How Experiences Apply to Content

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Content Strategy for Professionals: Engaging Audiences

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Northwestern University

Content Strategy for Professionals: Engaging Audiences

314 notes

Cours 1 sur 5 dans Specialization Content Strategy for Professionals

In this course, professionals at all levels of an organization will learn the best ways to engage an audience they want and need by smartly implementing their important, strategic stories and information and by using proven tools and techniques to enhance an audience’s experiences and interest. Content Strategy is a conversation that provides thought-leadership. It starts a “conversation” with users and stakeholders inside and outside an organization. Conversations are the natural way people think about complex issues. Conversations also enable people to develop “stories,” which lead to understanding and helpful mental pictures. Content Strategy practitioners are at all levels of the best enterprises – in all departments and sectors from the top leader to the newcomer in the ranks. In this complex information age, forward-thinking employees know that if they and their organizations are to thrive, they need to go beyond their job descriptions. They must master the most demanding communications frontier – creating engaging, strategic, honest stories and information that is valued by their most important audiences. In turn that will make their enterprise stand out. Regardless of their area of work, position or expertise, Content Strategy practitioners know how to use words, pictures, video, and social and mobile media to interact with their most important constituents with trustable, actionable information that the audience values and will use. The strategic content they produce enhances the user’s lives and deepens their understanding and engagement with the organization. Guest lecturers in this course include: -- Rachel Davis Mersey, Associate Professor, Medill, Northwestern -- Ed Malthouse, Theodore R. and Annie Laurie Sills Professor of Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill, Northwestern -- Bobby Calder, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing & Director of the Center for Cultural Marketing, Kellogg, Northwestern -- Steven Duke, Associate Professor, Medill, Northwestern -- Janice Castro, Assistant Professor Emerita, Medill, Nothwestern

À partir de la leçon

Experiences and Voice

Module 3 is all about using content “experiences” to engage the people you want to reach and the fundamentals of creating an editorial voice.

What Are Experiences?5:10

Why Do Experiences Matter?3:05

Understanding the Experiences4:34

How Experiences Apply to Content7:59

Rencontrer les enseignants

John Lavine
Founder, Professor and Director, Media Management Center
Candy Lee
Professor
Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
Randy Hlavac
Lecturer, Medill IMC; CEO, Marketing Synergy Inc

[MUSIC]

So okay, the sort of central question,

how do I apply experiences to content strategy?

>> Experiences are applied at three levels.

The message level, the distribution level, and the strategic level.

The goal is to be strategic.

And application at the message and

the distribution level reinforce the overall strategic approach.

For the content strategist, the first thing you wanna think about is

what stories am I gonna tell and what stories am I not going to tell?

If we think about our case study,

an expanding company that's building lots of new plants and it's proud of that fact.

Nonetheless, telling the story about opening a new plant is probably not going

to drive the experiences that you want for your audience, but if you got a customer

who's recently gotten a promotion, in part now dresses well using your fashions,

now that's a story that you do want to tell because it reinforces this

inspiration, aspiration experience that you're trying to drive.

Now in telling the stories, you've got some choices on how you do it.

You can tell it as a just plain facts case or

you can enhance it with story telling arts.

You can make some simple choices.

Are we going to tell this story in text, or

are we going to use something like a photo montage?

When you move up to the distribution level you're now thinking about how

all these messages, all these stories come together on any given channel.

As a content strategist, you're not gonna do this just one way.

You're gonna have a Twitter account.

You're gonna have a YouTube channel.

You're gonna put out press releases.

You're gonna send customer emails.

You might have a magazine or a brochure.

And what you have to do is make sure that all the messages, all the stories on

each of these individual channels matches the experience you're trying to deliver.

>> So if I summarize this thus far, I'm making men's clothes.

I'm in the company.

I just built a new factory.

That's what I want.

What you're saying really is no, no, no, no, no.

Think about at the message level the audience.

>> Right.

>> What experience matters for the audience.

That has no meaning.

What does have meaning is a story about someone rising in the organization,

who's a young man wearing our clothes.

>> Right. >> And tell it, then, at the distribution

level where, when and how that young man and other young men will be.

If that's the message level and

the distribution level, what's the strategic level?

>> The strategic level is where it all comes together and

this is where the content strategist really comes into his or her own.

This is where you wanna make sure that

all of your channels are delivering the same message in the same way.

You wanna be rigorous about applying the concept statement

that you came up with earlier.

All of this will pull it together at the strategic level.

Let's take a look at some examples of all the things I've been talking about,

the message level, the distribution level and even the strategic level.

First at the message level, let's take a look at these two Canadian newspapers.

This was in 2006, it was the day that the Canadian hockey

team had lost all chance of getting a medal in the 2006 Olympics.

And on that very same day the women skaters and

the women skiers took two golds and two silver medals.

The newspaper on the left took a real just-the-facts-man

approach as you can see.

Serious, somber, not particularly engaging.

The newspaper on the right clearly they were thinking they wanted to drive,

talk about it and share experience.

That headline is a headline to debate over,

to talk about over at the water cooler.

They focused on their message, we want our

readers to talk about the things we write about and they stayed on it.

Now, that's at the message level.

The editors of both papers had exactly the same material to work with, and

chose two different ways to do it.

Now let's move to an example from the US, at the product level.

This newspaper wanted to focus on the looks out for

my interests experience and it does it throughout the paper in every section and

in as many stories as it possibly can.

Let's look at a non content company.

We saw Apple's ad, we know that they focus on simplicity so

let's look at all the ways they do it.

The message level and content would be comparable to

the individual design elements and their products, and everything is simple.

If we compare product components to the message level,

they do it with every component.

Look at the way the power cord plugs into a MacBook.

It's a magnet.

You just slap it on there.

You don't have to fuss around trying to stick prongs into a slot.

That's kind of the message level.

The product itself is comparable to the distribution level in the content world.

So if we look at one of their products, the iPad, it's so

easy, it doesn't even come with an owner's manual.

Even a two year old can learn how to use it.

Then at the strategic level Apple pulls that all together.

Every element of design every product every customer contact walking into one of

their stores, looking at their ads, they are all simple, everything makes it easy.

And this differentiates them from their more complicated competitors.

>> Okay.

I get it.

And you've set up a sort of wonderful set of metaphors,

because the people taking this MOOC are in for-profit companies, and

not-for-profit, and giant, and small, all over the world.

And all of them have stories to tell, and

a whole lot of those stories are things that need to be told inside the company,

and then maybe outside to customers or supporters or funders or whomever.

And the examples you've given are great ways for

them to take this idea about experiences and

the message level and the distribution level and the strategic level home,

because everyone at home is gonna have some experience with those examples.

I think I hear you saying one more thing, and

the one more thing is that's the sort of recipe.

Those are the steps, but the powerful message is

content strategy is by itself, prioritized and important.

But if you really want it to have impact,

if you want to engage your audience with it.

At the beginning you said you create an experiences whether you want to or not.

So plan them, understand that audience,

create an experience which makes them want more and makes them want to come back.

And if you do that then you'll have great content and an experience and

the audience will give you more time and come back more often.

Is that the message we're trying to get across?

>> That's the message.

Experiences are powerful.

And they'll deliver for you as a company.

>> And for you, too.

[MUSIC]

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