Do you sometimes wonder why your content doesn’t have the desired effect on your audience? Or why some content spreads virally when you wouldn’t expect it to? Do you know what the most important factors to success are? I answered some of these questions in my "Content Design" Webinar. What's inside: ✓ How to create content that is both useful to your audience and your business ✓ How the typical user experience design process works ✓ What Aristotle has to do with content marketing I used this SlideDeck for my GoToWebinar session on February, 22nd 2018; available on-demand via https://bit.ly/Recording-Content-Design

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Content is Design.
Design is Content.
A holistic approach to a
successful content strategy

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Robert Weller
Content Strategy Coach at
• Speaker (CMCX, Content World, CEBIT, BCM)
• Blogger (www.toushenne.de)
• Contributor (Adobe/CMO.com, Salesforce, Searchmetrics, HubSpot)
• Book Author (Blog Boosting & Content Design)
• Lecturer (Akademie der Deutschen Medien, Leipzig School of Media)
• Experience from self-employment, working in agencies,
e-commerce business and startup companies
• Studied management/marketing & design

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I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the
discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries
of work... Progress happens when all the factors that
make for it are ready and then it is inevitable.“
– Henry Ford

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How Important is Design?
14% mention design as one of the top 3 content characteristics.
3% call it the most important.
Source: Adobe Content Consumer Report 2018

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„Visual design aims to shape and improve
the user experience through considering
the effects of illustrations, photography,
typography, space, layouts, and color on
the usability of products and on their
aesthetic appeal.
What does „beautifully designed“ actually mean?
What is Design?

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Design is Important!
Source: Adobe Content Consumer Report 2018
Let’s have another look…

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User Experience
User experience design is the process of enhancing user satisfaction
with a product by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure
provided in the interaction with the product.
Taking into account…
… before, during and after using a product (i.e. content).
Emotions Expectations Preferences Behaviours Reactions

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User Experience Design
1. Satisfy user needs without delay;
2. Make consumption as convenient as possible;
3. Make it fun;
4. Add value;
5. Emphasise your authority.
Image: Interaction Design Foundation
Content Requirements

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User Experience Design
1. Satisfy user needs without delay;
2. Make consumption as convenient as possible;
3. Make it fun;
4. Add value;
5. Emphasise your authority.
Frist focus area: Content & Interaction
Content
Interactions
UX

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Design Best Practices
How to make your content more fun
• Offer opportunities to interact – best ones
that are beneficial to the user
• Embed videos, audios, presentations, galleries
• Develop quizzes and incentivize users to
partake (high scores or prizes)
Pro tip: Make it shareable!
• Plain simple: Try humour

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Design Best Practices
How to increase your credibility / authority
• Quote thought/business leaders
• Publish and/or promote your content via
experts channels and specialist media
• Let your customers do the talking (how did
they profit from using your product or
service?)
• Show some numbers: customers, ratings,
subscribers, social shares etc.

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Content Design describes the conceptual, technical
and visual design of (digital) content intented for
business growth; for example by optimizing the
user experience or increasing conversion rates.
A New Way of Thinking
„
If content is a new (marketing) standard, then we should think of „Content Design“
in a similar way we think of „Product Design“ or „Service Design“.

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User-centered Design
Always ask questions like
• What does the user want?
• What would the user do?
• How would the user react?
• How would the user feel?
• …
If you have customers or access to potential
clients integrate them into your design process.
Create personas for future work.
L

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But What About You?
Why would you want to publish content that‘s benficial to the
consumer alone? What about your own (marketing) goals?
The Content Design Challenge:
Aligning „what consumers want“ with „what you want“.
Second focus area: Business & User Goals
User
Goals
Business
Goals
UX

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Combing All Four Dimensions
… in a model called „CUBI UX“, designed by Corey Stern.
He reverse-engineered hundreds of award-winning interactive
projects – to determine the elements of the experiences.
When familiar with CUBI UX it will help you
• produce creative content
• produce content more creatively
• speak a consistent voice (also in visual)
• collaborate across different teams
• find and close gaps in your design process
Source: cubiux.com

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Driving Profitable Action
Looking at the intersections you see the process by which users
navigate through content through the provided interactions.
This “Action Cycle” consists of four steps:
1. Attraction
2. Reaction
3. Action
4. Transaction
Source: cubiux.com

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Design Best Practices
Content Design along the „Action Cycle“:
1. Grab the users attention by picking searched
for keywords, superlatives or, if you have the
chance, contrasty images that stand out
2. Make the user say „yes“ mentally by asking
rhetorical questions or showing a picture
they can relate to.
3. Add a visually highlighted call-to-action (e.g.
a button)
4. Ensure the transaction through message
match and clear communication
It‘s a match!

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Design Best Practices
How to drive attention through design
• Sizes (dominance), contrast and colour
• Directional cues (arrows, direction of view)
• Visual anomalies
• Visual highlighting
• Encapsulation and perspective
• Symmetry, alignment, continuation and
repetition
• People, especially eyes
• Be careful with motion. It can work, but it can
go terrible wrong, too!

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Experience Factors
A second set of intersections reveals the “experience factors”. In
order to have an effective experience content needs to be
1. Comprehensive – both comprehendible (clear, organized,
no jargon…) and extensive (i.e. complete)
2. Useful – satisfy users needs and help them achieve their
goals
3. Usable – cross-device functionality, intuitive navigation,
direct feedback to users actions and opportunities to correct
mistakes
4. Branded – unique and consistent, credible, reputable,
reliable
Source: cubiux.com

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CUBI UX Outer Ring
UX & Content Design fundamentals are actually
similar – if not the same – to what you know from
strategy, marketing or development:
• Target group analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Market analysis
• Brand strategy
• …
But be honest: Are you really working with all these on
a regular basis and company-wide?

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Content Design Requires Teamwork!
… or could you produce something like this all on your own?

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Content Design ist eine Teamaufgabe!
... oder könnten Sie sowas hier alleine produzieren?

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Content Design Requires Teamwork!
Take advantage of the various synergies.
Source: Thaisa Fernandes

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Content Design Requires Teamwork!
The whole is greater than
the sum of it‘s parts.
Aristotle
„
Take advantage of the various synergies.

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My No #1 Tipp To Start: Start!
1. Build and Learn.
2. Test and Adapt.
3. Measure and Learn.
4. Repeat.
Think of it as a process, not a project.
Content Marketing does not end.
Content Design is a necessity. Always.

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Many thanks for your attention!
You may now take action… ;-)
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27. Webinare als essentieller Bestandteil im Content-Marketing-MixContent is design, design is content: A holistic approach to a successful content strategy
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