Web Focus Groups: Know Your Users, Know Your Content

For most organizations, the go-to method of content analysis is web analytics. People love numbers: 2,000 inquiries, 500 sign-ups — oh, baby! Unfortunately, these numbers don't tell the whole story, and if we base our content strategy on quantitative data alone, we're missing a big piece of the content measurement puzzle. Web analytics is great at answering "What?" What pages do people view on our website? What actions do they take? … [Read more...]

The Case for a Web Editor-in-Chief

Web content workflow and governance include many moving parts. In order to keep the wheels turning, roles and responsibilities must be defined to make sure that all work gets done and that content contributors have clear expectations about their own and others’ responsibilities. As described in Content Strategy for the Web, 2nd Edition by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach: "It’s critical for each person to know what their role is and how … [Read more...]

Guidelines for Effective Editorial Calendars

Whether we’re planning content for a homepage, a blog, a news site, a Twitter account or some other destination, an editorial calendar is an essential tool for making sense of the who, what, when, where, why and how of our content: Who is responsible for creating this? What content type are we publishing? When will we publish this content? Where will we publish it? Why are we publishing this? How are we promoting this … [Read more...]

Content Worksheets for Editorial Workflow

For web professionals in higher ed, keeping content up to date is an uphill battle. Regardless of the size of your institution, as a content professional you still have to deal with numerous subject matter experts, content contributors, editors, approvers, and publishers. Content has a shelf life, and without processes for maintaining it, it can quickly become ROT. Editorial workflow for the web is a challenge for day-to-day work, not to mention … [Read more...]

Meet Confab Higher Ed

Not even two months after Meet Content launched, we flew to Minneapolis, Minn., to be a part of another new creation. We were among the inaugural attendees of Confab, the content strategy conference organized by Kristina Halvorson and Brain Traffic. (See our recap of the conference, including a video of attendees sharing their top takeaways.) We were thrilled. Finally, a conference devoted to content strategy, with a lineup that couldn’t be … [Read more...]