This week I was treated to the inaugural London Agile Content Meetup. What was formerly the Content Strategy Meetup, has now become something a lot larger and more holistic – indicative of the way in which Content Marketing and Content Strategy has evolved.
The term ‘agile content’ is used to describe a strategy that allows a number of departments, teams, individuals and stakeholders to help with the content process in a dynamic way, as well as being produced with their individual goals in mind. In other words, content is now a collaborative effort which needs to be published across multiple platforms and tick a number of boxes. Agile content facilitates this, and this is what I learned.
Kate Towsey – An agile content case study: process, team, tools, and lessons
Agile content is not a circular process, it’s actually quite chaotic: researching, conceptualizing, and making all at the same time
Agile only works once everyone knows their roles
For The University Of Surrey Case Study – tone of voice is important when it comes to the user – show don’t tell. They spoke to the audience, not the stakeholder
Talk to your audience, get everyone to help with the creation process – this helps when making agile content
Helena Quartey – Make friends and influence people online
Get what you want to share in the hands of those that ‘get you’
Relationship building is key – reach out to the ‘super platforms’ e.g. Huffington Post
Make your content easy for search engines to find e.g. use Schema to create the same content but for different audiences around the world
Two ways towards a COPE strategy e.g. Technology driven and user driven
Understand the technical requirements for COPE, otherwise you’re stuck with what the developer wants
Andy Freeman – Gaudi and the marriage of content and design
Harmony is key for content and context
Embrace design principles e.g using colour to bring out structure
Spend time and understand your context e.g it has to be about people, the user
Content is an ethos and inspiration, not just bricks and mortar
Gaudi became a metaphor to explain to people about agile content – how design works with content
Rupert Bowater – Why trouble with triples? An introduction to the semantic web
We need machines to better understand our content and answer our questions i.e. things not strings
To do this, we need to think in triples – detailing a relationship between subject and object
Use Schema.org to mark up your content
Get better snippets and better social sharing
Create a richer context for your content so search engines understand this better
Cress Rolfe – Content, custom templates and formulaic experiences
Large scale sites must have structure for their content and user experience
Structure works, e.g WordPress themes work and are copied
Without structure, a typical evening’s browsing is quite fatiguing
We need to design the whole experience
Content needs to know itself so it can deliver better e.g. A personalised user journey and information architecture
There needs to be something more and we need to establish what our role is within that
Lana Gibson – Using search data to find out what our users want
User data is the voice of our audience – use it to measure performance
Start with user needs – look at what people are searching for e.g. More people search for ‘holiday entitlement’ rather than ‘annual leave’
Look at the holistic user journey and better understand what links to put where
Changes in traffic tells you about the need for that content or webpage
Rob Grundel – When is the song over? What digital teams can learn from music
What can we learn about the state of flow when it comes to content creation?
Start with listening and then build; listen to your teams and clients
Feedback is important, we need feedback to get better
Are you happy with the music your band are creating / the content your team is creating?
Most music is the same, you need to put your stamp on it to make it different
Sometimes you’re going to get it wrong, but if you’re in a supportive team then listen and redo
David Adams – Is Adaptive Content a holy grail or complicated fad?
Adaptive content is difficult and complicated but it’s valuable
Websites are conversations between you and your user, but normal conversations are not repeated like websites are, so websites need to learn and get better for the user
The clues you get from your users are subtle but effective e.g. browser choice, actions, time spent, location
These help us draw together an image – but we need to adapt what we are saying to each user – we need a CMS to deliver a unique experience
If you have a website where people only visit one page but lots of times, push them to visit more pages
David doubled total page views easily doing this – all you need is adaptive content
Presenting two case studies, 18 years apart, Paola showed how she organised Barclays’ products and services into customer goals and how she later pitched a similar idea to MOO
In 1995, Barclays wanted to put all their content online, she organised this into what people want rather than just detailing the information
She then got in touch with MOO after making a wedding invite for her friend. Her friend would not have used Moo because it didn’t have her friend’s needs on the Home page. This is a good example – think about your products in terms of user needs
Once she grouped this into user needs she established lots more product ideas for MOO
Don’t rely on Analytics to establish what your users need, speak to them
Content in an emergency is difficult but you can make it work
Give people specific roles to deliver what is needed at the time
The army made sure everyone knew what was going on during the Foot and Mouth crisis – they got people to say what they were going to do at the start of the day and what they had done at the end of the day
This made people more accountable for delivery
This Army did not start Agile content, but such techniques helped to sort a crisis
A big thank you to all of the speakers for sharing such great tips and the organisers for arranging everything and making it run smoothly.
Sign up now and get our free monthly email. It’s filled with our favourite pieces of the news from the industry, SEO, PPC, Social Media and more. And, don’t forget - it’s free, so why haven’t you signed up already?
An Award-Winning Digital Agency
We create cutting edge, award-winning digital campaigns.
Unlike 08 numbers, 03 numbers cost the same to call as geographic landline numbers (starting 01 and 02), even from a mobile phone. They are also normally included in your inclusive call minutes. Please note we may record some calls.
1 Comment