or making something, we usually operate from a place where we prioritize our own thinking and ideas and language without considering whether it would resonate with our readers.
“Publishing content that is self-absorbed in substance or style alienates readers,” explains Kissane. “Most successful organizations have realized this, yet many sites are still built around internal org charts, clogged with mission statements designed for internal use, and beset by jargon and proprietary names for common ideas.”
Simply put, if we want to create content that our users will read and find useful, we have to leave our ego and adopt the mindset of our users.
Principle 04: Good content is clear
When we are putting out content into the world, we are seeking to communicate and connect. Effective communication is only possible when we state our position clearly. Good writing is always clear writing. “Seek clarity in all things,” writes Kissane.
She then goes on to explain what it means to be clear: “When we say something is clear, we mean that it works; it communicates; the light gets through. Good content speaks to people in a language they understand and is organized in ways that make it easy to use.”
Principle 05: Good content is consistent
The easiest way to explain this principle is that when you are putting out content in the world mainstain a consistent style, standard, presentation, language, etc. It is what they call brand consistency in marketing—your brand should maintain a consistent approach to communicating with the world. The design, color, font, and style of the language should be consistent. The same is true for content. If you use many different styles and languages, it will only confuse your users.
Kissane explains: “ For most people, language is our primary interface with each other and with the external world. Consistency of language and presentation acts as a consistent interface, reducing the users’ cognitive load and making it easier for readers to understand what they read. Inconsistency, on the other hand, adds cognitive effort, hinders understanding, and distracts readers. That’s what our style guides are for. Healthy reader centric consistency is critical.”
You should employ a company-wide style guide to ensure consistency within certain limits. If each department or each product team produces content in their own style, it will confuse your users and limit the potential impact of your content.
Principle 06: Good content is concise
Be brief. Say no more than what you need to. These are timeless advice in the world of writing and communication. It is equally true for your content strategy.
“Omit needless content,” recommends Kissane. “Once you have rooted out unnecessary content at the site-planning level, be prepared to ruthlessly eliminate (and teach others to eliminate) needless content at the section, page, and sentence level.”
When you have removed everything that is unnecessary, you have stated yourself well.
Principle 07: Good content is supported
The final principle talks about maintenance of the content you put out into the world. You should regularly maintain your content. Edit the ones that may need editing. Update the ones that need new information. Add a new example or explanation when you think one would be useful. Kissane suggests that when you are publishing content, have a maintenance plan to update and take care of your content.
“If newspapers are “dead tree media,” information published online is a love green plant,” writes Kissane. “Content should be updated based on the needs.”
Coda
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, every company is a publishing company today. And content has become an incredibly important component of organizational communication and marketing strategy. Which is why it is critical that we have a good grasp of what an effective content strategy looks like. To that end, this set of principles from Kissane can be handy tools in our toolkit to design and implement a content strategy that can make a difference for our organization.