Contented Strategy Blog

How good is your content? Find out with a content audit

Fri, 17 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

How good is your content? Find out with a content audit

The first job I always do for a new client is a content audit. This is the best way to quickly find out how your existing content is performing.

You have limited time and money. Spend it on content improvements that will get you the best return for the least amount of work.

In this post I’ll talk you through the basics of a content audit for a startup, SME or growth-stage company.

Audit all your content

Marketing content is super important because it drives customer acquisition. However, relevant and helpful content helps you increase revenue at ALL stages of the growth funnel. It helps you with conversion, retention, referral and revenue.

So try and audit all your content, not just your marketing content. Look at your:

website content (including translated content)
onboarding content
SEO content
marketing content (blogs, videos, podcasts, emails campaigns)
support documents
internal team documentation

Note down your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Either link to your key performance indicators or cut and paste results for the last 6 months directly into your content audit.

KPIs are important values that you can measure to see how well your business is doing. They could include paying customers, actual or monthly recurring revenue, organic search traffic, and customer lifetime value.

KPIs give the best high-level overview of how your company is doing and identify potential areas of weakness (high churn, poor conversion of trial to paid, etc.).

Your content audit should identify actions that will improve your KPIs.

At the top of your content audit, I also like to answer these questions:

What is your main growth channel at the moment?
What do you think the main problem is with your content?
What are the key qualities about your company that you want to communicate to your customers?

Measure basic quantitative metrics

Although the most important content metric for any company is whether your content leads to an increase in revenue, the overall answer can be slightly complicated.

If a page isn’t getting much traffic due to an architecture issue then it’s hardly fair to call this page a write-off.

With more traffic could it perform better and form an important part of your sales funnel?

So I like to measure basic quantitative metrics to give me an idea of the effectiveness of your content.

For your website, marketing, SEO content and support documents this might include:

page title and url
word count
date published/revised
average time on page
average page visits
exit rate
content format
keywords and ranking (SEO content only)
sign ups from page
assisted signups from page

For onboarding content this might include:

content title
% of audience who make it to the next screen

For your newsletters/emails this might include:

open rate
click through rate
% of subscribers who take a revenue-linked action (sign up, upgrade, download pdf, whatever is relevant)

You can potentially add a lot more quantitative information to the audit. This is great if you have the time for analysis. If you don’t, even basic information will be helpful.

I prefer to do a basic analysis in a day or two rather than suggest a comprehensive analysis that will be too expensive and time consuming for many startups.

Grade content using a scoring system

Quantitative metrics give you factual information about your content’s performance.

Hopefully you can start spotting interesting issues: pages with hardly any traffic, content that has a high exit rate, help articles that lead to a surprising number of signups.

However, your information at this stage is limited. You need to add qualitative categories as well. These could include:

purpose (acquisition, conversion, referral, etc.)
audience (which persona or audience group does the content target)
findability (how easy is it to find the content? Does is appear in Google searches?)
accuracy (is it well written and still relevant?)
actionability (what is the content trying to get users to do? Is it clear what they should do next?)
content messaging (does the content communicate your company values/style/message architecture?)

For many of these categories you can use a simple scoring system of 1-5, with 5 being the best.

Choose the categories that are most relevant. Findability might not be relevant for newsletters and email campaigns. Actionability is super important for onboarding content.

Add ‘recommended actions’

I use a ‘recommended actions’ category to note down some quick thoughts about what I’d change and why. This category also stops me prevaricating too much about the scoring, because I can always explain my decisions here.

I also like to give a rough idea of how easy a change should be to implement and what impact it might have. This is particularly important if you have a specific business goal in mind (like reduce customer churn from 8% to 4%).

You won’t implement all your suggestions, but these three columns give you a useful place to start.

Draw your conclusions

Once I’ve finished a content audit, I’ll draw up a high-level list of recommendations, with reference to the business goals of the company.

I prefer to offer realistic suggestions rather than ‘ideal scenario’ ideas that will leave you (and me) feeling both stressed and useless :-).

If you’ve secured investment and need to double in size by tomorrow then your content strategy is going to be very different to a bootstrapped company that favours a lower-growth lower-stress model.

Implement the easiest and most powerful changes

Choose the easiest and most powerful changes to implement first. A few quick wins will give you the necessary enthusiasm to keep going!

Make sure you immediately schedule content changes in whatever project management tool you use. Don’t let them moulder in an excel file as you work on yet another new feature.

Also, work out who needs to be involved in your content changes. Do you need a developer, designer and subject expert to successfully push through a content idea? (often yes, in my experience). If so, make sure everyone has time to help.

What next?

You now have a clear content roadmap that should nudge your key metrics in the right direction.

Once you’ve implemented changes from your content audit, check what impact they’ve had on your KPIs. Hopefully you’ll see a definite improvement – congratulations! If you don’t see the improvements you’d hoped for then try and work out why. Then move on.

Pay attention to content changes that work particularly well. Make a note of those that don’t. This way you can update your roadmap to make sure you’re implementing the most important content changes for your business.

If you’d like help with your content audit please get in touch: hannah@contentedstrategy.com. My day rate is £345 for startups and SMEs and £525 for enterprise companies.

How to measure and improve your SaaS content - and why you should bother

Fri, 21 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

How to measure and improve your SaaS content (and why you should bother)

People come to your website for the content. They heard a snippet of information about your product that has got their interest and they want to know more.

They want to see how your product can solve their problem, scratch a painful itch, or make them happier. And they want to know whether they can trust you and whether other people do too. And it is your content (not your product, or even your web design) that will help them at this crucial stage.

Because once your content sells them on the pain of their problem and the sheer relief of your solution, then they might actually sign up for it. Then they might give you money, particularly if your onboarding quickly helps them use and love your product. Then, if you’re really going for it, they might upgrade or repeat purchase.

Content is your friend. It’s not something to be avoided, like that train seat near the toilet.

Just look at the recent discussion around open-source JavaScript web framework Ember: that it has strong advantages over competitors but is failing to communicate these effectively. And unless they do something about this, Ember will continue to lose ground.

“As we discuss the future of Ember we need to recognize that without learning how to talk about Ember to the rest of the Javascript world, having any future becomes less and less of a guarantee.” Chris Freeman

In this post I’ll look at:

How do you tell if your content is working effectively?
What makes good content for SaaS products?
How much content do you need?

The reading time for the whole article is approximately 15 minutes.

How do you tell if your content is working effectively?

I know many developers avoid or dislike content because it doesn’t offer such clear cut results as code (and I can empathise. I’m an amateur coder but at least when I get it right it usually works, which is pretty satisfying).

However, you can be logical about testing and improving your content. Here are two approaches:

The pain point approach: best when you know something isn't working

This is a good approach when you know something is blocking growth and are wondering what to do.

Start by writing down the pain points in your business based on your key performance indicators (KPIs): poor conversion rate of free to paid users, inadequate traffic, low engagement rate, low order value, high churn rate, and so on. Now at least consider whether you have a content rather than a product problem or superficial PR problem.
Dive into your metrics, trawl through your customer support, or reach out via a survey to uncover as much information as possible about this growth blocker. Talk to your fellow business owners or colleagues to see if they have any ideas.
Construct a working hypothesis: say you’re getting lots of customer support questions asking what you do + a high exit rate from your homepage + your customer survey shows lots of happy existing customers = potentially you’re doing a poor job communicating at a high level your product to new customers. So you need to improve your homepage not your product.
Then run a test. Change the offending content and see what happens to the relevant KPIs making sure that you don’t improve one KPI only to negatively affect a more important one. Aim for a fairly large content change instead of just a tweak here or there, unless you have a lot of traffic. This means your results are more likely to be statistically significant without you having to run them for weeks if not years.
If you see positive results it’s likely that your previous content was performing badly and your revised content is definitely better.

For more advice on running tests (including content tests) read Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown.

The content audit approach: best when you want an overall idea of whether your content works

This approach basically involves giving your content a thorough check-up, like you would your car, to check it is working properly and hasn’t any hidden problems.

This process can be partly automated using various tools like the Content Analysis Tool, but does involve a degree of legwork as you go through your content and grade it based on qualities such as whether it supports your current business direction, is up-to-date, actionable, and so on. You’d also collect metrics on each page so you build an effective picture of how your content is performing.

Your aim is to identify weak content that can be archived and revised, good content that can be imitated and content gaps that can be filled.

Although time consuming, a content MOT gives you some great insights into how your content is performing. Otherwise it’s easy to think your content is okay because it’s familiar. Or you just forget half the stuff you have on your site, even when it becomes outdated and is really off-putting to anyone who land on it.

Content audits need to be shaped to suit your business goals. However, here are a few tips:

If you are pushed for time audit only some of your site (making sure you include content a few layers down)
Use a crawling tool like Screaming Frog to identify all/most of your URLs, or use the Content Analysis Tool (CAT)
Use a content audit template like this one as a base if you feel a bit overwhelmed
Consider dividing your content into categories that have different analytic criteria: homepage, brochure pages, support content, blog content, onboarding content, and so on
Collect data such as page views and conversion information, as well as information that requires you to make a judgement such as ‘overall page quality,’ ‘content findability,’ ‘visibility of next action,’ and so on

Your content audit should be customised to suit your business – and different types of content might need to be evaluated using different criteria

If you are running an early stage startup, you should also consider doing a competitor audit, particularly if you don’t have much content of your own. A competitor audit means you rank your competitor’s content so that you discover their content strengths and weaknesses. Most importantly, you learn how you can differentiate yourself.

Once you have a good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your existing content, you can move on to content creation and editing.

What makes good content for SaaS products?

Generally speaking, content that gets people to take a revenue-linked action as soon as possible. You’ll need content for other tasks – for investors, job seekers, affiliates, partners, and so on – but this content is probably not high priority. Don’t let it get in the way of your core users taking business-critical actions.

But how can you write content that gets people to sign up to a free trial, request a demo, pay for an account, upgrade to a more expensive one or repeat purchase? Here’s how:

1. Get outside your own head

“I think customers will do this because I think this…”

Really?

Unless you have an amazing degree of empathy, you’ve probably forgotten what it’s like to have the problem you solve. And also what it’s like to come across your product for the first time.

You need to get in touch with people who are in pain and in search of a solution. Found out what they think and need.

Even if you really know some of your customers – particularly those that have been with you since the beginning – you need to be strategic about this knowledge, and then build on what you have.

You can do this in a number of ways:

Send out a survey

You can send out a survey to paying customers asking questions like:

How would you describe this product to a friend (to find out: is this different to how I describe the product in my header copy?)
What was going on at work when you signed up for this product (to find out: am I getting my value proposition right?)
How would you describe your position in your company?(to find out: are we targeting the right people through our content)
What feature couldn’t you live without? (to find out: am I prioritising the right benefits in our content?)

I prefer open-ended questions that give you interesting replies, even though these take longer to process. I also keep surveys very short. People are busy. Don’t bore them.

You could also send out a different survey to people who signed up to a free trial but didn’t convert asking questions such as:

What challenge did you hope this product would solve? Did it? (to find out: is our content giving an incorrect idea of what we do)
What would encourage you to sign up for a paid account? (to find out: do we need to improve our onboarding or are we targeting the wrong type of people?)

I advise separating the two surveys because you want more people who did convert and love your product. So find out what makes them tick as a matter of priority.

This survey question asked whether people wanted to download or stream long tech videos – and more people than expected favoured downloading

Talk to your customers

This one is easy to miss because you probably feel like you hear from your customers all the time. You are helping them do something through your support section. Or trying to face-to-face convert high-value clients or get your first 100 users.

This isn’t quite what I mean.

You need to find power users, basically, people who love your product, and get them on the phone. Then ask them a few simple open-ended questions such as:

What was going on at work that they needed a product like yours?
What challenge were they trying to solve?
What other products did they look at?
What made them choose yours?
Did they talk to anyone else before signing up?
What nearly stopped them signing up?
What did they imagine their life would be like after using the product?
What is their life actually like using the product?

Raid your support section

Your support section isn’t just a valuable resource in terms of working out whether your product has a bug, or whether you need a new feature. Or a pain in the proverbial, given how many people seem to ask questions that seem super obvious to you (the all-knowing founder).

It is also a great way of showing you who is using your product, whether they get your content, and what they need from you.

Go raid your support section, looking for valuable insights into:

Who is using your product (those that pay; those that don’t and probably never will)
Whether your content is failing to answer the questions of potential customers (do far too many people write to support basically asking what you do?)
Whether people are using your product in ways you didn’t anticipate but are actually quite interesting

Snoop on your competitors

This is a particularly good option if you don’t have many paying customers.

See what people are saying about your competitors, not just on their websites, but on LinkedIn or Facebook groups, on Twitter, on Slack channels, on Reddit, in the comments sections of articles, or wherever.

See what they like, what they don’t and what language they use to talk about their problems and the competitor solution.

Then use this language to grab their attention through your content.

See what people are saying about your competitors (I was looking at personal safety apps)

If you’ve succeeded with any of this user research, it’s likely you have a fantastic amount of useful information just waiting to be used.

Now’s the time.

2. Unleash your customer knowledge

Don’t undertake customer research in a fit of enthusiasm and then leave it to moulder in an unloved file somewhere.

Unleash your customer knowledge.

Plan to create useful, specific content based on your research. For example, you could create case studies, which can be particularly valuable if you are early stage and need to work hard to show how and why people use your product.

This is an extract from a case study by Feature Upvote. It shows how one of their power users gets real value from their product.

You can also pull out quotations and images from these case studies to strengthen other marketing and sales content.

Plan to create infographics if you spot trends or have statistics that work well in a visual format (graphic tool websites like Canva mean you can create your own).

Or compile in-depth reports, PDF downloads, email sequences, or blog posts, sales brochures, or other content marketing that is valuable to your audience.

However, don’t just confine your content efforts to obvious channels like case studies and content marketing.

All your content should be informed by detailed and specific customer research including your landing pages, your customer support section, your onboarding and your checkout process, including microcopy.

Take a step back and reassess how your content works as a whole to persuade your targeted customers to buy (or sign up or download or whatever you want them to do).

Does all you content tell a good story?

Does it have what it takes to persuade sceptical and savvy people to say: “I need this product now!”

3. Tell a good story about your product

You’re probably software developers so I’m guessing you like logic. Things that work. Which may well be why content is high on your ‘this is a pain’ list and low on your ‘things I love doing’ list.

Being creative and creating quality content can’t be reduced to an algorithm (as yet, probably never). However, there are frameworks you can use to help you create effective content even if you’re not JK Rowling or George R.R. Martin.

Here are two frameworks you can use to tell a good story.

PAS technique

The PAS copywriting technique stands for Problem → Agitation → Solution.

hi there person with a problem. You’re not feeling great are you? Wouldn’t life be better if that wasn’t happening and you didn’t have to waste time thinking about this? And this? Well, you don’t have to worry about all that crap anymore. Our product does this. And improves your life in all these amazing ways. All these people trust it. You should too. Let’s go my friend. Just do this.

This technique can be really effective, although personally I don’t like content that is too negative or that slams competitors.

I think the former can just take people into a dark and aggravated place that makes them critical of your product – or just plain cross. The latter can simply make people sceptical and give your brand a ‘nasty’ flavour that isn’t helpful.

If you use PAS (and I sometimes do) I prefer not to let readers wallow in pain. I either show the problem in a fairly factual way or address the problem emotively but then quickly show what my product does and why it would benefit them.

For example, if I was creating a SaaS meal planning product for people with special dietary requirements I would say something like:

Problem: Fed up with spending hours browsing the internet for suitable recipes? And calories counting to make sure recipes suit your dietary requirements?

Agitate: You want to eat healthily/lose weight but meal planning is so time consuming and you often fall back on the same old recipes or junk ‘free from’ food?

Solution: We provide a personalised meal plan just for you, every day, so you can always eat healthily – and reclaim your time. We even suggest tasty options if you’re eating out, so you’re free to eat wherever and whenever you want.

FAB technique

The FAB copywriting technique stands for features - advantages – benefits, which reminds you to communicate benefits rather than just listing features.

Apple captured the benefit of the iPod by saying: ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ rather than, say, ‘1GB storage’.

For more on these techniques have a look at this blog article by Copy Write Matters or this one by Enchanting Marketing.

Both approaches can help you make sure all your content is helping to answer that key question: why buy (or switch) now?

A word of caution

A storytelling approach to content is great but not if you get carried away and start rambling. Give your customers the information they specifically need when they need it.

Never lose track of the fact that you should be answering key customer questions such as:

What do you do?
How do you do what you say you do?
Why should I care?
Do others care and trust you?
How will you make my life better?
Say I trust you a bit – what now?

Keep a note of what content converted you

Try and keep track of what it was that made you buy a product or service.

Did the content hit a nerve? How did it do this?

Did you have a go with the product and quickly find value, meaning you were happy to pay up?

Even if you didn’t end up buying something (because you really didn’t need it), you can add content to your scrapbook that you think is doing a great job.

Then when you need to create or revise your own content, you’ll have some best practice examples to inspire you.

I use Evernote to collect content that has impressed me.

How much content do you need?

If your product doesn’t cost much you can tell a short story – over a page or so – and probably still convert well, particularly if you offer a free trial so people don’t need to give you money up front.

However, if your product costs a lot you need to tell a more complex story over a lot of content, with room for diversions when your cautious or less informed customers need more information.

I worked with a boat club where customers would be parting with a sizeable amount of money if they signed up – so they needed a lot of content

A few boat club customers were motivated to sign up quickly (so we didn’t get in their way) but many needed to hear a story that covered how it worked, benefits, whether others cared, boat details, harbour details, pricing details, the social scene, training opportunities, and much more.

Only then would they get in touch to discuss a pricing plan or to arrange a visit.

Once they’d explored a lot of content.

And I mean a lot.

Which brings us to the next point:

Your content isn't just your homepage

Even if you have brilliant content on your homepage, or even on a few landing pages, your work isn’t done.

Far from it.

There is nothing more reckless than to spend sweat and tears getting people to your website only to lose them at the onboarding stage, or a few months down the line, or to fail to upsell them when you really should.

What you need to do, after getting people to take an initial action – such as signing up for a free trial or creating something for free – is to show them very quickly why your product is a must have. And for this you need great onboarding content.

You may know exactly how to use your product so it sings, but unless you communicate this effectively to strangers then you’ll struggle to convert trial users or curious customers to paying customers.

And this is a KPI that really matters.

So first work out what value users need to get from your product that makes it a ‘must have’ and that gets them invested in your product very quickly. Then keep your onboarding focused on getting people to take actions that give them tangible value.

Avoid wordy instructions if you can: show don’t tell is much more effective.

In this respect, Paperless Post do a great job.

I recently wanted to send out invites to my youngest son’s first birthday. I’d heard of Paperless Post so I went to their site, liked what I saw and selected ‘browse’ on the kid’s invites section. I saw a design I liked and selected it. Then I saw the ‘customize’ button.

Then I was off.

Before I knew it I had designed my invite and was reconciled to paying so many coins per recipient, for extras like an envelope and a backdrop.

Basically, I’d been onboarded.

I’d very quickly found value in the product, I’d been encouraged to spend time in creating something, even when I thought I’d just have a quick browse, and I was going to hand over money.

Good job people.

Before I knew it, I’d selected customize and had designed a birthday invite. And I’d only intended to have a quick browse.

If you don’t offer a free trial, or the opportunity for people to create something, then you can always try offering something like a demo or free limited access.

Make sure your content is prioritised to support these calls to action.

Don’t suddenly activate a chat window when someone is about to select ‘demo this product’. Or ask them to sign up to your newsletter.

Also, don’t forget content aimed at upgrading customers, encouraging repeat purchases or increasing lifetime value. You can increase revenue nicely if you increase the value to your business of existing customers.

Content isn’t just about attracting and converting new customers. It’s about retaining your old ones.

Good content techniques for customer retention include:

Newsletters, emails and messages (to show product improvements)
Free downloads and/or courses (to educate)
Blog posts (to show authority)
Excellent support (to help people get the most from your product)
Excellent help articles (to help people get the most from your product)

What now?

If your sneaking suspicion that your content is underperforming has matured to alarm bells then this next sentence is for you.

It’s time to actually do something about your content. Now.

Set time aside now to see how your existing content is working by either the ‘pain point’ approach or the content MOT method mentioned above. Decide what content needs to be improved, how long it would take and what difference it would make. Prioritise accordingly.

Then, appraise your customer research. If it’s only in your own head then get it out of there. And do some more research. If you have lots of research already good on you. Use it.

Create new content to test. Test it and see what happens. Make sure the results are meaningful to your bottom line rather than to your vanity (wow, I have loads of site visitors! Shame they don’t seem to buy anything…)

Celebrate your content success. Then repeat.

Need help with assessing or improving your content? Get in touch: hannah@contentedstrategy.com

How to write a book when you don't have any time. By a working mum.

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

How to write a book

When you don’t have any time

Now updated to include advice from other authors!

I don’t know about you, but when I read articles about how you can write a book/learn to cook like a celebrity chef/read Game of Thrones, all in two weeks, I want to scream; but don’t, obviously, because it might wake the baby. These articles nearly always seem to be written by smug young people with very little in the way of responsibility (and going to the gym and sampling artisan beer don’t count).

I have managed to write a book – an ebook on content strategy for startups and small businesses – but it has taken me about two and a half years. Which is also the time it takes to have two children, work part time, exercise a dog, and move house.

In this post I talk about how you can write the book you’ve always dreamed about, even with your many responsibilities, if you just follow a few basic guidelines. I also encourage you to bin unhelpful concepts like multitasking, the superwoman (or superman) complex, and feeling guilty.

Be realistic about your timeframe

You can achieve your goals but if you have family commitments then it might take you a bit longer than two weeks. Say two years. Embrace this kind of time frame. If you are already working and looking after small people, dogs, a house, packing for holidays (a military exercise if ever there was one), doing the washing, doing more washing, managing your finances, and so on, then the fact that you get anything done is cause for celebration.

Writing a book is doable but only if you accept that you aren’t superwoman or superman and no one should expect you to be.

No one should expect you to be a superhero

Accept that 20 minutes is a wonderful opportunity

I fondly remember the days when I’d make myself a cup of tea, wonder around a bit, rearrange my desk and then do some writing, for hours if I wanted. No more. The key to writing a book when you’re busy is to accept that 20 minutes is a wonderful opportunity. If you spot 20 minutes (or even the promise of 20 minutes) sit down and write. The washing up can wait. It doesn’t matter that the house is a bit messy - really, it doesn’t. Don’t go anywhere near social media. Accept that writing in your pyjamas is perfectly acceptable.

I’m always amazed by how much you can get done if you do little bursts frequently. However, if you are tired then don’t feel guilty. Go back to bed. Have a bath. The book can wait

Bin multitasking

I appreciate this goes against the prevailing wisdom but if I try and do lots of jobs at once I end up feeling useless and confused. What helps me instead is to write lists and then do one thing at a time. So if I have 20 minutes (see above) and I decide to write then I’ll do just that, trying to ignore everything else on that list. At least, that way, I achieve something.

Personally, I never try and seriously write or work while looking after my children, which is a full time job in itself. I’ll instead fit writing in when they are napping, or with someone else, or after they’ve gone to bed. In any case, if I tried to work when my toddler around my book would read like this: zzzh4chhhaums 7s8sj as her sticky little fingers got to work.

Multi-tasking often ends badly – like when you try and write while looking after a toddler

Advice from author Ceri Radford

Writing time is sacred time. I try to leave the house and work in a café so that I’m not even remotely tempted to do anything about the general state of domestic chaos. I kept thinking there would be a time when I could write and look after my daughter, but it’s yet to happen. She howled and would only nap in her pram as a small baby, climbed my leg to get at my laptop as a bigger baby, and now at three plays brilliantly by herself until the precise moment she hears the click of my laptop opening.

There is no easy way to be a parent and a writer - they’re two all-encompassing things. I feel better if I’m making progress on something I’m happy with, even if the pace is slower than it used to be. I also comfort myself with the idea that it’s not like I’m a footballer - I’m not going to get worse at writing as I get older. Things will get easier.

Ceri Radford, author of A Surrey State of Affairs, currently working on her second novel

Think about your book while doing other things

I actually did some pretty good thinking about a work project while I was in hospital being induced (my second child was two weeks overdue). There wasn’t much else to do really, so thinking about a project I’d been given seemed like a good way to pass the time. Obviously as events progressed my mind turned to other matters.

However, there are a number of times in a day when you’re doing something that doesn’t require much brain activity: going to the toilet, cooking a familiar dish, having a shower, trying to get the baby to sleep, and so on. This can become quality time for thinking about your latest ebook chapter. Don’t do this, however, if you feel like you need some time to slow down. Just enjoy your shower. Or go to the loo in peace.

Treat yourself to quality writing time

Although writing a book is likely to be your side project, so not something you can easily justify spending money on, try at least occasionally to fence off quality time. See if your partner, friends or family can help with your children, dogs, or other dependants. Pay a cleaner. Employ someone to do odd jobs. I know many or perhaps all of these options may not be available, but see what you can do.

If this project matters to you then you deserve to have at least some quality time to spend on it, if possible. Because you’re worth it, as some wise person said. Or a shampoo advert. I forget which.

Advice from literary consultant and author Claire Wingfield

Having less time as a new mum helped me focus and complete my draft, as I went from having ‘all the time in the world’ and not completing personal projects (always prioritising my work as a freelance editor and literary consultant) to having limited time but an increased sense of both my own creativity and the necessity of time management.

Having less time made me more protective of it and even influenced the format of my creative-writing guide 52 Dates for Writers - Ride a Tandem, Assume an Alias and 50 Other Ways to Improve Your Novel Draft.

Claire Wingfield, literary consultant and author

Get reviewers or a mentor on board

You’re going to have plenty of moments when your enthusiasm flags or you think your book is terrible and no one will buy it. To help you steer past these dispiriting shoals, find yourself a mentor or a group or reviewers early on. They can offer you valuable feedback and motivation while you write the book, as well as helping you publicise it when you ship it.

Begin by thinking who you’d really like to get on board and then reach out to them, even if you haven’t met them yourself. Explain what you’re doing and why you really care about their opinion (treading a fine line between honesty and flattery). You’ll hopefully be surprised by how helpful people can be.

Finding a mentor can help when times get tough and you need help to keep writing

Plan for ongoing research

Putting time aside for research is important when your book is likely to take a year or two to write. You need to stay current and make sure your book is still relevant when you finish it. I did bursts of writing, then some reading, then some revision, and then repeated the whole process. This worked well for me, although I did need to be tough about ending the research stages. Otherwise I’d have never finished my book.

Accept you can always do more – more research, more revision, more editing, and so on. Then move on and get your book finished. You’ll never think your book is perfect but you should feel proud of it. That’s my definition of finished.

Embrace ebooks

I’m a huge fan of ebooks because they are cheap for you to create, easy to update and you get to keep nearly all of the cover price if you sell direct from your own website. Plus you can automate the sales process using various digital delivery providers so that you can make money while you sleep (or try to sleep, if you have young children). Plus with ebooks you can sell to people all over the world, which is particularly important if you’re writing a book on a niche subject.

Of course, you need to put a marketing plan in place otherwise you’ll never sell anything through your own website. But going through a conventional publisher is no guarantee of great sales either (and I’ve done both) and you have to sell a lot more books to take home the same amount of money.

Accept that marketing will be a challenge

The ideal scenario while writing an ebook is as follows: get followers excited about book, write a bit, get feedback, write a bit more, write about writing the book, actually write some more of the book, publish a blog post inspired by the book, and so on. You market the book as you write the book so at your launch people go: ‘wow! I must buy this now!’ I know all this. I’ve even written about it.

However, in practice, if you are writing a book over many months or even years, when you have very little time, something has to give. And this, for me, was often marketing. I did try to market as I went along, but the value of getting people excited about what I was doing was tempered by the fact that by the time I finished they might not care. They could have become a monk. Or the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook.

Instead of managing a ‘hot launch’ for my ebook I’ve had to settle for a ‘tepid’ one. This scenario will hopefully be improved by some after-launch post-children’s-bedtime marketing.

Start writing

If you have an idea for a book that’s been bugging you then sit down and start writing. You can plan and edit another time. Just make a start now. Once you’ve got past this first stage you’ll find it easier to write more. And more. Accept that weeks (and months in my case) will pass when you don’t do anything. Life gets in the way. Don’t feel guilty. Just pick up where you left off when you can and just give yourself a pat on the back that you’re keeping going.

You can write that book. Don’t let anyone – including yourself - tell you any differently. Make a start, keep going, then keep going some more.

You can do it. Good luck!

Focus on content strategy rather than marketing and grow your startup

Thu, 27 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Start with content strategy – not marketing

You’re a startup, solopreneur or team member of a growing business. And you know you need to grow your business. Perhaps you’ve been advised to concentrate on marketing tactics for startups, or perhaps on SEO or social media?

However, if you jump straight in to startup marketing without a content strategy you run the risk of producing a load of expensive content that offers a very poor return on investment. Why? Because if your content is not precisely focused on what your audience need, as well as on your specific business goals, then it will fail to help your business grow.

In this blog post I’ll outline a few content strategy tactics for startups that will help you focus on what content your customers need from you and how to find this out. Once you have this vital information, then customers will be magnetically drawn to your product or service because you seem to offer them precisely what they need.

What you’ll learn in this post:

to identify your different customer groups
to find out what content they need from you and when they need it
to implement your customer research

Why it matters:

If you understand who your customers are, then you can create targeted content that will persuade them to buy your product, keep buying it, and talk to their friends and followers about how much they love your product
Companies with only a superficial knowledge of their potential customers will find it hard to market and sell to them, and will lose out to competitors
Companies that don’t understand what their customers need are more likely to develop features and schemes that fail to engage and attract customers

This post is an early extract from my book: Content strategy for Solopreneurs, Startups and Growing Businesses. Read more about how the book can help you drive growth, engagement and investment.

If your customers are people like you then congratulations, you’re very lucky. It will be fairly easy to work out what they need. However, if your customers are not like you, or your company has a number of different types of customers, then you need to work out what they need. Don’t just guess! Then you can produce focused content that appeals to your customers rather than any old content that might not.

1.Listen to your customers to be able to sell to your customers

Create a user survey

I’m a big fan of user surveys. True, they only tell you what your actual customers want – as opposed to potential customers who might make a purchase if only you did something a little bit different. However, they can be immensely valuable in corroborating what you know, challenging your assumptions and making you smile because who knew? People like your product or service!

I helped live coding video startup Peer to Peer with a survey. They wanted to know whether people liked downloading their long videos or whether they’d prefer to stream individual chapters.

Peer to Peer started with the assumption that streaming would be better: after all, that’s the direction pioneered by successful companies like Netflix. Various tech friends and colleagues had also said streaming chapters would be better. People could watch a chapter when they had a moment, without clogging up their hard drive.

However, the survey results showed that around 75% of Peer to Peer customers wanted to download the video, giving perfectly sensible reasons like their internet speed was terrible, or that they wanted to listen on a journey where the internet could be pretty sketchy.

So, although Peer to Peer can look into streaming, because it might attract new customers (something they’ll need to validate), they probably shouldn’t kill the download option just yet.

Surveys can help you test your assumptions about what customers want

Listen to customer support

Customer support often exists in its own little world. Either because you do it all yourself, you contract it out, or you have a dedicated customer support team whose job pretty much solely involves handling customer emails and phone calls.

However, customer support can provide all kinds of useful insights into who is using your product, or thinking about using it, and whether your content is doing a good job in communicating your product.

Consider whether circulating a ‘new customer’ list within your team that will show you who is currently signing up for your product or service – and may offer some surprises.

Interview your customers

Talk to actual customers. This could simply mean that you ask recent customers why they chose you as opposed to a competitor. Ask your customer support, marketing or sales teams to keep an eye out for likely people and then send them a short email with a few questions. Or ask if they can jump on a short call. You might be surprised by what made different customers choose you. You can then assess your content based on their feedback.

If a majority of customers choose you because you provided a simple and easy solution to a problem does your website prioritise this message? Or is this message tucked underneath a message about increasing productivity that doesn’t seem to resonate as well?

If customer interviews sound a bit formal, then you can also try pouncing on people who leave comments on your blog, reviews on the App store, say something interesting on social media, or who you come across on a closed Facebook group.

Try the corridor test

One of the most straightforward ways to find out whether your content is fit for purpose is to watch someone using your site. It’s called a corridor test because all you need is a laptop and passerby – no need for a big budget or loads of time. Ask people to run through some critical tasks on your website using a laptop and/or mobile. See how they get on. You’ll soon get a good idea of any user pain points.

I remember having a browse of the website of a potential client to see how easy it would be to buy their product. Not very was the answer. From the features page I had to navigate back to the main menu where they had a ‘buy now’ button. Even one corridor test would have flagged this up as a problem. I probably wasn’t their target customer, but that didn’t matter for such a simple test of functionality.

No matter how they find you, your users almost always have very specific goals and expectations. And if your content doesn’t meet their expectations – and quickly – they will leave. Period. Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach

2. Create an audience research document that highlights your main findings

Collate all your research in one place so you can refer back to it and show it to other members of your team. You might also want to create a high level overview so you don’t overwhelm other team members. A high level overview of all your user research also lets you refresh your memory at a later date without having to go into all the granular details.

You might want to include charts, statistics and images to help clarify your key takeaways.

These key takeaways could include:

age range and gender of audience
online habits and preferences
how they found you
what they like best about your company
what they dislike
their main problems with your current content
how they use your product or service
how they’d describe your product or service to a friend

These are just suggestions: you’ll need to choose the takeaways that are most relevant to your business.

Don’t forget to keep researching your audience though. As your business grows you might start attracting different customer groups and you’ll need to update or refocus some of your content. If you found a user survey very helpful, for example, make it a yearly occurrence and put it in your calendar now.

3. Make your audience research actionable

Although any audience research is useful, you can make it even more helpful by ‘translating’ it into user personas. These can then be used to work out exactly what your customers need from you at what point in their journey through your content.

A persona isn’t usually based on one person: rather it is a composite of characteristics of real people/customers.

What makes up a persona?

name
age and gender
job description/education level
main problem that you can help them with
main tasks they need to complete on your website

A sample persona

Let’s imagine I run a startup that specialises in analytics. Our main competitive advantage is that we use mathematics to power our analytics. After digging around in various channels (see user research suggestions above) I realise one of our key personas is something like this:

Early 30s, female
Marketing manager at major ecommerce brand
Science and marketing background – Needs to be able to process and understand a large volume of data and derive actionable, sophisticated insights
Needs to understand how our maths-powered AI platform can help deliver these insights and how credible we are

With this persona in mind (who I shall call Lucy), I now know what content to prioritise on our website. I’ll make sure I surface information about how we use maths early on. I’ll make sure our tone is businesslike and that we get to the point fast (Lucy is busy). I’ll show ‘social proof’ that we know what we’re doing (important clients, testimonials, relevant statistics and so on). And I’ll use images that shout ‘we’re cutting edge’ – no cute animations here.

Done well, user personas keep your team focused on those people who matter most: your audience.

4. Understand what content your different personas need from you

You’ll likely have a few different personas who use your product. For example,

You might have new customers and existing customers
Or software engineers, indie gamers and craftspeople
Or small businesses and multinationals

Your key messages should appeal to everyone, but you’ll also need to match different content to different audience groups. For example, say I run a subscription-based luxury car club. This is one of our personas:

Existing customer
40s, male
professional in the $50,000-$100,000 income bracket
wants to drive exciting cars but doesn’t want the responsibility of ownership; likes the car club but doesn’t always remember to go/and has no one to go with
needs reminders about exciting events that are happening (so being solo is no problem) and cool new cars that he can drive

[photo credit]

So suitable content might include:

monthly newsletter highlighting new acquisitions and events – no sales talk here. Let’s keep it informative, exciting and friendly. Customised newsletters based on his preferences is even better.
text alerts about events he has signed up for/weather warnings that might affect driving

In contrast, a potential customer persona, even if they are broadly speaking similar (male, 40s, professional) needs very different content to persuade them to spend a large amount of money every year on membership, instead of buying a car, sharing one or relying on friends. For example:

online content that shows how a car club works
online content that shows how it solves customer problems (flexibility, no responsibility, social, etc.)
online content that shows that the club is credible
online content that offers some idea of price
lead-generating brochure or information guide download (that captures the excitement of driving high-performance cars in a social environment)
phone contact with a sales rep
site visit
online contact showing technical details that address specific questions

It’s tempting to spend a lot of time and money going after new customers, but if your business model involves people subscribing on a monthly/yearly basis to use your product then your existing customers base is very important. You want to keep them happy. It is so much easier to retain an existing customer than to attract a new one. And if you reduce churn (people leaving) and increase plan value (type of membership) and average lifetime (how long they stick around for) then your profit margins will start looking very nice indeed.

Good luck

I hope this post has given you some useful insights into why customer research is essential, as well as how you can ‘do’ customer research on a tiny budget (good for you if you have a bigger budget!).

You should see an improvement in your conversion rate, as well as in your workflow, as soon as you start precisely targeting content at your actual customers.

For further insights into how you can use content to grow your business see this post, which focuses on creating coherent and focused content across all of your site (rather than just a few seemingly ‘key’ pages). Or sign up below to be the first to hear when I publish my content strategy ebook, specifically aimed at solopreneurs, startups and growing businesses.

We want to grow our startup faster and think content strategy will help

Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We want to grow our startup faster and think content strategy will help

Content is why people come to your website. They want to complete a task, find information, be entertained, or a combination of all three. If you make these goals even remotely difficult for them then they’ll leave.

A customer doesn’t want to know everything about your company. She wants the content she needs, when she needs it.

So, a content strategy aimed specifically at startups can help your company grow faster by getting the attention of customers, answering their questions, and motivating them to take specific actions.

What you’ll learn in this blog post:

How to use a core mission statement to nail down the fundamentals of your company and work out what content you should produce, who it’s for and what’s the end result
Why providing a consistently good experience across all your content has a direct impact on your conversion rate
How you can improve often overlooked pages
Why you should concentrate on user flow through your website and app, and how you can do this

Why it matters:

Poor or inappropriate content will lose you the attention and trust of your audience
Mediocre content, with poor information architecture, will fail to convert browsers to customers
Content that doesn’t make it obvious what a customer should do next leads to customer abandonment
Inconsistent content – some good content and some poor – will confuse and frustrate customers
Search engines penalise poor content so your search rankings will suffer

This post is an early extract from my book: Content strategy for Solopreneurs, Startups and Growing Businesses. Read more about how the book can help you drive growth, engagement and investment.

Get the basics sorted first

In this chapter I’ll give you an overview of how you can make sure you have content that drives growth and increases productivity, as well as how you can make the business case for content strategy.

Let’s begin by nailing down the fundamentals of your company. Sit down with your team and discuss what the purpose of your product or service is and what problem it solves. Even if you have been trading for three years this can be a valuable exercise. Make sure all your stakeholders are involved so you get everyone onboard now.

After this initial brain storming, you’re ready to craft a core content strategy statement. A core content strategy statement addresses issues such as:

What content should we produce?
Who is that content for?
What’s the end result for us?

A tech startup that provides software for athletes in training might craft a statement like this one:

“Increase signups by producing detailed and technical content that will provide ambitious amateur athletes with answers to their training questions.”

Or a company selling GPS maps of the Australian outback might go for:

“Increase sales by producing knowledgeable and helpful location-based content that provides adventurous travellers with the motivation and means to navigate the outback.”

Provide a consistently good experience

Companies often spend time and money on a few bits of content (usually a homepage and a few other marketing pages) but don’t give much thought to the rest of their content and how their content links up.

As a result, the overall user experience for your product or service can be inconsistent. This can lose you the trust of customers.

Just think for a minute: you’ve come across some cool software and the marketing pages have been pretty persuasive. But you need to know if the software works for your specific setup. The features page doesn’t quite tell you but signposts the knowledge base.

So you head there only to find that it could have been written by a different company. One that employs robots rather than copywriters.

Don’t frustrate your customers with copy that reads like it was written by a robot. photo credit.

You try and read the knowledge base article, give up, and start wondering if maybe the product isn’t right for you after all. But you quite like it.

So you email customer service. And they say what a nice day it is and how happy they are to help. By which time you feel like screaming. Then they don’t really answer your question because it’s quite technical and you get the feeling they haven’t really understood what you’ve asked.

Result: you decide to buy another product because you get the feeling this company doesn’t really care about providing a great experience for their customers.

Providing a consistently good experience across your content is more important than having a few stand out pages of content and a lot of dross.

Neglected content often includes

Checkout pages

Pay pages that guide a customer through the process of giving you money.

Make sure that these are simple, easy to use and mobile-optimised. For example, if you are buying an ebook then you don’t want to be asked for your address: this is confusing and unnecessary. Avoid checkout providers who are cheap (or free) but offer a very poor user experience. You’ll end up losing money because of a poor customer conversion rate. This article I wrote for SendOwl offers some tips.

Knowledge base content

Help or support articles for new or potential customers.

Support content is a great way to reduce the cost per customer of customer support. You basically encourage your customers to ‘self-help’ rather than contact you every time they have a question. Support content also has SEO value (often for long-tail key words) and can be a good way to convert customers who want detail. Good customer support content might include:

Title
Table of contents
Use cases for this feature
Video walkthrough
Walkthrough with screenshots
Related content

Onboarding content

Emails and dashboard content that helps new customers find value in your product or service

Getting value from your product is easy if you built it, but make sure that it’s equally easy for your customers, particularly if they are on a free trial. Guide users towards useful actions that will benefit them. For example, I work with UXPin, a “full stack design platform” that helps me prototype websites, apps and so on. On my free trial I was encouraged to start a project when I logged in.

They also sent me a welcome email with a few more choices: Design from scratch, Import from Sketch & Photoshop, Get everyone on the same page and Start collaborative design. This gave me an idea of different use cases.

I created a project, enjoyed using the software – and signed up (which meant moving from a competitor).

For an insight into how other companies use onboarding have a look at this website.

Customer support emails, phone calls and chat

Reply to a question or query

Although it’s important that customers get support quickly, it’s essential they get useful support. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending 30 mins on the phone to someone (or spending half a day on email) and still not getting the answer you need.

Avoid contracting out support (especially choosing a company by price alone) unless you are 100% sure the support team get what you do, can genuinely help your customers and will work happily together with other team members. Otherwise they will cost you money in lost sales and inefficient company processes.

Even 24/7 phone support will go down badly with customers if your support team is not really very helpful. photo credit.

Less prestigious website pages

Anything that you need to click a few links to find

All content on your site should be valuable and serve a clear purpose. So don’t create poor content because it ‘doesn’t really matter’ or fail to revise content because ‘no one will notice’. All your content matters and customers (and search engines) will notice if you skimp on ‘less prestigious’ pages.

If you look at your analytics, you might also be surprised to see how high-performing some of your seemingly ‘less prestigious’ pages can be, perhaps because they have unexpected SEO value so lots of customers are landing on them or because they provide vital information that your customers need (but that you didn’t know they needed).

Microcopy and UI text

Labels on a form field, tiny pieces of instructional text, words on a button, field labels, error messages, confirmation text, even urls

Micrcopy is the unsung hero of your app or website. It can make the difference between a conversion and a confused customer. However, it can often get lost in the borderland between your content people, your user experience people and your design people. Who actually has responsibility for microcopy and UI? If no one takes responsibility then you can get all kinds of inconsistencies.

This website tries to pre-empt your concerns about security and what happens next using microcopy

As well as being useful, microcopy can also differentiate you from competitors. One aspect I really like about video conferencing company appear.in, aside from ease of use, is that they have brilliant generated names for chat rooms. Not only do these make me smile but they often provide a great way to break the ice with new clients. Plus they are functional: ‘first-gerbil’ or ‘opulent yak’ is much easier to say and share than ‘1062728’.

Customer stories, video, testimonial, interviews, and so on

When you’re just starting out or are small-scale then you don’t have a large proven customer base. So ‘social proof’ can be a powerful way to persuade potential users of the credibility of your company and product or service.

However, if you want to make the biggest impact with social proof, approach it strategically. This means:

Make sure the type of social proof you choose fits with your business – don’t just copy a competitor. Short word-only testimonials might not be as useful to you as a video case study, for example.
Make sure you get your tone right. If your company targets both men and women include social proof from both, for example.
Consider how you can extract the most possible value from any social proof assets. If you approach a customer about a short word-based testimonial why not also see if you can record a short video or podcast with them about how and why they use your product – what problem it solves for them? Then you have social proof for people already on your homepage as well as a video or podcast that can be shared on social media and funnel people to your website.
Make sure you think about when customers need to see social proof – just having one page of ‘customer stories’ might not be sufficient, if your customers want to see social proof on your homepage or features page, before they decide whether to move deeper into your site.

Internal documentation about processes

Any documents meant for company eyes only, ranging from what holidays people can take, over-time, expenses, and so on, to ‘how to’ documentation about your social media strategy, message architecture, branding information, and so on

This content is largely about saving your company time and money in terms of processes. Every internal query you have to answer about holidays or expenses, or how to use this piece of software, say, costs you money. So get your answers to these queries down in one place so you don’t have to keep repeating yourself.

Even if you only employ occasional freelancers, having good internal documentation will save you time and money. If you commission an illustrator to draw you a couple of animations they need guidance on your company messaging and visual branding. A virtual PA who helps you with organisational tasks needs to understand how your company works and what matters, so they know when to get your opinion on something and when to go with their own judgement.

Companies scaling quickly also need to extract information from the brains of a small team of people so it can benefit new team members (and the company as a whole). It isn’t fair to expect new members of the team to do marketing, social media, support, or whatever, as faultlessly as your initial team can. They need proper advice, guidelines and examples they can refer to - not a quick onboarding tour and job done.

Think about creating a wiki or perhaps a folder on a file sharing service like Dropbox for key team sections like: who we are & what we do, overall messaging, visual branding, social media, marketing, support, software, holidays, overtime & pay, and so on. However:

make sure that someone has overall responsible for creating and curating this resource otherwise it will end up as an outdated mess
consider what matters most to your company for internal documentation: privacy, a good search function, ability to share…. there are a lot of solutions on the market so a ‘must have’ list will help you winnow down the contenders

Support your customers (not your internal lobbyists)

You want all your content to work together to support and nudge customers through your sales funnel. This way what content you do have is supercharged and offers the best return possible for your investment.

However, there are a few reason why your content might hinder growth rather than drive it, including:

you don’t understand who your customers are and what they need
your feel pressured by team members/departments to create certain content
you feel that websites should be arranged in a certain way (or the many people you consult have strong views on how a website should look, often opposing!)
you have something really important to say about your business and that deserves top billing

Stand tall. You need to reject these pressures. Unless you give your customers what they need then your company – and every individual and team within it – is going to suffer.

So, think about your customers and think about how they need to journey through your content (and that includes social media, print content, phone calls, text messages, and so on). Then, and only then, will you start creating content that will drive growth.

Let’s look at a website that pays attention to what a customer needs rather than simply ‘broadcasting’ information about the company.

We’ll take the site for a test drive: I’m a CTO with responsibility for overseeing our company’s transition to an agile methodology. I’ve made a business case for getting some external training. Now I’m seeing what options are out there before pitching to our CEO.

I’ve landed on this page. There’s a great big button at the top that says ‘training: when you need to develop new skills’. Just what I wanted. I select this and am taken part way down the homepage to a section that tells me:

whether we need training rather than coaching
why training will benefit our company
an example of courses offered

This section answers some of my questions. I’ve read enough that I want to find out more – so I select the handily placed ‘find out more’ link.

Now I’m on a training landing page. What have we here?

More content about why training is helpful
An ‘action’ plan that invites me to browse training courses by subject or structure. If I see something I like I can schedule a course without any more ado. If I think we need something more customised I can schedule an initial consultation

Useful. I browse by subject and spot the perfect course: “Making Your Agile Transition Work”. This landing page tells me:

The course is right for you, if…
What you will learn…
What we will do

This is sounding great. Just what we need. The ‘schedule a course’ button is obvious and tempting. I go for it.

Now I see this:

You’d like to schedule some on-site training? Fantastic! I look forward to talking to you about working together. But first, I need to ask you a handful of questions in order to see how our schedules fit and to be able to answer (probably) the most urgent question you have: how much will it cost me?

Cool. I know our budget is realistic but I need to see the sums. I love that I’m not wasting time sending this guy loads of query emails as well. I answer all the questions: I’m led through them so there’s no problem. I particularly like question 12: What, if anything, would you like tell me that I haven’t asked you about?

I’m going to press ‘submit’. We are go!

The site author knows exactly what we need: I know exactly what they offer.

Job done.

I can’t believe how easy that was.

So, to recap:

The site author has given a lot of thought to what his customers need and when. The homepage looks very simple (almost like a one-pager) but as you get deeper into the site you come across a lot of useful information. When you need it. And the author didn’t feel the need to link to all of it from the homepage!
The site author hasn’t got bogged down in ‘web conventions’ – there is no top navigation, for example
The site author has also give a lot of thought to what he needs (fewer exploratory and explanatory emails, phone calls and miscellaneous time wasting enquiries). So his web content is making him more productive.
Although his content probably took a lot of work up front, in terms of researching his target audience and thinking strategically about what content they need when (i.e. how they will journey through his site), his hard work is paying dividends now. I bet his conversion rate is pretty good.

As a contrast, let’s have a quick look at a website that isn’t so committed to the concept of the user journey.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that big corporations like this one have their work cut out: there are a lot of different customer groups potentially interested in what they are doing. However, a quick glance at the homepage gives me the impression that it has been carved up to satisfy the broadcast requirements of the company rather than to satisfy customers.

The homepage is heavy on links to PR releases. The financial team have managed to get seven clustered links included. Further down we have publications and videos where the marketing and social media team get to showcase their stuff. And we have a ‘traditional’ top and secondary navigation and an enormous footer menu.

Presumably that’s at least three or four teams in the company that are happy-ish. They have real estate on the homepage. The most important page right?

However, are customers happy? I wonder. Let’s take the site for a test drive. I’m a student studying biochemistry. I’m interested in a career in healthcare.

I know about the company so I google them and land on their homepage. My eyes are immediately drawn to the carousel. I try and read the content but then it disappears to be replaced by something else. Oh well. I look down the page to the left and see a list of press releases. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the titles are a bit boring. Not quite what I’m looking for anyway.

I glance to the right. Financial stuff. I don’t want that either. I look down again. I’m getting a bit fed up of all these links. I’m half tempted to watch the video. But the title isn’t very appealing. ‘A web series about diversity’. Has this been made for the regulators or something? Maybe I’m being too cynical. Maybe it is targeted at people like me. I don’t know.

I decide to scroll up again. Ah ha. There is a small link for ‘applicants’ that I missed before. I was too focused on the carousel. But I’m not an applicant. I’m just kind of interested. Gah. This is complicated. I hover over it. There’s a ‘get to know us’ link. Right, that sounds more like it.

I select this page and read the introductory text on this landing page. They are very keen to talk about themselves. I get the feeling they are not so focused on people like me. There’s not a single ‘you’ in sight. I’m not sure what to do next. There’s a main video but it is a grey box with a play symbol and no title. That’s not very helpful.

There are ‘facts and figures’ about the company that I can hardly read they are so small, off to the right. There’s a small video to the right that just looks like general advertising. Then I have some more choices in a menu to the left.

I guess I should watch the video. But wait. Maybe the ‘working at’ the company link might be more interesting. Gosh, this is more complicated than I expected. I’m a millennial. I’m used to the web being easy.

So, to recap:

This site has got rather bogged down in a ‘let’s talk about us’ mentality that can make life difficult for readers
Internal teams, I suspect, are quite keen to have their own real estate on the website and this means customer need is not always given priority
With so many links on the homepage – and no real calls to action: big signposts that say to a customer ‘select this perfect link for you!’ – customers can get confused about what they should do next
That sense of being led through a website in a useful and helpful way is absent – you’re left to make a lot of decisions based on sometimes not very helpful information
And we’ve not even talked about the browsing experience on tablets or mobiles

These two website examples should give you a better understanding of what I mean when I say that you should try and give a customer the information they need when they need it. And if you get a ‘journey’ approach right, then your customer will have an easy and frictionless journey through your content, meaning:

They find the information they need
They even find information they didn’t know they needed (but that you wanted them to see)
They feel smart and happy
They might even consider buying from you - happy days!

Content strategy deliverables and takeaways in this post:

Core content strategy statement
Exploration of ‘neglected’ pages
User journey explanation

Make your tech startup stand out using a message architecture

Fri, 08 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Make your tech startup stand out using a message architecture

You want people to visit your site and immediately get a strong sense of who you are, what you do, what matters to you, and why they should choose you and not a competitor. When companies get it right, site visitors are left feeling clever, impressed and with a strong a desire to purchase your products. When companies get it wrong, visitors are left feeling confused, bored or slightly stupid, and are much more likely to leave or to proceed with caution. In this post, I’ll look at how developing a message architecture will help you successfully communicate key qualities about your company to potential customers.

Don’t look like every other tech startup

Some tech startup websites fail to successfully communicate what makes their company unique. They often hazily communicate that they are a technologically-minded and approachable kind of company. Apart from that, they don’t really stand out from each other in terms of design or content. I find myself forgetting who they are and what they do about 20 seconds after leaving their site. And this is a missed opportunity. With so many people competing for the attention of your customers, you can’t afford to under utilise what should give you a competitive advantage – your content.

Take email service Mad Mimi for example. Their website immediately gives a sense of who they are, what they do, and why they are different through a clever use of design and content. Even if you don’t like their website, you will most likely remember it – and that offers Mad Mimi a distinct competitive advantage.

You might not like their style, but the Mad Mimi website stands out.

How you can make yourself stand out with content strategy

There are lots of ways to make your company stand out, but in this blog post I’m going to concentrate on developing a message architecture, because this tackles the issue of your startup’s identity at a fundamental level.

Content strategist Margot Bloomstein defines a message architecture as:

A hierarchy of communication goals; as a hierarchy, they’re attributes that appear in order of priority, typically in an outline.

All these ‘attributes’ are actionable, which means that you can communicate them through your content. For example, if one your attributes is that you’re ‘trusted’ you can show this through case studies, customer testimonials and customer logos, by clean, measured copy, by 404 pages that are useful rather than witty, and by support documents that are detailed, clearly laid out and informative.

By developing and implementing a message architecture across all your content, you’ll ensure that your customers quickly gain an impression of what matters to your company as they browse your site. Rather than being forgettable, you’ll begin to stand out because customers quickly understand who you are and why they should care.

A message architecture is different from brand values. The latter is more an internal document, while the former are about how you communicate with your target audience.

Developing a message architecture through card sorting

You can develop a message architecture in a number of ways, including card sorting, through a Venn diagram or through a big argument fuelled by too much coffee (not recommended).

I’m going to look in more detail at card sorting, which is my preferred option, because you get everyone in a room, thinking hard about what matters to the company, debating it with colleagues, and reaching some kind of consensus (this has always happened in my experience; sometimes it can take time though!).

You’ll need someone to act as a facilitator for the session, who will jump in with targeted questions at key moments (why did you choose x rather than y?; what does x mean to you?). I’d recommend bringing in someone external to your organisation who won’t let the session be derailed by internal politics. However, if you don’t want to do that choose someone who is good at listening, but who has the authority to gently lead the discussion in a productive direction.

How a message architecture helped one tech company stand out

Andreas Voniatis, founder of maths-driven digital agency Artios, talks about his experience:

Developing a message architecture gave me a lot of confidence that our new website was going to work. If there is no thinking involved in the first instance then copywriters and designers will have to make it up. You, as a business owner, should be responsible for ensuring that the necessary thinking process takes place before you bring in other people. After all, it affects everything on your website and beyond: the colour palette, the font, the images, the style of the words, everything to do with your marketing collateral. It’s unthinkable not to have this thinking in place before a major web project begins.

The card sorting exercise also made me question a lot of things: do we really want to be seen this way? How can we stand out from competitors? For example, nearly every agency says they are data-driven but through developing a message architecture we realised we were actually maths-driven. This is a point of differentiation from our competitors and has caught the attention of prospective customers.

Digital agency Artios communicate that they are mathematical – and this makes them stand out from the crowd

Running a card sorting session

I’m indebted to Margot Bloomstein for much of this information below and would highly recommend her book Content Strategy at Work.

Right, let’s get going. In advance of your meeting, write down actionable words that may relate to your company and industry (plus a few obvious ringers) on pieces of card that are the same size and colour. Here are a few ideas:

proactive	trusted	down-to-earth
practical	custom	innovative
customer-oriented	market-driven	professional
technological	visionary	tactical
responsive	consistent	savvy
friendly	high-quality	the thought leader
agile	approachable	welcoming
strategic	premium	cutting edge
national	detail oriented	accessible
responsive	in touch	assertive
progressive	modern	expensive
flexible	international	national
simple	serious	reliable
relationship-oriented	driven	experienced
smart	focused	structured
timely	pioneering	honest
pragmatic	collaborative	credible
rigorous	analytical	dynamic
connected	efficient	intelligent
engaging	versatile	fun

Create your categories

Using larger piece of card that are a different colour write down these words:

who we are
who we’re not
who we want to be

Get started

On the day, leave yourself about 1.5-2 hours for your card sorting session.

First, scatter the cards on a large table and start dividing them into the three categories mentioned above.

It doesn’t matter so much what the dictionary definition of a word is – it’s much more important what you think a word means. Discuss this with your colleagues. Some words can seem very similar in meaning but there will be subtle differences (for example, flexible and versatile).

This exercise is about working out how you want your tech company to be perceived by customers, so don’t get distracted by internal mission statements.

You don't have to do this card sorting exercise indoors!

Get categorising

Get rid of all the cards in the ‘who we’re not’ category.

Work out what qualities from the ‘who we are’ category you want to take into the ‘who we want to be’ category. This might be most of them. Don’t worry! Get rid of the qualities you don’t want to take with you.

Start grouping the qualities in your ‘who we want to be’ category – some might seem fairly similar (for example, professional, experienced, credible, trusted).

Decide which quality (or qualities) in a group are the ones that you most want to communicate to your customers.

List the remaining qualities in order of priority – you should aim to have about 5-9 cards left in a vertical list.

Congratulations! You now have a message architecture

You now have an actionable message architecture. Take a photo. Pin the cards to your wall or stick them to your computer. Refer to them a lot!

You can't be all things to all people – so what do you want to be?

What do you do now?

Now, you apply your message architecture to all your content. Either revisit existing content and tweak accordingly, or, if you’re starting from scratch, ensure your new content communicates your key messages.

This implementation stage can be challenging so you might want to bring in a strategy expert if you don’t have anyone suitable in-house.

Also, make sure your designer knows and supports your message architecture. There’s no point in your content producers going out of their way to show how approachable you are, if your designer favours a small paragraph text size and lots of images that take ages to load on mobile.

Concluding thoughts about developing a message architecture

By establishing a message architecture though a card sorting session, you’ll make sure that your startup stands out from the crowd and that customers know what makes you special. You’ll also discover who you are and why you’re different – something that isn’t always obvious when you’re head down building your MVP. Just make sure that your card sorting session is professionally conducted and taken (fairly) seriously by all involved. You don’t want it descending into a shouting match or a gossip session!

Writing an effective tech job description

Fri, 01 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Your team is your company’s greatest asset, so it makes sense to recruit people who will love your company, stick around and do some fantastic work. So, how do you recruit these great people? Usually, through some kind of content. You might write a job advert, a blog post, send out some tweets, perhaps send a message down a newsletter. Fab! But not so fab if this content puts off great candidates while attracting poor ones. In this post I’ll look at how you can use some content techniques to write job adverts that work for your company.

1. Know what you want to communicate about your company

Work out what key messages about your company you want to communicate to candidates. Are you fun, friendly and relaxed? Reliable, helpful and considerate? Fast moving, technological and social?

Be truthful rather than aspirational – and be honest. If you have a 95% male team that eats pizza on Friday and considers weekly football tournaments a perk, then you are not ‘diverse’ or ‘approachable’. Of course, you might want to be more diverse, but just saying you are to try and lure in someone under false pretences is not a productive way forward.

When I was writing a job description recently for independent ecommerce platform SendOwl I made a list of what I thought defined them: they are friendly, flexible, and mature.

With this is mind, I led with this elevator pitch:

“This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to do what they love (Rails) without being distracted by commuting, long hours and office politics.

We mainly work remotely, we get the job done but largely work when we want to, and we won’t get snarky if your kid is sick or you need a day off to argue with estate agents or builders (it happens to the best of us).

This job won’t suit you if you mainly care about money, VC networking and free pizza (best of luck to you; it’s just not what we’re about).”

The friendly bit is communicated by the informal style. The flexible bit is shown by examples of when they are flexible, and also by the relaxed syntax. The mature angle is covered by the mention of children (very rare in tech job descriptions) and also by the negative comment about free pizza (which tends to appeal to a younger crowd who will swap free food for long work hours).

2. Show don’t tell

This is a useful maxim no matter what content you’re writing. It basically means that instead of writing ‘The boy was scared’ you instead show he’s scared: ‘His teeth were chattering; his face paled as he clung onto the chair, as if to defend himself from some unknown force’ (Stephen King, eat your heart out).

The way you write can be just as important as what you write – so show don't tell! [photo credit]

Showing is generally more effective, engaging and believable than simply telling. So, if you want to communicate you are friendly, don’t just say ‘We’re friendly, we promise!’. Instead, show you’re friendly by writing an approachable job advert. Avoid jargon. Use flowing or shorter sentences rather than complex ones reminiscent of EU reports on tax management. Select short paragraphs rather than long, stodgy paragraphs that are hard to read. Use examples to prove your points.

When I was writing the SendOwl advert I mainly used 1-2 sentence paragraphs plus bullet points, and I backed up claims. So when I said we offered a sensible work-life balance (that ‘sensible’ resonating with mature candidates again), I then immediately specified: you’ll be asked to work 7.5 hours a day and you’ll get 5 weeks holiday.

3. Choose your words carefully

Although it’s a bit dated now, plenty of tech world job descriptions went through a phase where everyone needed to be a ‘coding ninja,’ ‘rockstar’ ‘or customer support hero’.

A 'rockstar' job advert will only appeal to certain types of people

Personally, this type of language makes me wince, but then I’m English.

More seriously, this type of language will appeal to certain people and not to others. People with a decent sized ego are more likely to react to this kind of language: ‘Of course I’m a rockstar. Yeah!’.

Or this type of language could appeal more to young people up for the kind of culture this language implies (at a guess, pizza, beer and ping pong).

If you want to attract brilliant people with slightly less confidence, older people or people who didn’t necessarily like cartoons as a kid, then you might want to use different language. However, if you want to attract (over) confident whizz kids you may be on the right track.

Here is a perfect example of an advert that will only attract a certain kind of person (the kind you probably don’t want working for your company):

Who says that sexism is dead?

I’m not sure how ‘top notch’ and ‘world class’ an agency is that can come up with such an unashamedly sexist job advert, but there you are.

Even if you don’t use such obviously divisive language as ‘brogrammer’ be sparing in your use of such terms as ‘dominant’, ‘competitive,’ ‘stress-resilient’ and ‘superior’. Taken together, your advert may in fact be shouting WORK HERE AND AGRESSION WILL BE AN INTEGRAL PART OF YOUR LIFE.

Even a term like ‘hacker’ may not resonate with candidates in the way you expect, particularly if it means to you: ‘I’m a cool anti-establishment kind of person’. This is the story of how Buffer attracted a broader range of candidates when they changed some job descriptions from ‘hacker’ to ‘developer’.

4. Don’t forget to use gender neutral pronouns

Unless you want to exclude at least 50% of possible candidates, don’t use ‘he’ in your job advert and wonder why no women applied. Here are a number of companies that made that mistake.

"We want a man to work here because everyone knows women can't code" – this is the subtext of only using a male pronoun

Maybe women shouldn’t be so quick to take offence though, when it was just a silly mistake? Hum. I’ve been inadvertently referred to as a man many times in my career (I’m looking at you RBS and Strava) and it always makes me feel like I’m an outsider, who shouldn’t really be doing something.

Would I apply for a job with a company that made me feel like this? Nope.

Of course, if you don’t want any women to apply then using ‘he’ in your advert is a terrific way of putting them off so you can continue your ‘bromance’ paradise for ever (or until you go out of business).

If you want to attract a mature developer who wants a good work-life balance then putting up an advert at Google Campus or a tech incubator is probably not going to work.

Equally, posting a tech ad to sites or mailing lists with an almost exclusively male/white/Western readership is probably also not going to reach other types of candidates.

Be careful if you catch yourself thinking ‘if this candidate was good they would be on this site or mailing list’. This just means you secretly want to recruit someone ‘like you’. This might be true, but if so, I worry for the health of your business.

Ideally you want people who share your company values, but who otherwise have a broad range of views on life, the universe and everything.

Don’t forget that even 140 characters is enough to attract or repel potential candidates. When I was advertising the SendOwl post on social media I led with ‘Friendly and flexible Rails job’ rather than simply saying: ‘We’re looking to hire a senior/mid-level Rails dev’.

The latter isn’t bad, but by prioritising a candidate’s experience you are communicating that this is what really matters to you. This initial message might not resonate with highly skilled candidates who get imposter’s syndrome, or who want to work for a company that doesn’t feel so ‘graded’ and corporate. First impressions matter.

Think carefully about how you advertise your job on Twitter to attract great candidates

6. Challenge your assumptions

There’s no point attracting a wide range of great candidates if you don’t treat their applications fairly. In an ideal world we’d all have an amazing ability to neutralise our assumptions, cultural alignment and life experiences so we can treat everyone the same. However, this isn’t an ideal world and we don’t. It’s nothing really to be ashamed of (it happens to all of us), but it is something that you should spend some time thinking about. For example:

“…Research from Yale that had scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the ‘males’ in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.” - Scientific American.

Don't let your assumptions and prejudices make you miss out on some great people. [image credit]

Don’t be that man or woman who turns down a great candidate because of your internal and often unconscious bias. You’ll miss out on some great people.

Conclusion

Words matter so spend time crafting a job advert that appeals to the kind of candidates you want. Make sure you know what you want to communicate about your company, so candidates know how your company is different, and why they might be a great fit. Remember that it’s not just what you say in a job advert that matters but how you say it. Stilted language, cliches and long paragraphs will quickly contradict any promises you make about working in a fast-paced and creative environment. Most of all, be prepared to spent time not only writing your perfect job advert but also promoting it, and in fairly considering potential candidates who take the time to apply.

This blog post was inspired by a very interesting discussion on Ada's List – thanks to everyone involved!

Redesigning Vimcasts: did we achieve our goals?

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year I worked with Drew Neil on the Vimcasts redesign. We had three main goals: to increase engagement with the website by making the content easier to navigate on all devices, to increase traffic through a broader social media strategy and to give more visibility to training, publications and pro-screencasts. So, did we achieve our goals? In this post I compare data from before and after the launch.

###Goal 1. Increase engagement with the website by making the content easier to navigate on all devices.

What we did:

added search
added a categories page
switched from a rails-based CMS to a static site generator to reduce page load time
gave the homepage a cleaner look so people can easily view the latest blog posts, screencast or do a general search for what interests them most
made the website responsive
added more metadata to screencasts so viewers could make an informed decision about when and how to watch them
added related content to screencast and article pages
categorised all screencasts and articles to make it easier to find similar content

Here’s what happened:

####The audience engaged more with the website There was a noticeable increase in the number of pages that visitors browsed in one session as well as the time they spent on site. Despite a slight decrease in overall site visitors, the total number of pages visited increased from 168,100 in the three months preceding the launch to 199,000 pageviews in the three months afterwards. We saw an increase from 1.99 to 2.48 pages/session, while average session duration went up from 2m59s to 3m23s. Looking at Google Analytics’ behavior flow we saw more people interacting once and then twice with the website and fewer drops offs.

This increase in engagement was apparent on all devices. For mobile users, we saw an increase from 1.95 to 2.34 pages/session; for tablet users, we saw an increase from 2.52 to 3.17 pages/session. The site-wide bounce rate for mobile users also slightly decreased from 71% to 67.6% and for tablet users from 62% to 58%.

####Potential Vimcast fans slightly preferred the new homepage The homepage bounce rate dropped from 49% to 43% – still plenty of room for improvement, but a move in the right direction. The exit rate dropped from 42.98% to 35.65%. The number of pages/session also increased to 4.08 from 2.82 and the avg. session duration increased to a respectable 6.10sec from 4.51sec.

####The site speed increased The average page load time decreased from 7.65secs to 3.68secs.

####My thoughts The data is encouraging: there has been a measurable increase in engagement with the website on all devices. There is still room for improvement though. There is too little prioritisation of content on the homepage, meaning that some visitors are unsure what action to take.

Also, are there other factors that could explain these results? I considered whether people were confused by the new website and clicked through to find what they wanted. I also considered whether visitors landed on the homepage rather than the deprioritised archive page and clicked through the site to find relevant content. However, these suggestions are a bit pessimistic. To continue moving through a site people usually need to have faith that they’ll find the information they need. Confused visitors tend to leave. We also actually saw a decrease in the number of visitors landing on the hompepage (28.85% to 23.55%) – more visitors were landing directly on screencast or article pages and then moving around the site.

###Goal 2. Increase traffic through a broader social media strategy

What we did:

added share buttons to screencast and article pages
set up a Google+ account for Vimcasts

What we failed to do:

set up a Facebook account – there had been some Vimcasts references on Facebook
use more images on social media
draw up a proper social media strategy

Here’s what happened:

Not a lot. The Google+ account is slowly gaining traction (720 views) and people are sharing and liking the posts. Twitter remains a popular way for people to engage with Vimcasts – there are currently 3,900 followers, which is 400 more than at the end of January. However, the number of people finding Vimcasts though social media has remained fairly constant.

####My thoughts We’ve probably got the results we deserve in terms of this goal. The share buttons are not being used much. This might be because they are at the end of screencast (and article) pages and only some people will see them. It might also be because they are just above related content meaning visitors are presented with two possible actions - and choose the latter. A possible solution is to move the share buttons to the top (or side) of the article and screencast pages.

We also need to draw up a sustainable social media strategy. Drew has been working on a new business idea so it’s not been easy for him to run several projects at the same time. Interestingly, a recent post with an image that Drew retweeted from his personal account did very well with 26 stars and 19 retweets. Perhaps we should consider using more images to advertise posts? It’s easy for text and link only posts to go unnoticed in people’s busy timelines.

I’m not convinced it’s worth setting up a Facebook account. With limited resources we should probably concentrate on the two channels that our tech-savvy crowd tend to prefer. Google+ hasn’t proven it’s value yet, but I wonder if publishing there might help our search rankings. Certainly, our organic search traffic is up slightly, although this could just be because the site architecture and metadata is better. I’m not sure: best practice for search engine optimisation seems to change so quickly and opaquely.

###Goal 3. Give more visibility to training, publications and pro-screencasts

What we did

added permanent links on the homepage
added training category to main navigation
redesigned existing landing pages and added new ones
added a banner at the top of key pages that could be used to advertise the latest paid product

Here’s what happened:

It’s slightly hard to be measure because Drew has been promoting his Core Vim Course, a new product. He hasn’t scheduled any Core Vim classes. So, numbers are down in terms of people looking at the Core Vim Class landing page – understandably, because you can’t book one. However, the bounce rate for this redesigned page is down 8% and people are staying on the site for an average of 2.65 pages/sessions after entering on this page. Perhaps they see enough to make them want to stick around. The Core Vim Course has also done better than Drew expected and Drew’s book Practical Vim continues to sell well.

####My thoughts There’s still room for improvement in terms of the homepage and in terms of optimising key landing pages. At the moment, people can’t use PayPal to buy the Core Vim Course and Classes. This is affecting the conversion rate, among other factors.

To gain a better understanding of how people interact with the paid options on the website, I need to track people through the sales funnel more effectively. This is something I’ll be looking at in the near future.

###Need help working out how you can improve your digital content? Get in touch! Or you can find out more about how content strategy can help your business.

Content Strategy Guide for Startups and Small Businesses

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Many startups and small growing businesses overlook the importance of content, because they are focused on other matters. But content is essential to communicating your product, and reducing the cost of servicing your customers. Content strategy will help you make the most of your content. It is “the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content” (Kristina Halvorson). It can stop you worrying that you don’t have the ‘right’ content or ‘enough’ content. Done well, it drives traffic to your website and makes you money through improved branding, social engagement, usability and SEO.

Content strategy can help you solve these problems:

We want to grow faster and we think good content might help
Our app design is great but users are getting stuck on certain tasks
We find it hard to get our team, including freelancers, to produce content in a consistent style
We want to improve user engagement with our website but don’t know where to start
We want to differentiate ourselves from our competitors to promote brand loyalty and increase sales
Our content marketing feels uneven and we’re not sure it’s offering a good return on investment
We’re not sure if customers understand how to use our product, or that we’re reaching everyone who might be a prospective customer
Our landing pages look good but don’t convert very well
How do we get good content when we don’t have a copywriter on the team?
How do we tell if a freelancer is any good?

Read the full content strategy guide to learn how you can use content to solve these common business problems.

Book review of 'Content Strategy for Mobile'

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In A Book Apart’s Content Strategy for Mobile (2012), Karen McGrane discusses why and how to get your content ready for different devices, platforms, screen sizes, and resolutions. She argues for making our content adaptive to mobile, and for content parity across different devices and experiences, because we can’t know what a user wants by screen size alone. This book is a great read if you need clarity on why you should make your content mobile-friendly, or if you need tips about how to do it. For those that like dissembling things to see how they work, you’ll need more than this book alone.

Read my review on the Content Strategy Forum

Contented Strategy Blog

How good is your content? Find out with a content audit

How good is your content? Find out with a content audit

Audit all your content

Note down your key performance indicators (KPIs)

Measure basic quantitative metrics

Grade content using a scoring system

Add ‘recommended actions’

Draw your conclusions

Implement the easiest and most powerful changes

What next?

How to measure and improve your SaaS content - and why you should bother

How to measure and improve your SaaS content (and why you should bother)

How do you tell if your content is working effectively?

The pain point approach: best when you know something isn't working

The content audit approach: best when you want an overall idea of whether your content works

What makes good content for SaaS products?

1. Get outside your own head

Send out a survey

Talk to your customers

Raid your support section

Snoop on your competitors

2. Unleash your customer knowledge

3. Tell a good story about your product

PAS technique

FAB technique

A word of caution

Keep a note of what content converted you

How much content do you need?

Your content isn't just your homepage

What now?

How to write a book when you don't have any time. By a working mum.

How to write a book

When you don’t have any time

Be realistic about your timeframe

Accept that 20 minutes is a wonderful opportunity

Bin multitasking

Advice from author Ceri Radford

Think about your book while doing other things

Treat yourself to quality writing time

Advice from literary consultant and author Claire Wingfield

Get reviewers or a mentor on board

Plan for ongoing research

Embrace ebooks

Accept that marketing will be a challenge

Start writing

Focus on content strategy rather than marketing and grow your startup

Start with content strategy – not marketing

1.Listen to your customers to be able to sell to your customers

Create a user survey

Listen to customer support

Interview your customers

Try the corridor test

2. Create an audience research document that highlights your main findings

3. Make your audience research actionable

A sample persona

4. Understand what content your different personas need from you

Good luck

We want to grow our startup faster and think content strategy will help

We want to grow our startup faster and think content strategy will help

What you’ll learn in this blog post:

Why it matters:

Get the basics sorted first

Provide a consistently good experience

Checkout pages

Knowledge base content

Onboarding content

Customer support emails, phone calls and chat

Less prestigious website pages

Microcopy and UI text

Social proof

Internal documentation about processes

Support your customers (not your internal lobbyists)

Content strategy deliverables and takeaways in this post:

Make your tech startup stand out using a message architecture

Make your tech startup stand out using a message architecture

Don’t look like every other tech startup

How you can make yourself stand out with content strategy

Developing a message architecture through card sorting

How a message architecture helped one tech company stand out