1) Content strategists come from all types of companies and roles.
At lunch one day I sat between a writer at AutoTrader.com and a UX designer from RetailMeNot. Prior to the conference I believed I’d be one of a handful of attendees without the official “content strategist” title, but in fact, I met few people with that title. Often times, those doing content strategy serve their firms in a variety of other roles and help to evangelize content strategy in addition to core responsibilities. Judging by how many companies sponsored the conference or someone’s attendance, it was also clear to me that content strategy is gaining legitimacy with company stakeholders.
2) We need to connect stakeholders with users.
Several Confab attendees and speakers listed executive team participation in usability testing as a major professional breakthrough. In fact, one speaker noted her firm had scaled back the high volume of usability testing in favor of high quality usability testing — all executive team members must sit in on a session once per quarter. Executives are more likely to support content strategy initiatives when they physically see their users experience and interact with their content.
3) It is critical that we define marketing objectives in advance and measure our results.
This was a theme in several sessions, but Jonathon Colman, Principal Experience Architect at REI, hammered it home. In his presentation, he pointed out that strategists talk often about content quality, but data literacy should also be a core skill for content gurus. According to Colman, data will help guide our content decisions and will subsequently help others trust our results.
4) “Don’t let the killer idea destroy all that is good.”
This quote was one of Denise McKee’s three commandments. I also think of this as the defense against the “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” statements. In a company with highly creative and energetic people, you are likely to do a lot of brainstorming and idea generation. That’s great! However, don’t run with an idea unless you can directly connect the idea to your goals and objects. Cool ideas for the sake of cool ideas are a waste of time and money.
5) Speak the way your users speak.
Confab ’13 screamed, “Be authentic!” in each session – moreover, it employed strategists to have empathy and know their audience. Tiffani Jones Brown of Pinterest told attendees that she goes through pages and pages of user feedback and emails to get a sense of their voice — how do they talk about the site? What do they call this action or idea? What do they think the future Pinterest should include? As writers and content providers we are often so busy communicating what we know that we forget to stop and ask, how will my users hear this message?