Slides from workshop presented by Kevin Nichols and Paula Land at Content Strategy Applied 2017. Covers how to define content objectives, how to measure content against them, and how to govern for long-term effectiveness.

1. Kevin Nichols and Paula Land
DEVELOPING AN
OBJECTIVES-BASED
CONTENT MODEL

2. INTRODUCTIONS & EXPECTATIONS

3. About us
Paula Land
• Owner, Strategic Content (strategiccontent.com)
• Co-founder, Content Insight, home of the
Content Analysis Tool (CAT) (content-
insight.com)
• Author, Content Audits and Inventories: A
Handbook
• 25+ years in editorial and content strategy
• @content_insight, @plland
Kevin Nichols
• Co-Founder, Executive Director
Experience, AvenueCX
• Author, Enterprise Content Strategy: A Project
Guide and UX for Dummies
• 23 years experience in the digital industry
• Key clients: MIT Open Courseware, Hewlett
Packard, Verizon, Target
• @kpnichols
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4. Key takeaways
• Introduction to the concepts of objectives-based content
• Understanding how to establish objectives and plan
content to achieve them
• Measuring results and building processes for ongoing
quality
• Key considerations for getting it right
• Hands-on activity to practice what you’ve learned
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5. DEFINING OBJECTIVES-BASED
CONTENT

6. Defining objectives-based content
Identifies objectives for content that drive business impact and
customer satisfaction
Ensures you can plan for future content needs and priorities,
based upon performance against objectives
Sets content up for success by positioning it as an asset to the
business and customer
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7. ESTABLISHING OBJECTIVES

8. Define objectives: Step 1
Review all inputs to show trends, findings and
requirements:
• Ensure a cross functional team can speak to each
• Talk to brand, analytics, customer experience, content
teams
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9. Define objectives: Step 2
Align inputs with business goals and objectives, e.g.:
• Revenue
• Conversions from prospect to customer
• Loyalty of existing customers
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10. Define objectives: Step 3
Translate into goals, e.g.:
• Increase engagement in the website experience
• Gain an understanding of who the user is (profile the
user)
• Identify content that will move the user through the
customer journey to conversion and loyalty
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11. BEST PRACTICES FOR SETTING
CONTENT OBJECTIVES

12. Best practice #1
Don’t replicate the business requirements.
Think about what you want the content to accomplish
to support your business objectives.
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13. Best practice #2
Think about the end-user needs and the tasks necessary
to fulfill those needs.
Ask which content is required to support each step in
the process?
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14. Best practice #3
Look at conversions as not the end, but as a process,
with a series of micro-conversions to get the user to the
next point in the process.
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15. Best practice #4
Get the stakeholders who understand the customers
best into the conversation. Ask:
• How do the customers behave?
• What would their needs be?
• What do we need them to accomplish to fulfill our
business objectives?
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16. Sample website objectives
• Release weekly content for home page, landing page and high priority
pages, publishing four articles each week; new featured content for thought
leadership for multichannel and multi-format distribution.
• Inspire loyalty of existing and new customers by providing timely, quality,
unique and thought-provoking content.
• Increase email newsletter satisfaction by listening to subscriber needs and
feedback and providing personalized content per identified user interests.
• Increase awareness of brand to win new customers in known and new
targets through campaigns, better SEO, and more social content offerings
(videos, infographic, and thought leadership)
• Emphasize user engagement by offering new mechanisms for social
engagement and user generated content.
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17. Example goal: Personalization
Goal
Amplify engagement of the user to showcase the brand and drive the customer down the purchase
funnel.
Organizing principle for initial stage
• Use behavioral analysis (click-stream) to determine the segment and market category of
the user, upon which more specific content can be tailored for their needs.
Objectives
• Determine the market category of user based on behavior for high-priority market
categories, leveraging the assumed browse-paths for each.
• Increase product detail page views by 20% per unique visitor over 3 month period.
• Increase overall site engagement of measured by page depth, duration spent on site, a
decrease in bounce rates or exit rates prior to conversion completion, and repeat visits.
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18. Example goal: Brand exposure
Goal
Increase the engagement with the brand of potential customers
Organizing principle for initial stage
• Content performance is predicated on usage, so leverage engagement principles and
metrics to build a more compelling content experience for the end-user
Objectives
• Increase the overall duration spent on the site, and repeat visits. Decrease bounce or exit
rates prior to conversion.
• Increase product detail page views by 20% per unique visitor over 3 month period.
• See positive impact on the following: page depth, duration spent on site, a decrease in
bounce rates or exit rates prior to conversion completion, and repeat visits.
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19. SELECTING METRICS

20. Metrics and analytics: Soft metrics
• Primary research
– Focus groups
– Secondary research
• Marketing trends
• Social listening
– Behavior, sentiment analysis
• Surveys
• Customer satisfaction
• Customer feedback
• Reviews
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Slide adapted from Rebecca Schneider and Kevin Nichols Fundamentals of Omnichannel Content Strategy
Workshop
Image source: Samuel Mann at this Flickr URL.

21. Metrics and analytics: Hard metrics
Quantitative measurements
• Conversions
• Page views
• Time on site
• Click-throughs
• Keyword search
• User journey
• Social metrics (Likes, shares,
subscriptions)
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Image source: Laurie Carodonna at this Flickr URL.

22. Best practice #1
Tie metrics to objectives:
• Review each objective
• Think about how to measure success or failure of the
objective and content performance
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23. Best practice #2
More than one metric may be required to measure an
objective.
For example, increasing engagement may be measured by:
• Bounce rates
• Exit rates
• Time on site
• Etc.
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24. Best practice #3
Use the SMART approach:
• Specific
• Measureable
• Assignable
• Realistic
• Time-related
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25. Best practice #4
Look at multiple channels
• Social
• Email
• Web
• Brand,
• etc.
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Source: Rebecca Schneider and Kevin Nichols Fundamentals of
Omnichannel Content Strategy Workshop on
OmnichannelContentStrategy.com

26. Best practice #5
Think about each customer touchpoint and desired
result
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Source: Rebecca Schneider and Kevin Nichols Fundamentals of Omnichannel Content
Strategy Workshop on OmnichannelContentStrategy.com

27. Measurement examples
Objective Measurement
Release weekly • Meeting all production and distribution dates; 4 articles per week online; two monthly thought leadership pieces in all
targeted distribution channels; with all required associated content.
Increase subscriber
satisfaction
• Increase subscriber satisfaction by audience measured by semiannual subscriber surveys. Receive a ranking above 4.0
(out of 5.0) in all categories.
Inspire loyalty of
existing customers
• Leverage the following KPIs: Note a baseline is required; measure for initial six months and then create new targets
for:
• Visit duration
• Clicks through to articles
• Number of articles viewed
• Number of articles downloaded
• Scroll depths on long-reads
Increase awareness • Measured by 20% increase of new users within six month of launch with 40% increase within 12 months from 2016.
Also track the following:
• Unique visitors
• Amount of social shares
• CTR (Click Through Rate) from social media or email to journal
Emphasize UGC and
social
• Social media metrics for sharing, commenting, and referring. (TBD with the Social Requirements meeting in Jan)

28. ESTABLISHING USER GOALS

29. Tools for understanding user
behavior
Key inputs:
• Personas
• Customer journey
Additional inputs:
• User research, user insights, segmentation models, competitive intel, etc.
• Usability testing
• Card sorts
• Search log analysis
• Customer support logs
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30. Personas
Illustrations of user profiles
Personas answer:
• Who are your users?
• How do they behave?
• What are their motivations?
• How do they make decisions?
• What are their pain points?
Note:
• Continue to test and evolve
• Requires UX expertise
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Persona Example taken from Content Strategy Alliance’s Free Tools and Templates
Handbook.

31. Customer journeys
• Based on typical progression of customer engagement
Discover -> Consider-> Decide -> Advocate
• Used to capture business goals, user goals, and content
needs
• Shows content gaps
• Customize to personas
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32. Customer journeys—example
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Persona User State User Journey Channel Content
Soccer Mom Anonymous Buy a Product – Step
One: searches for
product in Google
Website (Desktop)
Mobile (App)
Product information
in home page
carousel
Soccer Mom Anonymous Buy a Product – Step
Two: clicks on
product in carousel
goes to product
detail
Website (Desktop)
Mobile (App)
Product detail page
Soccer Mom Anonymous But a Product – Step
Three: Add to cart
Website (Desktop)
Mobile (App)
Shopping cart
Source: Rebecca Schneider and Kevin Nichols Fundamentals of Omnichannel Content Strategy Workshop on OmnichannelContentStrategy.com

33. Customer journeys—example
10 February 2017 @plland | @kpnichols 33

34. Best practice #1
Align on high-level steps within the user journey and the
purpose of each
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35. Best practice #2
Map the objectives to the high-level steps within the
journey; identify any missing objectives
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36. Best practice #3
Leverage customer / brand experts in a workshop to
validate assumed user path
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37. Best practice #4
Leverage testing when necessary or proof of concept
approach with a lower priority product or service prior to
rolling out to larger brand experience
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38. Best practice #5
Complete for each persona or segment
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39. ANALYZING CONTENT AGAINST
OBJECTIVES

40. Tools for analyzing content
• Content inventory
• Content audit
• Gap analysis
• User feedback
• Performance analytics
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41. Why inventory?
• Establishes current-state content landscape
• Aids in scoping project
• Acts as basis for audit
• Provides initial patterns of issues to guide audit focus
41
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42. The content inventory
42
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43. Content inventory – web site data
43
Standard Data
• URLs — Location of all assets
• File types — Formats
• File size
• Level — Site depth
• Images/media/documents — Number, format, location
• Metadata —Title, description, and keyword metadata
• Links in and out — Links to and from each page
• Word count – Word on the page
• H1s — Text of the H1 tag
• Analytics — Pageviews, conversions, bounce, entrances
Custom Data
• Content owner
• Content type
• Audience
• Status
• Template
• Etc.
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44. The content audit
"If you know your content, you
can control your content."
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—Ann Rockley

45. Why audit?
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• Shows whether content supports business and user goals
• Incorporates metrics for performance analysis
• Informs strategy for improvement
• Ensures that content consistently follows brand, editorial, style and metadata guidelines
• Establishes a basis for gap analysis between content you have and content you need
• Prepares content for revision, removal and migration
• Uncovers patterns in content to support structured content plans
• Supports decision-making
• Reduces project risk

46. How to audit
• Establish business context
• Establish scope
• Select tools
• Choose audit criteria
• Map content to persona and journey step
• Incorporate analytics and user data
• Evaluate against objectives
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47. Establish audit context
47
Content objectives Customer journeys
Analytics and metrics Customer data
Business requirements Personas
Editorial and brand guidelines Search data analysis
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48. Scoping your audit
• Go horizontal or vertical
• Focus on high/low performing
• Content most related to conversion or other goals
• Content related to most important audience
• Content related to most important product/service
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49. Audit tools
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50. Typical audit criteria
50
Consistency
Does the content present a unified message?
Depth and breadth
Is there sufficient high-quality content to
support the user’s information needs?
Format
Is the content in the right format for optimal
use?
Performance
How effective is the content?
Accuracy
Is the information correct?
Accessibility
Is the content consumable by all users?
Context
Is the content available when and where they need it?
Competitors
How does your content compare to your competitors’?
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51. Map content into journey
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52. Leverage competitive analysis
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Competitive Analysis Template from Content Strategy Alliance’s Free Tools and Templates Handbook.
• Audit your competitors just
as you would your content
• Identifies opportunities
and gaps in your own
experience

53. Incorporate user feedback
• Social listening
• Surveys
• Customer feedback
• Reviews
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54. Gather and analyze performance
data
• Focus on your most
important content
• Look for the lows but
don’t forget the middle
• Matrix the data
• Account for factors like
seasonality
2 Sept 2015 54

55. Auditing against objectives
• Review the objectives gathered from business and users
• Evaluate content effectiveness at meeting goals, using
metrics selected in content planning
• Identify where content is under-performing
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56. Gap analysis
• Identify what is missing
• Plan for content creation
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57. What to do with findings
• Plan and implement content improvements
• Future content planning
• Content to leave as-is
• Content to optimize
• Content to sunset
• Derive implications for governance
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58. MAINTAINING YOUR MODEL
Governance and Organizational Change

59. Governance: Benefits
• Provides a structure for content creation and maintenance
• Sets, enables, and enforces standards
• Provides clear roles and responsibilities
• Provides a forum for content-related issues
• Group members can collaboratively define success measures
• Ensures predictable processes
• Lowers risk
• Conserves resources
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60. Governance requires organizational
change
• Getting organizational buy-in
• Preparing for changed or expanded roles
• Training on new skills
• Documentation of policies and workflows
• Tools implementation and adoption
• Communication across silos
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61. Set a strategic foundation
• Begin with understanding of current state
• Define goals, priorities, use cases for future
• Define success metrics
• Create organizational structures
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62. Plan operational aspects
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Tactical plans for implementation and ongoing maintenance
• People
• Processes
• Tools

63. Operational aspects
• Defining a team model to support governance
• Establishing and documenting roles and
responsibilities
• Training
• Procedures, policies, guidelines
• Communication
• Ongoing optimization
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64. Set team model
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Governance Team
Working Groups
Social Analytics Legal Content TechnologyBrand
Operations Technology Marketing Publishing TaxonomyStrategy
Executive Sponsor
Product

65. Define roles and responsibilities
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• One model: RACI
• Other models may exist in your organization – key is choosing what works
Source: Content Strategy Alliance Tools & Templates Handbook http://contentstrategyalliance.com/csa-best-practices/csa-handbook/

66. Training
• Map people to roles
• Assess existing skillsets
• Provide training on tools, processes
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67. Policies and Processes
• Describe governance tasks and schedule
• Define how decisions are made
• Define content lifecycle management and workflows
• Channel-specific workflow
• Content-specific workflow
• Routine maintenance
• Change management
• Updating content
• Archiving content
• Create a schedule of content review based on the quantity and frequency of publication
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68. Communication and training
2 Sept 2015 68
Message/
Campaign
Audience Objective Distribution Format Frequency Responsible
• Create communication plan to schedule project communications
• Plan and implement team training on processes and tools
• Use in conjunction with RACI model

69. Tools for Governance
• Rolling audits
• Gap analysis
• Editorial calendar
• Optimized workflows, content lifecycles
• Tracking and reporting
• Ongoing assessment of performance data to feed back to content
planning
• Process automation
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70. Editorial calendar
• Central area for content planning and production
• Should align with other calendars (technical implementations, marketing
campaigns, product releases, etc.)
• Include go-live dates, dependencies, responsible party
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Source: Content Strategy Alliance Tools & Templates Handbook http://contentstrategyalliance.com/csa-best-practices/csa-handbook/

71. Optimized content lifecycles
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Source: http://contentstrategyalliance.com/csa-best-practices/csa-handbook/
• Tracks content from planning
through distribution
• Provides a way to ensure
consistent process
• Allows for identification of
optimization opportunities

72. Governance workflow
• Can be used in conjunction with a
RACI chart
• Provides clear steps in approval
process—people-focused rather
than tools-focused
• Shows hand off points
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72
Source: Rebecca Schneider and Kevin Nichols Fundamentals of Omnichannel Content Strategy Workshop

73. Dashboards
• Provide information on
content creation (or
other) progress
• Helps to identify potential
roadblocks
• Helps to plan for future
initiatives
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Source: Rebecca Schneider and Kevin Nichols Fundamentals of Omnichannel Content Strategy Workshop

74. Performance-tracking dashboard
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Source: http://contentstrategyalliance.com/csa-best-practices/csa-handbook/

75. Process automation
• Automated workflows
• Content expiration
• Version control
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76. Operationalize excellence
76
Build audit findings into
your content plans so you
are creating new content
to the standards and
guidelines
plan
Regularly audit content
to monitor for issues
that will affect
customer experience
audit
Fix issues with content
and update guidelines,
processes, and goals to
maintain quality over
time
improve
Ensure everyone in the
organization knows what
is expected of them and
how to do their part
communicate
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77. FINAL THOUGHTS

78. Final thoughts
• It takes a village—to effectively implement an objectives-driven content
initiative you need organizational buy-in, cross-functional support
• If at first you don’t succeed… It may take a few tries to get your plan in
place and your processes organized and optimized. Review, revise,
repeat.
• Your business and your customers will change over time. Review and
adjust your processes, tools, and measurements to keep pace.
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79. Stay in touch!
Paula
• paula@strategiccontent.com
• Web:
• www.content-insight.com
• www.strategiccontent.com
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/paulaland
• Twitter
• twitter.com/content_insight
• twitter.com/plland
Kevin
• kevin@kevinpnichols.com
• Web: kevinpnichols.com
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kevinpnichols
• Twitter: twitter.com/kpnichols
• YouTube:
www.youtube.com/user/kevinpnichols
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80. THANK YOU!

81. APPENDIX

82. Suggested reading
• Havas Worldwide. Prosumer Report. Building Brands That Matter: The Sweet Spot Between Trust & Dynamism. 2013.
– http://www.prosumer-report.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/11/HWW-Prosumer-Report-Brand-
Dynamism-Hi-Res.pdf
• Welchman, Lisa. Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design. Rosenfeld Media: Brooklyn, NY. 2015
• Kevin P Nichols’ Enterprise Content Strategy: A Project Guides (XML Press, January, 2015) Everything in this Webinar is
detailed much more in by book. Whilst my book is not specifically on performance driven content, that approach
underlines the structure and all of my recommendations.
• Paula Land’s Content Audits and Inventories (XML Press, October, 2014)
• Redman, Tom. Data-Driven Marketing, How to Engage your Customers (Harvard Business Review Webinar Series, 15
January 2015).
• Forbes Insights: The Rise of the New Marketing Organization (January 2015).
• Content Strategy Alliance Handbook: This new repository contains nearly 40 free templates and leverages a closed-loop
structure to position the effort.
• Rebecca Schneider and Kevin P Nichols’ Omnichannelcontentstrategy.com and Kevin P Nichols’ website: kevinpnichols.com
• NGData The Fifty Top Data-Driven Marketing Blogs
• Jones, Colleen. Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content. New Riders: Berkeley, CA. 2011
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