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What IS Content Strategy, exactly? Great question - so glad you asked! A lot of colleges, universities and other large organizations have style guidelines that tell you what gets capitalized when and how to make a department or a team’s name possessive – that’s useful, but it’s not that. Many organizations also have branding, web design and social media guidelines – rules for which fonts to use and how to represent the organization on the open web. That’s a little closer, but it’s not that either. Content strategy is the practice of understanding your users – what they’re looking for, how they’re feeling when they’re looking for it and how they process it when they get it – and crafting a strategy for making sure your content suits their needs.
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CONTENT STRATEGY FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARY USERS
www.linkedin.com/pub/deirdre-costello/12/440/593/ http://www.slideshare.net/DeirdreCostello
@deirdre_lyon
ABOUT ME
Experience:
Currently at EBSCO Information Services
5+ years experience in Library & Information Science
Education:
MSLIS from Simmons College
MA in English from Boston College
BA in English and Psychology from Lewis & Clark College
Deirdre Costello, Sr. UX Researcher
CONTENT STRATEGY AN OVERVIEW
Agenda:
• Project Review
• Audience
• Style
• Organization
• Voice & Tone
• Examples
Deliverables:
• This presentation
• Useful resources for
further exploration
Also, feel free to connect
via email or LinkedIn!
Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/
deirdre-costello/12/440/593/
THE PROJECT • User Research Team + Academic & EDS teams • 23 sessions with students – Boston, Houston & San Francisco
– High school, college & graduate students – Humanities & Sciences majors
• 1 ½ hour sessions: “Show me the last search you did for research.”
AUDIENCE
AUDIENCE
Key to know: –What they’re looking for – How they feel – How they read
AUDIENCE WHAT THEY WANT
Why students search:
•To find an overview of their topic •To narrow down their topic •To find citable, scholarly sources
Content should facilitate goals &
make the path as short and
easy as possible.
AUDIENCE HOW THEY FEEL
AUDIENCE READING LEVEL
The average American adult reads at a 7th-8th grade level and is an Intermediate reader.
From the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy: http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/
AUDIENCE READING LEVEL
• Most blockbusters are written at the 7th grade level.
From Impact Information Plain Language Services: http://www.impact-information.com/impactinfo/literacy.htm
• The average newspaper is written at the 11th grade level.
• People prefer to read recreationally at 2 reading levels lower than their actual reading level, but can tolerate up to 2 levels higher.
AUDIENCE KEY ABILITIES
•Locating information in dense, complex documents.* •Examples:
•Finding a location on a map •Finding library hours on a website •Finding a relevant fact or quotation in an article
*This is the primary use case we heard about in our research.
AUDIENCE EXAMPLE
Before:
After:
From plainlanguage.gov: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/testExamples/images/overctrdrug.pdf
AUDIENCE KEY ABILITIES
•Comprehending and acting on information in moderately dense texts. •Examples:
•Consulting packaging to see which foods have a specific ingredient •Finding an alternative word in a thesaurus
AUDIENCE EXAMPLE
Before:
Mitigation is the cornerstone of emergency management. It's the ongoing effort to lessen the impact disasters have on people's lives and property through damage prevention and flood insurance. Through measures such as, building safely within the floodplain or removing homes altogether; engineering buildings and infrastructures to withstand earthquakes: and creating and enforcing effective building codes to protect property from floods, hurricanes and other natural hazards, the impact on lives and communities is lessened.
After:
Protect your community from natural disasters!
• Build safely in the flood zone, or remove buildings altogether
• Engineer buildings and infrastructure to withstand earthquakes
• Create and enforce effective building codes
From plainlanguage.gov: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/testExamples/indexBA.cfm?record=121&CFID=2402283
AUDIENCE KEY ABILITIES
•Making simple, on-the-fly calculations using available data. •Examples:
•Splitting a check •Calculating the acceptable number of sources
AUDIENCE EXAMPLE
Before:
After:
From plainlanguage.gov: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/testExamples/indexBA.cfm?record=181&CFID=2402283
AUDIENCE TAKEAWAY
There is an inverse relationship between density of text and users’ ability to act.
AUDIENCE TAKEAWAY
Content needs to be readable at an intermediate, 7th grade level to be accessible to student users.
QUESTIONS?
STYLE
STYLE GUIDELINES
• Short. • Simple. • Sweet.
It always needs to be shorter and simpler than you think. How much shorter and simpler? https://readability-score.com/
STYLE GUIDELINES
ORGANIZATION
• Overviews • Bulleted content • Highlighted terms • TOC • Clear headings & subheadings
Anything that makes content easier to scan so they can get to the key piece of information they need.
ORGANIZATION USERS LIKE ...
ORGANIZATION EXAMPLE
1. Overview in “plain English”
ORGANIZATION EXAMPLE
2. TOC + Easily Scannable Headings
ORGANIZATION EXAMPLE
3. Links to More
ORGANIZATION EXAMPLE
ORGANIZATION EXAMPLE
• Easy access to important functionality • Break up long sections of content • Use a list where it makes sense • Organize content consistently • Highlight key terms and figures
ORGANIZATION GUIDELINES
There are conventions out there – already familiar to students – that make content accessible to them.
ORGANIZATION TAKEAWAY
QUESTIONS?
VOICE & TONE
Voice and tone should be tailored to users’ emotional state.
Example: http://voiceandtone.com/
VOICE & TONE USERS’ FEELINGS
We know a little about what college students are feeling during the research process:
VOICE & TONE USERS’ FEELINGS
• Frustrated • Overwhelmed • Stressed • Bored • Anxious • Tired
• Productive • Curious • Motivated • Excited • Smart
The ideal tone is one that soothes the frustrated, overwhelmed user but encourages the one who feels smart and excited.
VOICE & TONE IDEAL TONE
• Simple • Clear • Respectful
• Positive • Optimistic • Permissive
VOICE & TONE EXAMPLE
VOICE & TONE EXAMPLE
Tone helps develop a positive relationship with users that will keep them coming back to your content.
VOICE & TONE TAKEAWAY
QUESTIONS? THANK YOU
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
• Plain language
– PlainLanguage.gov: http://www.plainlanguage.gov/
– Center for Plain Language: http://centerforplainlanguage.org
• Style
– Writing level: https://readability-score.com/
–Wikipedia’s Guide to Writing Better Articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_better_articles
• Tone: http://voiceandtone.com/
•General library UX (including Content Strategy): http://www.walkingpaper.org/
•Reading on the Web: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/
