{"rowid": 87, "title": "Content Planning Demystified", "contents": "The first thing you learn as a junior editor is that you can\u2019t do everything yourself. You must rely on someone else to do at least part of what must be done: the long-range planning, the initial drafting or shooting or recording, the editing, the production, the final polish. All of those pieces of work that belong to someone else take quite a lot of time \u2014 days, weeks, sometimes months. If you\u2019re the sort of person who wrote college term papers the night before they were due, this can come as a bit of a shock. To my twenty-two-year-old self, it certainly did. \n\nIt turns out that the only real way to avoid a trainwreck with editorial work is to get ahead of the trouble, line everything up carefully, and leave oodles of room for all the pieces to connect on time. The same is true of content strategy, content planning, and just about everything to do with content on the web, except for the writing itself \u2014 and that, too, usually takes far longer than anyone expects. If you\u2019re not a professional editor and you suddenly find yourself dealing with content creation, you\u2019re almost certainly going to underestimate the time and effort involved, or to skip something important in the planning process that pops up to bite you later. \n\nWithout good content, it doesn\u2019t matter how well designed or coded your web project is, because it won\u2019t be doing the thing it\u2019s meant to do. And even if content is far from your specialty, you may well end up being the only one willing to coordinate it far enough in advance to avoid a chaotic ending. Whether you\u2019re hiring writers and editors for a big project, working with a small client, or coaxing some editorial help out of a co-worker, getting the planning work done correctly \u2014 and ahead of time \u2014 will allow you to orchestrate a glorious ballet of togetherness, instead of feverishly scraping together something to put on your site when the deadline looms. So get out the graph paper and the pocket protector, because we\u2019re going to go Full Nerd on this problem.\n\nKnow your poison\n\nAnyone who\u2019s seen a project delayed for six months by content trouble, or derailed by content that\u2019s bland and unhelpful, knows this stuff can make you feel like a dead sock. To get ahead of the problem, you\u2019re going to have to learn to spot common problems and plan your way around them. On web projects without a dedicated editorial lead, you\u2019re likely to encounter content that is:\n\n\n\tUseless \u2013 Content that doesn\u2019t serve your readers\u2019 needs in some way is pointless. And because it takes up your time and crowds out genuinely helpful things, it\u2019s actually damaging. The logic is simple: you can make content that\u2019s all about you, and that serves your stated messaging goals, but if no one is motivated to read it, it\u2019s a waste of everyone\u2019s time.\n\tBadly written \u2013 When you publish articles or instructions or other content that is too stiffly formal, overly wordy, hard to understand, offensive, unintentionally cheesy, or otherwise off in tone or style, you\u2019re doing two things. First, you\u2019re weakening the information you\u2019re trying to convey by making it obscure or annoying. Second \u2014 and this one is even more damaging \u2014 you\u2019re demonstrating bad taste. When you get the cultural elements of publishing wrong, you encourage your readers to believe that you either don\u2019t understand them or don\u2019t care about getting it wrong.\n\tGooey \u2013 Content strategists have been talking about structured content (that\u2019s chunks versus blobs) for years. If you\u2019re publishing more than a few dozen pages without thinking through the structure of your content, you\u2019re probably missing a chance to improve your long-term efficiency. If you\u2019re publishing more than a couple of thousand pages without taking care of your content structure, you\u2019re probably doing a lot more manual wrangling (or cumbersome CMS work) than you need to be, especially when it comes to cross-platform publishing.\n\tUnregulated \u2013 If you\u2019re not tracking what works and what doesn\u2019t \u2014 and especially if you don\u2019t know what \u201cworks\u201d means for your project or organization \u2014 you\u2019re almost certainly getting worse results than you should be, for more work.\n\tOverabundant \u2013 As demonstrated by the cinnamon challenge, too much of a delicious thing can be a giant and publicly embarrassing disaster. For most projects and organizations, if you\u2019re making more stuff than your readers can handle, or if you\u2019re spreading your creative and editorial resources too thinly, that\u2019s bad. Spammers, content farms, and barrel-bottom tabloids have their own special math, the side effects of which include insomnia, irritability, and crying in traffic while silently mouthing Wilson Phillips lyrics.\n\n\n\nPrevent all preventable damage\n\nOnce you know what kind of trouble to look for, you can prevent a lot of it by doing some smart planning well before someone starts writing (or recording or shooting video).\n\n\n\tTo prevent uselessness: Know your readers and decide what you\u2019re trying to accomplish \u2014 with your website as a whole, and with each piece of content, always. Once you know what you\u2019re trying to achieve, you can evaluate your work as you go to make sure that it\u2019s actually doing the right thing. (I\u2019ve written a lot more about this for A List Apart and in The Elements of Content Strategy.)\n\tTo prevent bad writing: Establish a consistent and appropriate style using examples (and a style guide if you need one), designate an editor, hire good writers, and make time for quality control. Kate Kiefer\u2019s style guide for MailChimp is a superb example of style-wrangling that everyone can use.\n\tTo prevent repulsive goo: Give your content as much structure as possible, and know how structure relates to your entire publishing ecosystem, including all those mobile devices. Sara Wachter-Boettcher\u2019s Content Everywhere and Karen McGrane\u2019s Content Strategy for Mobile offer brilliant yet friendly introductions to the wide world of structured content.\n\tTo prevent unregulated chaos: Measure everything that matters to your project, your client, your organization, and especially your readers \u2014 not generic measures of someone else\u2019s success. Measure it all regularly. Be disciplined. Adjust at regular intervals. Rick Allen\u2019s series on content strategy analytics is an excellent place to begin (part one; part two).\n\tTo prevent overabundance: Stop trying to do everything and focus on giving your readers just a few things they want and genuinely need. Don\u2019t establish a schedule your writers might not be able to keep, and focus on differentiating yourself with quality, not quantity. (And while you\u2019re at it, scratch the auto-posting to social networks and the cross-posting between them. It\u2019s about as engaging as an automated phone system.)\n\n\nAt a slightly higher level, pick the right content person (or team) for the work. If you really only need a few pages of copy, find a smart writer who does good work for multi-platform readers. If you\u2019re slinging tens of thousands of pages of content, get someone with field experience in high-level editorial planning and the ability to turn blobs into chunks and melted goo into Legos. If you\u2019re starting a project that involves making a lot of content over time, bring in someone with journalism experience (or get your client to do so). \n\n\u201cBut wait!\u201d you may say. \u201cI\u2019m not hiring anyone. I have to do this all myself.\u201d That\u2019s not uncommon at all. The bad news is, you have to learn a bunch of stuff. The good news is, you get to learn a bunch of awesome stuff. Figure out what the project needs, just as though you were going to hire someone, and then give yourself time to get up to speed. If it\u2019s a really complicated project, you\u2019re probably going to have trouble unless you eventually get professional help. But if it\u2019s small and you can do it in steps, you can certainly do much better by giving yourself a plan and working on the things that matter most.\n\n\nPlan for the marathon, not the sprint\n\nLaunching with awesome content is a tiny fraction of a victory, which is why it\u2019s so important that your content not be gooey or unregulated. It also means that if you don\u2019t plan for a realistic publication schedule, you are going to slam into reality in a really unpleasant way not too long after you\u2019ve begun. If you\u2019re asking people to make words (or videos or whatever) for you, they\u2019re going to have to do less of something else, so plan for that beforehand. \n\nAnd while you\u2019re at it, unless publishing is your core business, ditch the feed-the-beast plan that leads to fluffy blog posts and spiritless, unhelpful social media content. It\u2019s antisocial for your reading community, offers short-term gains at best, and will burn you out or lower your standards until you don\u2019t even know you\u2019re doing lousy work. Good content is expensive, no matter how you do it, but spreading yourself too thin is a much worse investment than doing a smaller thing well and gradually building up a body of superb content that people want to share and keep and return to.", "year": "2012", "author": "Erin Kissane", "author_slug": "erinkissane", "published": "2012-12-20T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/content-planning-demystified/", "topic": "content"}