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Tell Us What You Want (What You Really, Really Want)

by Melissa Rach on January 5th, 2012

Happy New Year! We hope you have the best year ever in 2012. Especially because the whole world is going to end on December 21, according to the ancient Mayans. Or not. Nobody knows for sure.*

Deathstar blowing up Earth

Hey, it could happen.

There are three things, however, that we DO know for sure:

  1. We have AT LEAST eleven more months to rock the Brain Traffic blog.
  2. Blogs, like all content, are only successful if it provides value to the user.
  3. We’d like you—yes, YOU—to tell us what topics you’d like to see discussed on this blog.

That’s right, there are 22 Brain Traffic employees standing by. We eat, sleep, and breathe content. What would you like to learn more about? How can we help you?

Make your suggestions in the comments section below or on Twitter (@BrainTraffic). We’ll address as many as we can. And treat this year’s editorial calendar as if it were our last!

Thanks in advance for your suggestions. We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

* Does anyone else see this whole Mayan calendar debacle as a content workflow problem? It’s more proof that content that hasn’t been updated regularly can cause all sorts of problems (i.e., conspiracy theories, mediocre movies, etc.). No? OK. Erm. Nevermind us.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 5th, 2012 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Content Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Befuddled content strategist

    What’s the best way to handle resistance to content strategy? I’ve got buy-in at C-level, but there’s a lot of territorialism below VP level, which is where I interact with other departments digitally. I end up spending inordinate amounts of time having meetings to explain why we’re doing content strategy now and then dealing with hurt feelings (and water cooler badmouthing) that *they* aren’t in charge of all the content strategy.

    This redesign project we’re doing is all-consuming, so having to play political games is detracting from the work I *should* be doing in terms of content strategy.

    What’s the best way to deal with such deep-rooted resistance to content strategy? How do I get peer buy-in?

  • katie d.

    How do you get people to comment and discuss all in one place? I get conversations going on Twitter and Facebook…but not the place where I wrote about the original content. 

  • http://twitter.com/maddyzero Liz Hunt

    Thanks for a great year of informative and entertaining content, Brain Traffic!

    I’m looking forward to 2012 — too bad the ‘End of Days’ will rob you of that fully-realized December post, though.

    As a self-declared content strategy lurker, I would love to see a Brain Traffic staff round-up of sites, articles, magazines, juice cartons — really, anything —  that you think truly embraces the content in all it’s delicious glory.  

    I apologize  if you’ve done something similar to this in the past, or if the concept itself is tired and worn; I’m continually behind the pulse as both a professional and a human being, but I’m always eager to hear what experts find exhilarating. 

    Thanks again, and Happy New Year to you and yours!

  • http://twitter.com/JMYsays Julie M. Young

    Structured content – there’s a lot of tech-talk, but not a lot of writer-talk on the subject, and it’s “our” copy and assets! How do we plan to write for structure and/or reuse and then actually make it work and appear seamless? How do we get folks to stop thinking about everything in terms of specific pages? 

  • guest

    more on content sharing … partnership development for sharing content

  • Rach

    I agree with you. I would love to see more advice on how to get others on board with content strategy — esp. those with whom I work closely, i.e., web developers, web designers. 

    When they would rather have the writer just “hand over the text”, how do I get them to care about–and participate in–the strategic planning of that content?Tips on breaking down silos…collaboration…warm fuzzies…all that fun stuff.

  • http://twitter.com/cwalski Cary Lenore Walski

    Great questions, Katie! I don’t know what the folks at BT think, but I honestly don’t think you can ever expect to get all your conversation in one place. Nor would you really want to. At the end of the day, the visibility of having a lot of people talking about you in a lot of place is what you want. 

    But don’t dispair — there are tools — like the WordPress Social plugin by MailChimp that can “pull in” responses from other platforms to your site.http://blog.mailchimp.com/introducing-social-a-wordpress-plugin/ 

  • http://twitter.com/cwalski Cary Lenore Walski

    I’d love to see some posts on how nonprofits are incorporating content strategy into their work. In fact, if you need some nonprofits to talk to who have based their work off of Kristina’s book, please be in touch.

  • http://twitter.com/milmi Michelle Anderson

    Explanations and examples of different types of content templates – and ways of using them in different scenarios.

  • Ian Orekondy

    I’d love to see a post on licensing content – if/how it fits into an overall content strategy.

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