Types of Content

What is content? We talk about it as if it’s something tangible, but without understanding it’s composition, properties, and lifecycle are we really qualified to discuss it effectively?

I think it goes without saying that content is created. The creator may be man or machine, active or passive. It may be a summary or composite of other works, something inspired by other creations, or totally original. The process of creation is interesting in it’s own right, and I want to decompose this into two distinct areas; the subconscious creative act of artistry, and the conscious workflow-driven scientific processes that enable us to control the manner that content is born. I’ll call these artistic inspiration and scientific inspiration respectively.

Artistic inspiration

Artistic inspiration can come from many sources. Experience is certainly one, as many will utilise what they already know when tasked with making something new. A carpenter will build a wooden house, a mason one out of stone. This doesn’t stop it being an original construction, nor does it even matter if someone else has done one just like it so long as it does what it needs to. I know that’s very pragmatic but while form really does follow function, embellishment is often a good thing. Most gargoyles look pretty similar and all have the same purpose but somehow they are still fascinating. Without the design, they would just be a hole in the guttering. The inspiration is imagining what posture they have and facial expression giving them personality.

So we have inspiration from experience, and from peers and existing works. Where else might inspiration come from? I hesitate to suggest mind-bending shamanistic illicit medications but the truth is that they have inspired many great works of art. They certainly have had an effect in post-war popular music, and it’s said that absinthe had influence on painters. There is something missing from this picture though; could it simply be that if an artist is surrounded by others of a similar creative mindset then their abilities are amplified? A sportsman on the right team will usually play better, as will a programmer create better code when working with world-class colleagues. I’m not sure the reason why, perhaps they share tips or feed of each others energy. Of course, this is a truism; I’ve no evidence to back this up whatsoever so please do take it with a generous amount of sodium. Assuming you believe this truism, even within these groups of the elite there are sub-groups that seem to amplify it further. Painters grouped into impressionists, cubists, and so on. Athletes congregate according to sport. Software developers collect themselves by language; Java, c#, Ruby, Objective-C,  etc etc. If you put an iPhone developer demi-god into the same room as a PHP über-web-lord and expected them to create you’d get mixed results at best. They just wouldn’t have any shared frame of reference any more than a photographer and an pyrotechnical would even though they both basically deal with light. And so it is with the written word; people who write books are different to those writing magazine columns, who in turn are different to the creators of content for online delivery.

Inspiration through workflows

Scientific inspiration as I call it is the workflow side of the creativity. It deals with distinct concrete steps from inception to delivery of the finished article. It’s more mechanical, bound by rules, and could be mapped out in a flow chart or other diagrammatic device (but that’s a creative effort in it’s own right, right?). Some of the scientific inspiration process can, could, and should be automated where appropriate. Let’s take a look at it in a little more detail.

As with all processes, it has inputs. Something is done to these in order to produce outputs. One of these steps might be artistic in nature and require an artist but not always so. Let’s take a very simple examine of using software to automatically send a tweet on Twitter when a new article is posted. The input is the article title and url, the process is to take the URL and shorten it using a service like bit.ly and crop the title if necessary to fit in the character limit for Twitter. The output is a posted tweet that in itself might not feel much like content as it is a reference to the article but it has it’s own URL address, is visible on Twitter unlike the original, and will probably be retweeted too. It’s a unique synthesis from an original even though it’s been done without an artist during the creative process. It’s all been done mechanically.

Ah, but, what about programmers creating workflows? Have they not created indirectly? I don’t buy this simply because they have no idea what will be posted to the workflow process, nor is the algorithm in input into the process as it’s the process itself. Sure, they needed inspiration to create the code, but it’s not a factor when it’s running and working correctly.

Does this imply that science is all mechanical and doesn’t need art to create things? No, there’s no such thing as scientific science because in order to come up with “what happens if I mix X with Y” you need to be inspired in the same way that artists are. The big different is that artists will take a blank canvas and have a vision then just do something, there as most scientists have a theory and follow a clinical method in an attempt to create reproducible results. Some art is unique, true science should be repeatable.

Repeatable methods

Ignoring the fringe case of automatically tweeting, most of the time the process of creating content for online use is to apply a repeatable method with a unique input. We often start with a blank box to type into, sometimes with some extra boxes for metadata like keywords and page title. We fill in the boxes and hit save. We might edit it a few times, revising it and correcting spelling and grammar. We might decide that the image looks better on the right than the left. It’s all very personal and artistic. When we are done with our edits having checked the style guide, we submit it at the last minute before the deadline confident that it’s nearly right. Aren’t artists usually critical of their own work? The method is repeatable, but the results vary according to the creator. The method is dictated by the type of content, and it is the nuances in the process that influence the end result and potentially mutate one type of content into another. A prime example of this would be graphic design; the process can turn a Photoshop file into a poster, a web site, a tee shirt, or any number of other visual outputs.

Behind the scenes in the CMS

What follows next for online CMS driven content depends on the system: On some there is no noticeable workflow - although the system is processing it, no human would consider it a flow of any kind; you hit save, it’s live for the world to laugh at. It still has in-process-out concepts, so it’s the most simple case. In CMS powered sites with a preview / staging / whatever you want to call it system where authors can make a change but have to deliberately update the live site, often it just needs someone to click ‘publish’ and it goes out the door. Until that happens it doesn’t get processed to the live site. More advanced systems can add human approval so that someone has to say ‘great, thanks’ before the world sees it, and with the option to reject the content with a ‘what were you thinking’ option. It can even get really complex and have the auto-tweet thing describe above, or multiple approvers, or any combination of these as needed. Ask your friendly neighbourhood developer for more about your workflows in your CMS.

Ok, so we know that content is created, that it has some ‘content’ and usually some metadata, and that you have to do something to publish it (even if it’s only hit save) that triggers some processing. On the surface of it this isn’t really that far removed from print publishing as I understand it; write something, add a photo, get the editor to approve it with changes if necessary, send it to the printer, and distribute it. If this was so true we’d have no problem with online content so let’s explore the differences.

What we need to know is how is online content different from other forms of content. I want to believe that it’s because we skim read when we are online, that we are blind to certain devices due to overuse and misuse, that we consume our content differently because of the way it’s presented and packaged, and that it’s an interactive format. I want to believe but I don’t. Why? The ‘skimming’ argument tells us to write virtually nothing because it doesn’t get read. A List Apart is a great example of quality feature length content articles published infrequently. They are worth the time reading. The ‘skim readers’ argument makes people write shallow articles with no insight or evidence. This article has little evidence too, but I’m aiming for at least insight, if not to inspire debate. Short articles are hard to talk about, beyond the obligatory comments like ‘good article’, and worse still ‘interesting’.

Content Devices

The devices that are overused are, in my opinion, ones that aren’t used in other mediums. Flashing ad banners simply cannot appear in print, and no agency has to my knowledge managed to get a strobing box banner on TV or on one of those LCD boardings. Also popups just are possible in the real world either - can you imagine a TV spawning a smaller screen with an advert on it? This one is probably just a matter of time with the advent of ‘smart TV’ with technology from the likes of Google. Be prepared for picture-in-picture advertising based on your past viewing habits. Or a picture of a cheeseburger every time you switch the set on. All of these things aren’t the kind of thing you would create anyway, right?

The presentation and packaging of content is an important issue. Can you imagine for a moment what it would be like if 20% on one side of each newspaper page was taken up with the same information in the form of a sectional table of contents? And another 20% on the other side with lists of irrelevant information relating to (for example) the past 20 copies of the paper? Then take the top 25% of the page, and in it put a large display basically stating the name of the newspaper. That is what it’s like with the web. I understand the need to brand every page, but it’s this fundamental difference in format that seems to be widely ignored. What the web is really is a huge collection of individual pages connected with hyperlinks, not a huge collection of individual websites. Stop thinking of your site as a newspaper or a book. Think of it as a collection of information nodes. Each page should have one primary message, one primary purpose, one primary reason to exist. Anything secondary dilutes the main message. Why do I believe that these differences in presentation are not relevant? It’s for the same reason that TV adverts and radio ads can be similar but have to be different; using the same audio track just isn’t going to get results. You can and probably should use the same words online and elsewhere in order to have brand consistency, but you’ll need to tailor for maximum effect.

How is online content affected by the interactive nature of the online medium? In itself, it’s not. I can sit and write an article with a message or a strong controversial point. The interactivity on the modern web is no longer in the hands of the creators of content. It occurs on Facebook, on YouTube and on Twitter, within the social networks. Great content gets sent around and ‘goes viral’. Bad content? Ignored. Does this mean you should write for Facebook? Only on your Facebook page. Twitter isn’t content, it’s conversation - learn to listen more than you talk.

Readers versus Users

As for interactiveness within your site; surely all your content has a message and a call-to-action? What difference does it make, for without these points it’s a dead-end whether it’s in print, on a car sticker, or on the web. The main difference is that online you have an opportunity to be clever. If you had a form that you needed people to fill in via post, you would definitely want to ask ALL the questions you reasonably thought they would answer as you only really have one chance to collect data. Online however it’s very different. You can collect at the first registration little more than email address and let them set a password. Because they are logging in and identifying themselves you can incrementally add data, by asking them directly when they order for things like address, or indirectly using surveys in a sidebar.

So content on the web. It’s like writing a magazine for someone who is hyper-caffeinated and standing in the world biggest magazine / book / video game store with the most amazing sound system. Ask very little of them. Guide them with subtle nudges. Don’t overload them but do give them something to think about. Control your publishing schedule. Know that they will leave to look at something else, and be confident they will return when the next edition is due. Have something worth returning for. And above all, take the time to get to know them instead of asking them to fill in something that’s more like a tax return than a registration form.

Content Strategy through applied tactics

We have started to hear about the emergence of Content Strategy as a role, an occupation and as an industry but in order for a strategy to be enacted we must use tactics. If there are tactics then logically there must also be a Content Tactician (which there is, but I mean more in the sense of application of tactics at a low level). Content Strategy as with all strategies is best employed at a very high level, the so-called ‘helicopter view’ or 10,000 metre viewpoint. This applies equally for anything with ‘strategy’ tacked onto the end - business, warfare, information, software development, learning and education, communications, football (any game in fact), agriculture, and so on. From up high it’s easy to gain a great insight into how it all fits together. We can see the lines between a, b, and c. We can envisage how they will move together, and what the flow will be which enables us to predict short and long term outcomes, and align our resources towards achieving the required goals. 

To put into the parlance I am more accustomed to using, this can be compared to ‘greenfield’ and ‘brownfield’ software development. It’s so much easier to specify something when starting from scratch but I doubt that may organisations would be bold enough to throw away all their content; they certainly wouldn’t discard all their IT systems all at one! The strategy ceases to be all-encompassing and instead focusses on smaller more defined areas, such as a corporate intranet, or a microsite. 

Are taking a view that is too high? It’s not always possible for the practitioner to influence everything, nor is this possible when we take into account politics, and resources that have already been committed or are sourced from outside our remit. In the military analogy this might be soldiers from another nations army or rules of engagement that limit the actions that can be taken. In the offices and in the content management world, this roughly equates to content curated from databases or other sources which may include text entered in a certain style which doesn’t lend itself well to revision in terms of voice, tone, or structure. They still need to contribute towards the overall objectives.

What if we can distill tactics from the strategy in order to apply them to subsections of content? (yes, I linked to something that goes against my point, but really the point is that tactics help achieve a plan). The concept is simple; let us say our strategy is to have an amazing website to promote geeks getting eye tests. Imagine we already have a site. It kind of works in the sense that it does have some results in the form of visitors, sign ups, and various other analytics. It’s helping protect the geeks eyesight but we know it’s not right and doesn’t match our content strategy. What if we compare and contrast our current situation with our future (the strategy) and just write up a checklist of feasible changes to the current site to start moving towards our goal. Can we generate tactics in this way? We know that we can apply the strategy organically on a piecemeal basis and gain results. Unfortunately this is like fighting fire with a squirt gun if the content producers are sitting at their keyboards bashing out reams of content that just doesn’t fit with the new strategy. The first step in fixing any problem is usually to stem the flow and this definitely applies here too. 

We can look at the effectiveness of specific areas of the content such as buttons and links. These are especially valuable content artefacts as they invite user action and so having the right text, tooltip, image, position, colour, size, location and whitespace is likely to alter users perception. Conversely getting it wrong can hide the link. This can be monitored using analytics by setting up event tracking and by monitoring the stats for the target page. I don’t think it would be prudent for me to suggest any guidelines for buttons and links as every situation is different aside from the oft-repeated rules of make buttons look like clickable, links should always look like links (different colour to rest of text, and underlined), never use the phrase ‘click here’, and if you specify text colour always have a background colour - and vice versa; nobody likes white text on a white page. At some point you’ll find a reason to ignore one of these rules too. The same goes for programmers and the ‘goto’ statement - it’s a golden rule that it should never be used, yet I did manage to find a valid reason so it shows that even the hardest unbreakable and unbendable rules still have exceptions so long as you can justify it. 

Content Strategy might also dictate that pages need to be moved around and that changes are needed to the Information Architecture of the site, which in turn might need to be reflected in changes to the URL strategy (there’s that word again). How can we relate this to tactical thinking? What steps might we take to synthesise tactics from this? The procedure might be to move the page to the new address and create nice rewrite rules to redirect the users to the new address. This kind of tactic is really a process and is a candidate for automation. We could even take this a step further and claim that all tactics are in fact processes and should have either automation or alternatively manual checklists for administrators and content creators to use when applying making changes or performing audits and content reviews.

Would this work? My opinion is that it very much depends on the organisation and the people. Some people like this level of details and the reminders that checklists include. Others are forced to use them, such as commercial pilots, and for good reason. I don’t believe for a minute that we can force content writers to use checklists but as a tool to produce audit records they do have a place. The risk with checklists is twofold; people tick them haphazardly, and they constrain imagination. I’m sure you can see that there are many people who will think that if something isn’t on the list then it doesn’t need to be done. Is it trying to turn an art into a science?

As time goes on and Content Strategy develops then I see Content Tactics & Content Methods emerging too. Content Strategy is a top-down approach, while tactics, methods, and procedures are inherently focussed on the details, the paragraphs, the imagery, and the things done out-of-context. Another way to view it is Content Strategy lets us pick the pieces we place on the chess board, and the tactics are the moves we make. The board is out of our control (and changes every now and then unlike chess). The world needs skilled experts in both. 

My question to you: if you are a Content Strategist, what tactics are you employing? Or if you are in a different role, how are your tactics contributing to the overall strategy?

A method for writing content

 After some reading I started to realise that I need to have a method for writing articles and creating content, just like producing software or baking a cake. I’d seen it written that content is like a conversation with the reader, so where should I start? I should begin with a topic. Write something in the subject or headline box. Make it a bit questiony. Or answery. Or something.

Right, now I know what I’m writing. What next? Doing some research might help, with a bit of Googling, Binging, and Yahooing. I recommend that when I use my Mac, I should use Devon Agent for it’s natty search aggregation and ranking. I can put a search term in and it goes and finds information from all over the web. But sometimes I use a PC. Ok, it’s been a while since I checked it out, but last time I looked there was a tool called Copernicus that was rather useful and did something similar.

As for writing tools, I quite like MacJournal, and MarsEdit is good too. On Windows, I like Live Writer. I could use a web browser to want to blog. Outlook, Mail.app, or Thunderbird email work quite well. Anything with an autosave. On Linux I have no idea what you could use. (please send suggestions for tools in the form of links to Flickr, photos of names of applications written on napkins. best one gets a gold star).

Well of course I have a writing tool. Pen and paper. In fact it’s a rather lovely imitation Moleskine type notebook with coloured pages and a classic fountain pen (I ditched the pen quickly in favour of something less leaky...blotchy white work shirts isn't a good look). I prefer this to the real thing at the moment for three reasons. Firstly, it’s slightly cheaper. Secondly the coloured pages are ace for sectioning it up. Finally, it’s about twice as thick as a Moleskine so it’ll last longer and so it’ll get replaced less frequently. I think I got it from Rymans on the Strand but I'm not sure. Anyhow, now that I have a title and done some research, what now? First up, put down the traditional equipment, it’s not going to work for what I have in mind. Consider the English Language lessons you had in school, particularly the bit about stories having a start, middle, and end.

But I’m not writing fiction! It doesn’t matter. Everything is fiction unless it’s supported by evidence, and even then it’s open to interpretation and errors of omission. What is true to me might not be true at all. What matters is that you are writing and not just presenting tables of data, so you need to use structure and narrative, therefore it’s fiction. But rather than go down the rather boring start-middle-end style which will lead you into having something like “put water in kettle, boil kettle, pour into mug with teabag, remove bag, add milk; that’s how you make tea” where you have to read to the end to find out what it was all about, you should do it backwards. This also implies that it's a magical kettle that heats the water itself... it's too easy to miss details and forget vital steps.

If I try a end-middle-start approach, I’ll get a “Here’s how you make a perfect cup of tea...” type of linear guide which is great if that’s what I intended, but once a reader skips to the end I have lost them. I doubt that they will ever go back to the start unless they are desperate for a brew. Besides, what is a perfect cup of tea? Perfect by what standard? Anyhow, I’ll have saved them the embarrassment of reading something to the end then realising it wasn’t what they wanted. We all know everyone reads everything to the end.

Ok, I’ve done a whole bunch of words and arranged them into sentences, put the sentences into groups called paragraphs and shuffled these into reverse order. So that’s why a notebook isn’t going to work. Ok, it could if I’d used some scissors. Now all that is left is to merge the one or two sentence paragraphs into the larger blocks, read and edit it make it all make sense again, fix the spelling and grammar and fire in some hyperlinks preferably with a shotgun. Links are awesome. I can add embellishments too which may or may not be true just to make it a bit more excited, never mind the supporting evidence.

Optionally add a nice image from Flickr, and don’t forget to attribute it. Of course this will make for a fairly gibberish article. There are much better ways of writing for the web, and if this article inspired you then you should continue and read more on the subject.

And on that note, I need to have the start of the article here - the TL;DR version. So, this is an article about a method of writing. Would you like to know how to write an article? Read this one to find out.

a Knol on Content Strategy

This link was quite interesting and had a lot of good ideas on content strategy:

http://knol.google.com/k/content-strategy (thanks to Bertine Easterling for sharing this via linkedin)

I particularly liked the lifecycle diagrams by Erin Scime and Rahel Bailie, they neatly sum up all the aspects that need to be considered as well as reinforcing the principle that it's an iterative process. The developer in me sees the parallels between this and Agile methodologies in software. It's essentially analyse-change-deploy-monitor-repeat.

It's possible to scrub off the details in these diagrams and put tech words there instead - the headlines would easily match with a development lifecycle. The challenge is to get the two cycles aligned so that changes in content and content strategy match with changes in the platform and the deployment strategy. If we can achieve this we can achieve much greater results from the content and from the technology.