Creating a Unified Content Strategy

Ann Rockley presented this morning-ling post-conference workshop from the perspective of content marketing and mobile.

First thing to think about when considering content strategy is to always, always start with a content analysis. Suggest go out and talk to people. W call it a substantive audit. We talk to senior management, ask 3 questions. What are dangers faced if things don't change? A company never does anything unless they are in pain. The solution needs to use the words and the terms and the understanding of what's important to them.  Talk to them in management-speak. Sometimes when we are in tough times, that's the best time to do things.

Some of the dangers we hear are fear of loss, competition.

The flip side of danger is opportunity.

 People like to whine? No. If you're going to be making changes, you have to listen to the people who will be impacted. Then you get their buy-in. When people tell me about their problems, this is not a reflection on the organization, but an opportunity to make changes.

What is intelligent content. We need to move away from hand crafting content. Intelligent content is structurally rich and semantically categorized. Content is often stuck in formats.


When we look at content, we need to look at it differently than the way we are gong to tag (structure) it. Why structure? Make it easier for authors to author. Helps people write the same way if everyone is following the same guidelines.

25% is your main, base level reuse for most companies of content that can be reused.

XML allows us to take advantage of many tools on the market. If you're doing unstructured content now, converting to XML will require that some of your people grow technologically.

There should be enough information in a model to allow people to create their content without being rigid.

As you model your content, you'll find that about 80% consists of reusable models that you can reference. 

Even the structure of your content can be part of your company's voice and brand.

In workflow, automate as much as you can. Put processes in for reuse governance. For example, if you reuse content I created, are you allowed to change it? If so, what does that do to the original? Or do you branch it? Are you even allowed to branch it? If you're in a regulatory environment, you might be very highly controlled.