Marc’s post about the “c-word” inspired me to share how I go about starting a content strategy when the client is in a hurry (which is often!).

1. Gather all ye faithful – 9am

Set up a workshop with “surrogate users” – people in your organisation who talk to real users, all the time AND your business thinkers – people in your organisation who can offer strategic insight on the fly. So you’re talking sales people, customer service reps, CEOs, divisional directors, senior managers. Also include some bods from your web team and ask them to swat up on their web stats regarding current popular content (top pages, searches and referral keywords).

How long you need depends on the strength of your will (to whip sideline discussions into shape) and the number of audience groups you have, but considering everyones eyes will typically glaze over in a couple of hours, allocate 2-3 hrs.

Tip – coffee helps…

2. Identify your key peeps – 9-10am

Whip out your whiteboard marker and ask a fundamental question, who are we talking to? Keep it broad at this stage, don’t get bogged down in too much detail. You want to know who the key groups are, what are the fundamental characteristics that define them and what is the key reason they are visiting your site.

Identify at this point if there is a high level user journey or series of site visits that applies to this group – for example a typical process for a shopping site is establishing initial site / brand awareness, product desire and consideration, purchase, service, repeat purchase and referral.

Tip – Draw a box in a corner of the whiteboard labelled “the carpark”. Use it to jot down any ideas or other thoughts that are going off tangent.

3. Drill down into each group – 10-12 noon

Okay, start with your primary audience group, in case you run out of time. Draw up on the whiteboard a big matrix, a bit like the table below. Include user journey steps if applicable. Then ask the group to tell you about what the user is looking for at each step – product information? contact details? company background?

Quick & easy whiteboard template for a website content workshop

Now the important bit – use the group to identify some business goals for each step. They may be key selling points to get across, acquisition/lead capture goals, or a proposition statement, whatever is most applicable at that stage.

Tip – Don’t bother with note-taking, use your camera phone to snap a pic of your whiteboard musings.

4. Chillax – 12 noon – 1pm

Get some fresh air, go for a walk, get some lunch. Think about what you’re cooking for dinner. DON’T think about content.

5. Empower your inner huddle to inspire you – 1-2pm

Have a think about what is going to be the hardest content to come up with, and charge your fellow web/marketing team with the responsibility of scouring the internet for examples of how others have done it. Look broader than your competitors, think laterally – what other companies have similar products to you? similar audiences?

Tip - Use award sites such as the Webbys and FWA to find the world’s top websites.

6. Headphones on! – 2-5pm

Right, turn off your phone, put your headphones on, and start mapping content to user and business goals. I literally draw an extra column after the business goal column on the whiteboard matrix entitled content and list content ideas that match.

User Goals + Business Goals = Content Requirements.

Tip – I use a tool call SnagIT at this stage – a fancy screen capture tool that enables you to edit screenshots or pictures. You could do it in powerpoint or other picture editing software.

7. Vino – 5pm

Tools down, pour a glass of vino and let your content roadmap simmer over night. It gets better the longer you leave it – revisit every 24hrs or so.

I blame Jamie Oliver, Mario Batali and the little skinny dude off The Cook and the Chef. These modern day heroes have us discussing the secret to a good celeriac pure and how you simply must use a good shiraz in your red wine jus, because nothing else will do. I’ve been to dinner parties where the host has perfectly slow poached quail eggs for her crispy noodle and asian green salad but couldn’t manage to cook the rice properly.

Potatoes. Read on, I'll explain.

Let’s face it the world would have starved a long time ago if it weren’t for potatoes, rice and pasta. Man cannot live off coconut foam and micro-greens alone.

There is a lesson in this (it’s a stretch I know) for digital marketers currently obsessing with the finer frills of SEO, the engagement rates of their home page take-overs and the eCPM of their performance media buy. We’re forgetting the Internet (and it’s users) need feeding.

Cast your mind back to 2004, the Internet was very hungry. It was fed up with small portions of flash intros, gourmet brochure-ware websites and reductions of one-way communications. We demanded something bigger to chew on.  Comfort food finally came in the form of Blogger, Wikipedia and Co. who, in successfully bringing down the worldwide walled web, encouraged a new breed of chefs cooking up simple meals of content and conversations we could all digest.

It’s been 6 years since this wall came down yet big business is still struggling with getting simple well cooked content (user generated or otherwise) onto the menu. There’s little encouragement from the industry to change our ways. The ‘c’ word rarely gets a mention in agency land, maybe because there’s no award for “Best User Generated Content” or maybe it’s because, like potatoes, it’s hard to charge big dollars for.

All excuses to one side, it is time to put focus back on content. It is content that makes for great SEO, it is content that delivers great user experience and it is content that reduces bounce rates and improves conversion – nothing more complicated than that. So get back to basics, put ‘content strategy’ at the head of your brief and and give it the due time and consideration it needs. Don’t fear you can still add a touch of truffle oil at the end.

I was indulging in one of my favourite lunchtime pastimes today – checking out websites which have won awards. Today’s site, Waterlife, was courtesy of the SXSW 2010 Web Awards.

Waterlife won the award for the Activism category, a sector I find seriously interesting for two reasons. Firstly, I am fascinated by the web’s ability to instill and express emotion, which any good activism website will do, and figuring out how they achieve that heart warming, skin tingling effect. Secondly, the idea a website can change the course of history by making people DO something about political or ethical concerns is simply awesome.

Considering Waterlife is raising awareness of the challenges The Great Lakes is facing in the States, a far cry from the streets of Freo, Western Australia, where I live, it surprised me to feel a lump in my throat as I surfed around the site. How did they achieve it?

I’m not normally a fan of music on a website. I think it can be annoying, impact download speed and feel a little pretentious. Particularly if it’s a corporate website and I’m just trying to get a phone number. But on this site it works. Sigur Ros, Philip Glass and Brian Eno’s tracks all have that etheral, watery quality that supports the site’s topic matter, but also has the added effect of pulling at the ole heart strings.

This watery quality extends to the homepage interactive feature, a fluid animation of images representing each of the different ways the lakes have been affected. Check it out yourself, the screenshot doesn’t do it justice. It reminds me of a couple of Jonathan Harris’s websites – We Feel Fine and The Whale Hunt.

The audio features don’t stop with music. Each content page has a sound bite or two overlaid over the music. Each one comes from people who are touched by the changes there – from commercial fishermen and local residents (“people are saying “pray for me”, I have cancer”) to activists and businessmen.

They have also used video footage as background for text content, and added whimsical animations to the page layout.

The copy works hard too – “the commercial fishermen are noticing it, as are those who simply take solace in a tranquil day out on the dock – the fish are disappearing, one by one.” And I’m a big fan of how they’ve used headlines to intro a section of the site (while it quietly loads in the background).

So I’m pretty much a convert – but how do I act? I search the site and finally spot a small link at the bottom of the page for “Resources / Community Action”. It takes me to a boring list of different community groups.

Disappointing! How cool would it be to have a tool that finds out the best way for you to get involved? In other words, I don’t want to have to trawl through all these community sites myself to find out if they have any way I can get involved considering who I am, where I live and what I have to offer these groups. Build me a tool that does and I will gladly give you my email address so you can keep me updated on the cause (and charge me with the passion to make a difference).

I think one of the big opportunities online marketing has to offer is the facilitation of a brand journey. A campaign or site doesn’t have to limit it’s objectives to awareness raising. Use that awareness immediately. I’m at the site, I know what issues the Great Lakes are experiencing now, and I want to do something about it. Faciliate the next step for me.