Today I’m a Mentor

For weeks, months actually, we’ve been working on a website. And as the launch date looms ever closer on the horizon, I’ve been worrying about copy approvals. Hoping we haven’t waited too long before sharing it with our creative directors. After our Round 1 review, we headed in a direction 180 degrees from where we started. The copywriter and I went into today’s review understanding they’ll likely love it (give us the go ahead) or hate it (ask for a complete rewrite).

And we got the go ahead! What a wonderfully rewarding experience, not only as a writer, but especially as a mentor. We made great strides this week in moving toward our deadlines and have crafted a beautiful, creative and engaging site. Hats off to partnership, collaboration and an outstanding team!

Today I’m a Content Strategist

I was introduced to the idea of web content strategy last summer, but didn’t fully grasp the true benefits until a few months ago. At its core, content strategy is planning for the delivery of information your customers want to receive, not just what you want to give them. I fell in love with this idea and have been reading, learning, tweeting, studying, asking questions and re-tweeting about content strategy every since.

Rather than go into what makes a good content strategy, I’m going to identify 6 indicators that your web project needs a content strategy.

1. Your project leads have never heard of “Content Strategy.” This isn’t necessarily bad, but it does present a challenge for getting them on board early enough in the process to make a difference. Build yourself a case study. Nothing speaks louder than time and money saved on a website that gets results.
2. Your writers don’t have enough time to craft their copy. A content strategy helps identify what content will be included, why it needs to be there and how you’re going to create it. And, to avoid a lot of rewriting, these basic elements should be determined before a writer even kicks off a project.
3. Your information architect (IA) is revising wireframes to match layouts. In the early phases of a project, planners and strategists determine business objectives and identify customer goals. Site maps and wireframes are ideally developed prior to creative kickoff and should remain relatively in tact throughout the life of the project.
4. The scope of your project has outgrown your timeframe. Without proper planning and strategy up front, a project can run astray with every suggestion, recommendation and mandate from the powers that be. Identify who is responsible for providing, reviewing and approving the content before creative development begins.
5. Your tech development team has started building the site with FPO images and placeholder copy. This harkens back to the early phases of discovery when we want to identify the what, why and how of content. Declare your plan, sign off on the plan and stick to the plan to stay on course. If you don’t, you run the risk of not only missing your deadline but blowing your budget as well.
6. Your creative managers are still tracking down assets three weeks prior to launch. No one likes to work under the pressure of time, limited resources and lack of direction. Take the time to organize your content — catalog what’s available to help identify what needs to be created and what can be deleted.

With a content strategy in place, you can prevent scope creep, avoid unnecessary costs and allow copy development and site design to be a far more creative process. Best of all, you’re likely to produce superior results.