It took the Web, where content is the front door to products and services, where reputation is based on reviews, and where it turns out that accuracy and quality of content regularly sways reviewers, to turn the tides on content. The idea that content contributes to the bottom line is no longer a novel idea. I can’t really blame management for their skepticism; after all, what has been rather thin in public discourse about the benefits of content is the actual ROI.

It’s easy to understand that discussing the ROI of content can be a little fuzzy. Content comes in many forms, and affects the bottom line in complex ways. Also, ROI can different things in different industries. In the private sector, the ROI of content may mean its contribution to profitability. In the public sector, the ROI of content likely means efficiency of delivering services. In both cases, content projects may be measured against IRR (Internal Rate of Return) – the amount of savings realized by investing in content processes.

Key Performance Indicators

To understand how to measure content ROI, we need to discuss in a general way what content is intended to do. The common goal of any content is to change behaviour. Here are a few ways that content can accomplish that:

• Persuade consumers to purchase a product, through a description of benefits and explanation of features.
• Persuade constituents to respond to issues in a particular way, by explaining the issues and offering suggested responses.
• Reduce service calls by anticipating queries and ensuring that sufficient and accurate content is available.
• Allow the public to get answers to questions or problems in a self-serve  way, by providing helpful information.
• Increase engagement, whether that is constituent engagement or customer engagement.

In each of these examples, the behavioural change resulted in a benefit to the organization, whether it is to sell more products and reduce service calls, or by helping constituents be better informed or fulfill their civic obligations.

Business Drivers

The most common motivations or business drivers, expressed in very general terms, are:

• Increased revenue. Does the content help generate sales?
• Brand loyalty. Does the content help manage organizational desirability – whether that be to increase corporate trust in the private sector, or public trust  in the public sector.
• Risk management. Can accurate, quality content minimize inadvertent product misuse or minimize risk of lawsuit?
• Extension of market. Does the content allow the organization to extend to new markets?
• Operational efficiencies. Does the content reduce the number of customer support calls or make some operational aspect more efficient?
• Process efficiencies. Does a particular publishing process reduce the cost of content production?

Examples of ROI

How does this play out in terms of hard costs? Measuring ROI can be tricky because there is not always a direct cause-and-effect relationship between publishing information and seeing results, so figuring out how the benefits are manifested takes keen observation and a willingness to look at all types of content and multiple types of benefits. Take a look at some examples that I’ve come across in the last year or so.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was cited by the Content Marketing Institute as reducing costs drastically by changing the way that they presented content to consumers. This organization noticed that an average of 30% of their 4 million annual service calls were about a single problem: customers could not figure out their monthly bills. The average customer service call costs $25 (the range is from $5 to $50), so reducing the number of calls  means reducing 1,200,000 calls. Even after calculating the investment to rework the content, presenting it to customers in a way that increases their comprehension could mean a significant cost savings – a modest estimate would be upward of half-a-million dollars.

A company that creates processing solutions for community banks calculated that a change to their publishing processes, which allowed them to promote collaborative authoring by a number of authors, track content use across multiple products lines, and to re-use content more efficiently, saved them over $100,000 within the first year, and allowed them to significantly increase their production capacity.

A company that manufactures small utility vehicles reported that at least once a year, someone would misuse one of their vehicles in a way that would result in a lawsuit. The average lawsuit was $4 million, with 25% of that automatically involving the manufacturer.  These lawsuits happened no matter what content they produced – there will always be someone who is determined to drive a vehicle recklessly – but because of the quality of their documentation and fanaticism about accuracy, the manufacturer had never lost a lawsuit, for an estimated $1 million savings annually.

When a municipality offers leisure courses, they find themselves competing with the private sector for popular offerings, such as fitness classes, sports sessions, and children’s activities. It reasons, then, that they stand to lose more revenue if they don’t offer up content – descriptions, prices, locations, schedules, and so on – that ranks high in search engines, and allows people to find the leisure activity according to their particular criteria: the course they want, in the location they want, at the time of day they prefer, at the price they find acceptable. The ROI is highly situational here, and depends on a wide range of factors, but the potential for revenue – or loss of revenue – makes a direct link between content and ROI.

The performance that organizations gets from their content continues to be affected by the amount of effort they put into its production. The effort begins with a content strategy; the success is in its implementation.

It was interesting to me to see how Lean has made it into this area because at first glance, Lean is all about production line efficiencies, and here it’s being applied to a discipline that is far from production line, and couldn’t be effective without a certain amount of creativity. And creativity is hard to streamline in terms of “reducing waste.”

The idea of applying Lean principles to a service environment isn’t new, however. In 2004, Lean was just starting to be adapted to areas beyond manufacturing. I worked on a project where we applied Lean principles to the production of content, where the savings were great and the ROI was stunning (though as Scott Abel always warns: your mileage may vary).

My client and I turned our success story into a presentation. As the question of ROI comes up continuously, I thought I’d post the presentation to show how a rigorous examination of even a small area of content production can yield significant results.

How Far to Lean (goes to Slideshare.net) or view below:

Vancouver has a shiny new Canada Lin—a subway train—that runs from the Airport to downtown Vancouver. It’s wonderful. As I live out near the airport, I often take it to work, and it shaves a lot of time off my commute. It’s clean and comfortable, and runs every few minutes. However, there are inherent problems with wayfinding; some of them are usability problems, others are content problems. They are not separable, and work together to create either a good experience or a frustrating one.

Inside the airport, the signage says “Canada Line”. As I walk through the airport, I sometimes wonder how these people around me, many of whom have little or no English, find the transit system. Canada Line could mean “information about Canada by telephone” or some sort of train line. But where does it indicate what the Canada Line actually is: a subway train to Vancouver and to the whole regional transit system?

From inside the train, each transit station looks identical, and station signage is sparse. At rush hour, it’s next to impossible to see station signs through the crowds of people on the platform. Riders must learn to look for the signs inside the train that identify the current stop. It takes a while to realize this, and to counter-intuitive look within the train to learn where you are.

The signage on the platforms tells you which trains are coming. A recording announces that the next train on the “outbound platform is for YVR.” The platforms are not labelled, and in underground stations with several twists and turns down the stairs, who really knows which direction is inbound or outbound? Going north, there is one terminal called Waterfront (in other words, downtown). Going south, there are two possible terminals: YVR (the airport code for Vancouver, though the airport is actually in the suburb of Richmond) or Brighouse (also in Richmond). Going north is no problem. You get on the next train. Going south, you need to choose your train if you are going as far as Richmond. The helpful signage displays an electronic schedule such as:

YVR – Airport – 4 minutes

Richmond-Brighouse -  8 minutes

Richmond-Brighouse – 12 minutes

(This setup could be problematic; some riders see past the first line as its size and boldness are subconsciously interpreted as a title, and they automatically skip to the second line to look for “real information”. But that’s a whole other story, and we wonder whether TransLink did any testing of that.)

However, you are more likely to see a series of messages that say something like:

• If you drop something on the tracks, don’t retrieve it yourself. See an attendant.
• Only one bicycle per bicycle area on the train at a time.
• GO CANUCKS GO

The schedule comes around eventually, but your train may have entered and left the station by then.

If you have gotten onto the wrong train, figuring out how to double back and get onto the right train is problematic because of the mapping system inside the train (if you can find one). I know – been there, done that, cursed the entire time.

These may seem like small items, but they’re the crazy-making stuff that ruins your experience. It’s the stuff that makes people post about “the sign says this but what you really need to do is …” and “it’s cute but not too bright…” or “be careful, because if you miss your connecting stop, it takes you an extra 15 minutes to turn yourself around, and believe me, it will happen.”

It doesn’t take much to fix these problems, but it means that someone needs to walk through with a “user experience eye” and make sure that the experience works for all the audiences. For example, the content on the signs could shorten the duration of secondary messages and spend more time on the schedule and train destination. And it means training staff (including whoever is in charge of the electronic platform signage) to follow the guidelines that make the difference between a good user experience and a frustrating one.

Many thanks to Jerome Ryckborst, the UX Manager who collaborated with me on this post, and my project Director, who was the inspiration for this post. Pay attention. Be outraged.

The reason I say it’s worth considering is that if you’re like majority of the practitioners I meet, you have an area of expertise within content strategy or marketing communications or technical authoring or the other 31 subsets of the publishing field, and may have some ancillary knowledge about a few of the related areas. But every so often, you need to break out of your comfort zone and go learn something else, something new, something deeper. Congility is one of those conferences where you can do that.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to intimate that you need extensive knowledge of XML to get any value from the presentations. What I’m saying is that if you want to broaden your knowledge and increase your market worth, then this is the perfect place to do that. Even as we’re defining the field of content strategy, it’s changing. We’re looking at integrated content systems, with all of the permutations and combinations of marketing, social, technical, and product information that you can imagine. Just as we decry the project that leaves content in the hands of the technologists, we are moving into the phase where we should decry the content strategist who leaves content technologies in the sole hands of technologists. We might not have to know it in any deep way, but we should know enough not to be steamrollered by those who have technology agendas that don’t benefit our content strategies. There’s something for practitioners of all levels, so you’re bound to find a presentation or workshop that suits you.

Congility is just a few weeks off, so check it out today. I’ll save you a seat in my workshop.
Registration

This deliverable is The Pitch. It is what makes clients – external or internal – understand why they need it, what it is, how it brings benefit, who will benefit, who will bring the benefit and how, and what the mechanics are of what needs to be done in order bring those benefits.

Marketing communicators turned content strategists are pretty good at the pitch; justifying the benefits of efforts spent is part of the job. For other communicators, this way of thinking may not come naturally. In the technical communication realm, for example, there have traditionally been clear delineations about the work produced: a manual, help files, and perhaps text to the translators.  Making the case for content strategy is entirely new territory. For content strategists with a more technical bent, it’s hard to move away from explaining benefit in tactical terms – “the output will be interoperable with other XML schemas,” for example – and expressing ROI in terms that management will understand.

There have been numerous articles, presentations, and other resources produced on the ROI of content strategy, but it all comes down to the same core thesis. Making the case for content strategy is all about demonstrating the value it will bring, to help organizations meet their business objectives.

What impressed me about this particular method of content planning was not just the identification of personas, which are essential to any content strategy, but the identification of personas within the sales cycle. In a B2B context, this is important because the person who wants a product may not be the person who approves the product or the person who does the purchasing. And at each stage of the buy, there can be different tensions that need to be balanced to keep the buyers tracking on your product and not a competitor’s.

Content Mapping Process and Templates

The limitations of this particular mapping process is that, in my opinion, it ends with the buy. It’s only one conceptual step out to extend the process to the entire customer relationship cycle. We know, or should know by now, that what was traditionally deemed “post-sales” content is often considered as part of the adoption process. So adding post-sales material, such as user assistance content, social content, and user-generated content, to form an integrated process that brings the process more toward a customer conversation.

This content may not be sexy, but it’s complicated. You don’t supply content simply for a form. You have to take into account the various states of any potential transaction at any given time, and ensure consistency. This is not in just nomenclature, but tone and voice as well. Form labels, error messages, feedback messages…they all need attention. (This takes me back to the 1990s, when a mail program faced with a Canadian postal code in the Zip Code field displayed: What planet are you from? Needless to say, I deleted immediately.)

Linda adds, “In the UX realm, all content must be considered, for usability, voice and brand the sum of all digital interactions with an audience is what ultimately forms the online brand for any organization. Ensuring that all content is considered involves surfacing it all and reviewing it as a complete inventory as well as in-situ, on a screen-by-screen basis. This is increasingly important as we endeavour to reach various personas, personalize data, and deliver applications on a range of devices.”

I’ve always admired Linda’s ability to capture information in an organized, easy-to-digest way. Linda kindly agreed to share a sample Transactional Content Matrix. (Click to open a new page, then right-click to download the .xlsx file – it’s a WordPress thing.) The matrix is, befittingly, in a multiple page spreadsheet format. It’s a great way to present this particular deliverable.

IDI’s Rahel Bailie will be there, making one of the keynote presentations, The Content Strategy Paradox, and running a workshop, Not All Content Strategies are Created Equal, about strategies for cross-genre content.

Read her take on content agility
Revisit her 2010 webinar on content strategy and ROI

However, I’m providing the net best thing – a book review of Erin Kissane’s The Elements of Content Strategy. Kissane has brought together content strategy principles, methodologies, and deliverables in context for aspiring practitioners. This is an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to transition to the field of content strategy.

Don’t know if you’re ready to transition to working as a content strategist? Read this book. Someone who is comfortable translating what Kissane has brought together, and interpret it into a work methodology should be comfortable enough to try their hand at it. If you have the “aha, that makes sense” moment, this will give you the framework to develop a strategy in your own workplace. If you read this and wonder where you fit your writing and editing tasks in, then you’re probably not there yet.

The book isn’t just for the next generation of content strategists. I can see this being useful when you’re sitting in that late-night stupor after working several late nights in a row, and have a complete blank on what to do next. A quick flip-through can give you that push, the “oh yes, of course, why didn’t I think of that before?” I wasn’t prepared to like this book – it was too thin and full of clever puns and metaphors – but after finishing it, I can see this being a staple on the bookshelf closest to my desk for those difficult moments when I need a shot of inspiration.

Read an excerpt:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/a-checklist-for-content-work/

Like the book? Come back and leave a comment to tell me what you find helpful!

http://richardingram.co.uk/downloads/110318_pr_workflow_example.pdf

If the format looks familiar, it’s because in the vein of “great minds think alike”, Ann Rockley also uses swimlane diagrams, as shown in her book, Managing Enterprise Content. Richard has added a few extra extra components to provide clients with more context. Richard adds that “there’s nothing about the design process of these types of diagrams that I would consider complicated. Usually, once we’re all happy with what I’ve sketched on paper, I like to use OpenOffice.org’s Draw to rapidly sketch the final diagrams. With several diagrams of this type for any one project I even insist on using Draw’s gallery of preset shapes and icons. I save so much time doing it this way.”

As an aside, I’ve noticed that many organizations are averse to technology-assisted workflow. In fact, one CMS vendor told me that over 80% of customers never turn on the workflow module. Sometimes it’s because it’s “one-step workflow” – the communications person writes, edits, and uploads the content – and that’s fair enough. Other times, it’s resistance to change that holds an organization back. The manager wants to see a Word document, print it out, mark it up, and give it to the admin person who is tasked up the upload process. It works well – until there’s a problem and no one can establish the audit trail for the content. However, documenting workflow is quite useful for situations where content is componentized, re-used, is destined for multiple outputs, or has multiple touchpoints within an organzation.