Developing Your Content Strategy

This workshop title is available both in-person and online.

Description

A sound content strategy combines user needs and expectations with business goals and processes to deliver targeted, usable information at each moment of need. Its creation requires a careful analysis of your users, your organization’s capabilities, and your product’s functionality. It requires an understanding of what’s possible tempered by an assessment of what’s practical. To balance all the factors that impact an effective content strategy, you need a systematic approach for walking through each consideration and making well-informed, appropriate choices.

This workshop takes participants on a journey of discovery and planning to not only form a complete picture of what a content strategy entails, but also to begin visualizing and putting into words a specific blueprint for their organizations, users, and subject matter. During class, participants complete a planning workbook, which, when finished, defines a comprehensive content strategy ready for discussion, refinement, and ultimately implementation, when they return home.

You will learn to

• Identify the business goals that must be met or supported through your content.
• Define your target audience.
• Assess user needs and expectations for your content.
• Audit your current content offerings and identify gaps.
• Set architectural, writing, and design guidelines for content.
• Select an appropriate media and platform mix for delivering information.
• Establish a taxonomy and metadata strategy for meeting accessibility requirements.
• Assess your current information development process maturity.
• Outline the critical process flows for implementing your content strategy.
• Define critical roles for implementing your content strategy.
• Establish content strategy governance guidelines.
• Monitor your results and make incremental adjustments