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Confab 2013 mash-up: tips for content strategy, UX, SEO, social media, and more

For those of you who couldn’t make it out to Minneapolis this week for the third annual Confab: The Content Strategy Conference, here’s a round-up of the best things we heard.

Let’s Make Content Useful — or Hit Delete

One of our favorite quotes of the conference was: “If people can’t get to your content, it basically doesn’t exist.” You might be thinking, “Thanks, Captain Obvious,” but we can’t tell you how many times we’ve looked at the Google Analytics for a website that we were about to redesign only to find that half of the organization’s 3,000 pages got less than five hits a year. If that’s the case, either the content is useless or your users aren’t finding it. It’s a waste of money to produce and maintain content on your site that isn’t used.

When Designing Your Website, Don’t Rely on Universal Search

“Search is always plan B,” said UX guru Jared Spool, and we couldn’t agree more. With the exception of big online retailers like Amazon or Zappos, websites can provide much better experiences for their users with smart, intuitive navigation rather than a universal search function.

Content Strategy Affects the Business Bottom Line

Spool delighted us with his lively keynote on the business case for content strategy, demonstrating how it can directly affect profitability when it meets (or doesn’t meet!) one or all of these strategic priorities: increasing revenue, decreasing costs, increasing new business, increasing existing business, and increasing shareholder value. Authors and strategists should have a plan for how the content they are putting online directly achieves these strategic priorities.

Focus on Making Your Web Content Interesting

Melissa Rach schooled us on the science behind making content interesting. She’s digested vast amount of research in order to deliver these bite-size best practices that we can all start implementing today.

When creating content, keep in mind there are three categories of interest:

  • Goal-oriented interest – when users go to a website to achieve something (make a purchase, find the train schedule)
  • Action-oriented interest – when users go to a website to interact or share with others (social networking)
  • Learning-oriented interest – when users go to a website to increase their knowledge base — a kind of entertainment

First determine what your users are coming to the site for — or what you want them to come to your site for. Then choose a format for the content that is appropriate to their type of interest. For example, if users come to find out how to return something they bought from you (goal-oriented), don’t bury that information on a page with tons of other text (unless you want to lose those customers). On the other hand, if they are coming to learn every detail about warding off mosquitos (learning-oriented), it’s fine to have a very lengthy page of text with visuals imbedded.

These are Melissa’s four rules for creating interesting content:

  • Get yourself interested in the content. It’s hard to write compelling content when you don’t really know about the topic. Bored? Ask different questions. Look for the things that make it interesting for you and chances are it will be interesting to others.
  • Focus on helping people. Be a content concierge. People learn from people who they think care about them.
  • Find information gaps. What is missing from people’s lives that your content can provide? Information gaps often fall into one of the following: novelty, impact, conflict, loss, proximity, prominence, timelines, currency, and emotion.
  • Make it easy. Melissa recommends the book, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams. (If you’re a grammar nerd like us, you’ll love this book!)

Tips on Going Social

C.C. Holland spoke about building a smart, effective social media presence in “Rules of Engagement: Content Strategy for Social Media.” Her presentation included fascinating information on the best times to post about specific topics, the demographic breakdown of each major social media channel, and examples of companies successfully using social media to achieve tangible business results.

Some of her specific insights:

  • “Social media” isn’t a strategy. Instead, it’s a distribution channel for your content. When you think of it that way, you realize that your social media strategy is inextricably linked to your content strategy — and that you have a lot more to share on social media than you may have thought.
  • The top reasons to use social media are to help your company get found; showcase your expertise and convey your authenticity; and drive traffic to your site. That said, you don’t have to use social media if it’s not right for your brand. Plenty of companies succeed without social media — they often already have a strong customer base, so they don’t need to devote a lot of time to cultivating an online presence. But most companies would really benefit from a robust social media presence, which brings us to C.C.’s next point.
  • Need a social media role model? Maersk is a great example of a niche company that has a really smart, robust social media strategy. C.C. said that the shipping company, which has cultivated an enthusiastic following among people interested in their service offerings, provides a great example of social media done right.
  • Editorial calendars are important. (We couldn’t agree more!) Try to plan out your social media strategy — across all channels — for the week. Not sure where to start? C.C. advises posting once a day for Facebook and Google+ and 4 – 5 times a day on Twitter.
  • When constructing your editorial calendar, don’t be afraid of thematic content. It’s okay if you post a picture on Facebook every Tuesday, or provide an industry insider tip every Thursday.
  • When posting, ask your users to take an action. Don’t be afraid to ask your followers to “like” a post or share it if they agree with it.
  • Be responsive. About 1 in 3 users would rather communicate with a company with social media than by phone. And responding quickly to concerns on social media is a great (and public!) way to show how much you care about customer service.
  • Bring social media under your overall content-strategy umbrella. In C.C.’s own words: “Don’t put the intern in charge of social media.” We love our interns, but your company’s online presence is too important to leave to a junior member of your team. Lax management of social media channels can lead to a very public faux pas that results in widespread Internet backlash — and ultimately hurts your brand.

Karen McGrane Quotes We Just Had to Share

“Trying to make a computer screen act like a piece of paper is like tearing the wings off of a 747 and using it as a bus on the highway.”

“Google Glass is going to be the Segway of the face.”