Understanding our users’ needs and evaluating the efficacy of our web content is an ongoing challenge. But sometimes the most relevant, valuable insights are right in front of us. In her post, "Revisiting the cliché, 'the customer is always right,'" Tara DeMarco reminds us to make use of everyday user feedback. Just like customers, our web users are always right when they respond to our content — such as a visitor … [Read more...]
This Must Be the Place
May 20, 2011 by
Location-based services (LBS), writes Leen Jones, offer a powerful way to take our content marketing on the road, engaging users with content that is relevant to their physical location. Rick wrote last month about the importance of planning for the context in which content is consumed, and LBS is a prime example. She cites North Carolina State University's customized location-based service On Campus as an example of this, helping members of the … [Read more...]
Information Is Not Inherently Useful or Usable
May 19, 2011 by
A common perception in higher ed is that the role of content owners is to simply publish information. If it's on the website, they’ve done their job. How many times have you been told, "Well, did you look on our website? It's there"? As part of a collection of humorous cartoons on content challenges, Bruce Ryan of 4 Syllables highlights the importance of content owners, contributors and publishers taking responsibility for conveying … [Read more...]
Seeing is Believing
May 17, 2011 by
"Show, don't tell" is a tried and true adage for storytelling. But as UK video journalist Adam Westbrook points out, many stories that purport to be visual "[let] the words lead the way, dragging pictures along behind them." Westbrook challenges us to explore truly visual storytelling, where words are not required to understand the message being conveyed. He offers us some tips on how to accomplish this. There are a huge number of tools we can … [Read more...]
A Multidisciplinary Mindset
May 13, 2011 by
This week, Georgy and I attended Confab 2011: The Content Strategy Conference. For content-lovers like us, it was heaven. Two days, four tracks, all content. However, it wasn't just the shared ideas that made it great — it was the many unique perspectives challenging the way that we work and think about content strategy. One of the themes of the conference was working relationships between web professionals (a topic we recently raised). We … [Read more...]