Responsive design can have a major impact on your content. I’ll tell you how it works, how it can affect your content, and why you should—and need to—care.

What is responsive design?

Responsive design is the practice of having one website that adapts to the device it is being viewed upon. Or, more simply: one website for all screens.

So, why is it important? If you’ve ever been involved in the process of creating separate sites for desktop, mobile, tablet, iPhone, iPad, etc., you know why. It can be a nightmare to develop and keep up multiple websites that are essentially delivering the same content. If you only have to design and code for one site, things suddenly become a lot simpler.

Below is the Confab 2012 site I designed and developed as seen on a laptop, an iPad, and an iPhone. Notice that while the design and layout look different on each device, the URL and the content are the same.

How could it impact your content?

Right now, designers and developers are driving the conversations about responsive design. And those conversations are primarily about technical and esthetic matters. But, not surprisingly, it pertains to content, too. That’s the part I’d like to talk about.

The point of using a responsive approach is to allow the same content to work across multiple devices. This can make your job easier, because you don’t have to update content in multiple places.

So, what can happen to a site’s content as we go from a large desktop to a small device? Three things typically occur:

1. It shifts: This the most obvious change in content when we look at a responsive layout. As the screen gets smaller, columns become narrower, allowing text to become larger and more readable. Sidebars and other secondary content blocks move from the side to below the main column(s). Rows of six images become three, and then two, and then one, etc. All of this is done so you don’t have to pinch, expand, and move around a site on a smaller device. When it’s done properly, it can make the viewing experience much more enjoyable and efficient.
2. It gets hidden: Content that would otherwise take too long to skim by scrolling or just doesn’t fit well in the layout might get hidden. It's then revealed when a user performs an action like clicking a button or toggling a drop-down.
3. It gets removed: Uh oh! Did an alarm just go off in your head? It should have, because this is the part of responsive design that no one likes to talk about. Even though the general consensus is that removing content is generally a no-no, it’s totally possible and oh-so-tempting in the name of esthetics, reduced scrolling, lowered page load time, etc.

Why should a content strategist care?

As I was developing the Confab 2012 site and creating different layouts for different screen sizes, I found that I needed to make a lot of decisions about what should happen to the content across different screen sizes. Should this piece of content shift? Become hidden? Disappear altogether? What’s more important—this piece or that piece? Should this go above or below that? It became clear very quickly that I shouldn’t be the only one making these decisions.

Don’t leave these decisions solely up to designers and developers. Chances are, we’re too concerned about things like browser compatibility and page-load time to give much thought to them. I happen to be a designer who believes that people visit websites for the content, not the design—but that doesn’t mean I want to be making decisions about content priority myself.

Responsive design. Mobile first. Progressive enhancement. These, and any other technical approaches where your content can take different forms across channels and platforms, present a challenge to content strategists. The content you create needs to be flexible.

To achieve this, you may need to enhance and adapt some of your traditional deliverables, or set them aside in favor of conversations and collaborations, which is always a good thing.

The Web will continue to evolve, and the more content strategists and designers can work together to adapt to these changes, the better off our content—and users—will be.

p.s. Yes, we know our site isn’t responsive. But we’re working on it. Just you wait!

Responsive design is a term and a technique coined by Ethan Marcotte in his groundbreaking article in A List Apart, “Responsive Web Design.” If you are interested in learning the technology behind it, there are many more articles to explore.

Sometimes, a metaphor helps. One I find useful is the brown paper package.

Let’s go shopping

Imagine a retail store. Inside, the shelves are lined with unlabeled packages. What’s inside each? Fireworks? Creamed corn? Live mice? All of the above? (Let’s hope not.) Customers don’t buy unlabeled packages; they need to know what they’re going to get. (For starters, is it eight live mice? Or a full dozen?)

What’s in the box?

If you put your website (or organization’s) content in a box, what would the label say? For many organizations, this is the central question of their content strategy: What are we going to put in here that our audience will want and find useful?

Knowing what goes in the box—and why—is the core of your content strategy. The concrete image of the package can aid thinking and facilitate decisions about content: What is the primary value of this content package? What will be worth the audience’s time, attention, or money? What accessories should we include? How will we make this? Imagining the content in this way has various advantages:

• It demands clarity around substance. Although content takes physical form eventually, it often feels more abstract than, say, creamed corn. That’s one reason why defining the content’s substance—what it’s about—is a big part of content strategy. This seems easy enough on the surface. In fact, sometimes, project teams blow past this step because they assume the answer is obvious, already set in stone, or otherwise predetermined. But writing out the package’s label forces a useful specificity and can reveal previously unspoken differences of opinion. (“That’s not what I thought it was about,” etc.)
• It’s a reminder to focus on the audience. Organizations spend a lot of time and energy publishing things they want the audience to notice or use. Are those packages users will pay attention to and open? Or will they be ignored like socks on Christmas morning? If the package isn’t full of content that users really want or need, it’s probably time to revisit what’s going inside the box up at the assembly line.
• It’s an opportunity to differentiate. Put your package of content on the table, next to the packages the competitors offer. Make note of the packaging itself (it matters), but really pay attention to who’s got the goods inside the box. Who’s offering breadth? Depth? Authority? Who’s got an unusual angle? Now, what changes would make the content you’re offering a more attractive, unique, or specialized option?
• It’s the essence of the content strategy. Actual box manufacturers aside, organizations don’t create an infrastructure and staff-up so they can send empty packages out the door. Likewise, structure, workflow, and taxonomy don’t mean very much if the box is empty, or filled with random bits and pieces the audience doesn’t want or need.

A few hypothetical examples:

• A health foods maker might label their content box this way: Daily recipes, shopping lists, coupons, and resources to help people eat healthier every day.
• Because of the complex and customized nature of its products, a health information technology company might downplay its 500 product sheets and instead highlight: Technology-based success stories about health and modern medicine.
• An employee intranet might avoid becoming a dumping ground for old documents by defining its content package as: An essential guide to help our people manage their employment and work-life.

Cue the asterisk

The metaphor has limitations. It’s easier to think of some kinds of content as product in a box than other kinds. Some organizations create multiple “packages” to serve different audiences or purposes. And technology keeps changing the way audiences “shop” for content. A metaphor like this won’t answer every question about a content strategy, but I do find this technique to be useful in certain situations. It can help explain content strategy work to clients and stakeholders, too.

Tied up with string

Knowing what goes in the box and writing out a label for it can help stimulate and refine the thinking that goes into developing a viable content strategy. Of course, many decisions still need to be made and work needs to be done before that box gets into the hands of an audience. Having a concrete image of the content can facilitate those decisions and keep the work on track.

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.

As a content strategist, there are multiple levels to my work—two of which are strategic consulting and executional planning. Executional planning refers to the what, where, when, and how of your content. The process produces tangible deliverables. It is the road map for how to execute the strategy. Without it, any strategy is likely to sit in a drawer somewhere.

Strategic consulting means working with clients to figure out why they’re doing something. It’s as much of a process as a deliverable. The work involves a series of conversations and research activities to discover what the organization wants, and why they want it. It then gets transformed into what they can, and should, do.

Virginia believes, and you should, too.

Photo by @jbtaylor

Setting the stage for success

To test any strategic recommendations, I ask myself questions about how I’m going to communicate (and possibly defend) the approach. For example:

• What problem will it solve for the organization?
• How is it better than what is happening now?
• What will the organization need to stop doing for this to succeed?
• What about it will get people excited?
• What will make people uncomfortable?
• What will help them overcome the discomfort?
• Can others learn to communicate it effectively?
• Will it be able to grow and change over time?

When I believe in what I’m recommending, I see the value in the project. I can clearly articulate how it’s a good thing for both the client and their users. Because of this work, I can guide collaborative conversations with the client to refine the overall approach. Clear goals and objectives have been defined, which makes the executional planning go faster. Decisions have been made, people understand those decisions, and work gets done.

Over the years, I’ve heard people say, “Well, it’s not like we think anyone’s actually going to do/use/want this.” Huge red flag. To me, this says they never did any real strategy work. Someone just came up with a quick solution to make the client happy, slapped the word “strategy” on it, and called it a day. Without taking the time to discover what the best approach is for the client, it’s pretty hard to believe in what you’re doing.

Be realistic, but don’t settle for sub-par

I’m not saying you’re going to love every single project—there will always be unforeseen challenges and setbacks. But, if there isn’t at least something you think will be useful or valuable to both the business and the user, then you probably need to keep working. Remember, belief is a powerful thing, especially this time of year.

You know that saying, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”? We don’t want to go there. So we need to build upon what has worked for similar situations, while allowing lots of room for adaptation and innovation.

I mean, if Peter Brady can adapt to change so well, we content strategists certainly can, too.

Peter knows: When it's time to change, you've got to rearrange.

Image by TV Time Warp. All rights reserved.

A content strategy approach

When we give Content Strategy 101 workshops, we outline a general framework for approaching content strategy work. At a high level, there are four steps:

Step 1: Analyze and align

This is when we dig into our clients’ content ecosystem to determine what content they have, where it comes from, who’s involved in creating, publishing, and maintaining it, what challenges they encounter, etc. Some of the activities during this phase include stakeholder interviews, quantitative audits, competitor reviews, and user research. The output is a document or presentation that helps our clients get their stakeholders aligned on what problems the content strategy needs to solve.

Step 2: Define the strategic intent

This phase is when we home in on the central ideas for how the content strategy will help our clients meet their business goals. The output typically addresses implications for the four components of content strategy: substance, structure, workflow, and governance. The output at this phase can take many forms, depending on the goals, objectives, and client needs. And the goal at the end of the phase is, again, stakeholder alignment.

(For a refresher on the four components of content strategy, check out Brain Traffic’s content strategy quad.)

Step 3: Specify the substance, structure, workflow, and governance

During this phase, we detail how the content strategy comes to life. Again, the outputs depend on several factors, but can include things like content evaluation criteria, topics maps, site maps, wireframes and templates, workflow diagrams, a governance model … you get the idea.

Step 4: Implement the strategy

We don’t always help clients with this phase, but when we do it starts with a plan for getting things done and the tools necessary to do so. Depending on our role, outputs might include page tables or outlines, web copy, metadata and taxonomy schemas, and migration spreadsheets.

No holds barred

When I start a project, I try not to let past work and experiences limit how I think about the best approach to solving the client’s problems. So, how do I decide if I should skip a step, adapt an activity, or try something I’ve never tried before?

Well, it depends.

I find the answer depends on how confident I am that I can make the best recommendations possible with the information and experience I have.

Questions I consider include:

• Is this a problem I’ve solved successfully before?
  • If yes, I’ll probably borrow from what’s worked, but look for ways to make it work even better.
  • If no, it’s an opportunity to develop something brand new that my colleagues and I can continue to build upon.
• How familiar am I with the client and their content?
  • If I’m not very familiar, I probably want to talk to a lot of people and spend a pretty big chunk of time auditing their content.
  • If I’ve worked with the client a lot, I might already have some assumptions in mind that I can verify with the client.

The moral of the story

Having a framework to guide our content strategy endeavors is good. It helps us describe what we do and gives us a place to start.

But, it can’t be too rigid, or it will be nearly impossible to change when it no longer works. How many times have you heard a client or colleague say, “We can’t do [AWESOME IDEA THAT IS WAY BETTER THAN WHAT WE’RE DOING NOW] because we’ve always done it this way and it’s too hard to get people to change.”

Remember, just as content strategy is constantly evolving, so your processes should, too.

Listening: Still the Best Way to Learn Somethin’ New

Originally published on April 10th, 2009, by Erin Anderson

Our most important job here at Brain Traffic isn’t content strategy. It isn’t content creation, or even copywriting …

Nope, it’s good old-fashioned listening.

I mean the kind of listening that demands our active attention and participation. The kind that leaves us with the information we need to recommend truly smart, thoughtful web content solutions. The kind that requires we really focus on YOU.

So whether we’re scoping a project, clarifying user goals, or managing rounds of client feedback, we all hold fast to a few rules for active listening around these parts.*

Keep an open mind.

We may have created content for a dozen healthcare websites over the years. But that doesn’t mean we automatically know the unique challenges your healthcare company faces as you fight to get your new site off the ground.

That's why we mindfully avoid assuming we know where the discussion is going before it gets there. We’ll let you speak for yourself. It’s only polite.

Lead with “open” questions.

Open questions start with “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” or “how.” It's straight up Journalism 101. If we're getting yes/no answers from you, it means we’re being lazy reporters. And it means our conversation can only scratch the surface in terms of uncovering your needs and goals.

Get comfy with silence.

If our question to you is met with dead air or a frowny face, we're likely squirming in our ergonomic chairs. It's just human nature. So we count to 10 (in our heads, don’t worry) while you organize your thoughts. Because jumping in to fill that void might prevent you from collecting your ideas and articulating a particularly illuminating response.

Ask the “stupid” questions.

We wouldn't be doing anyone any favors by pretending we have all the answers. And we feel very strongly that the success of your project depends in part on us being bold enough to not take anything for granted. So we make a point to ask at least one “stupid” question in each client meeting.

Being not entirely shameless, however, we do practice some super sneaky tactics:

• “I know we’ve been talking about this for a while, but could you just clarify one thing for me?”
• “I’m afraid your users might not understand this fully. Could you take a minute to break it down so I can explain it in very basic terms?”
• “You'll have to excuse me. This is probably a stupid question, but …”

Our willingness to humble ourselves in that regard seems to really resonate with our clients. Because in many cases, voicing our confusion helps them quickly pinpoint gaps in their content universe.

Be curious.

There we are, asking you our thoughtfully stupid, open questions, and waiting patiently for your equally thoughtful answers. Suddenly it hits us: We know precisely how to solve all your website woes. Nice.

But wait! Now is not the time to share our brilliant plan. We may have an inkling about where your main pain points lie. But we need to know more. Where did these issues originate? How long have they been plaguing your company? Whom do they affect? How exactly would your life be easier if we made them go away?

Now we’re finally getting somewhere together. And as it turns out, we suddenly have an even better plan to share.

*Bonus: These techniques have multiple applications outside the work environment. Try them on your friends! Your in-laws! Your pets!

Now, old-timey (2007) content strategy logic says you need to audit all of your content. You need to see it all with your own human eyes. And if you have a small site (less than 5,000 pages or pieces of content), you probably still should review every piece.

But manual audits get more and more unrealistic as sites get bigger. Who has the time to review 25,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000 pieces of content? For our client with 100,000,000 pages, it would take 20 people working full-time for 270 years to manually view all of those pages. Obviously, that’s not an option. Unless you could hire an army of robots. Speaking of …

Can’t robots just do it?

It depends on what kind of audit you’re performing. If you are doing a quantitative audit—simply finding out how much content you have, where it lives, and associated keywords; yes, there are technical tools that can help.

But, if you’re doing a qualitative audit—where you’re trying to learn about the substance, accuracy, and quality of your content, robots can’t help you out. Well, maybe if you had a robot like C-3PO (fluent in six million forms of communication), or this guy:

Image by Sean Tubridy. All rights reserved. 

But you don’t. So, what else can you do?

Sample-size it!

You can pick a sample—a subset of your content—to review. Although a sample doesn’t replace a total site audit, it does help you reduce uncertainty about your content. Scientific and marketing researchers have been doing sampling for years, and when done correctly, sampling can give you a fairly accurate indication of your overall content situation.

You can choose your sample randomly or base it on various factors, such as user segments, product categories, content purpose, location on the site, etc. It all depends on why you’re doing the audit and what you want to learn.

How much is enough?

There’s no rule or benchmark to use. It would seem like the more content you could review, the better off you’d be. That is somewhat true, but mostly you just have to look at enough content to see patterns emerge. On a relatively small site (i.e., 10,000 pieces of content), you might need to look at half of the content before the patterns become obvious.

On a million-page site—you might look at only 0.01% of the content. That’s still 10,000 pages … so you’re not exactly off the hook. But hopefully you’d recognize some kind of valuable patterns by then. You might not have the same level of certainty as you did with the smaller site audit, but you’ll have some ideas. And you probably aren’t going to learn anything else by auditing another 1,000 or 10,000 items—the percentage of items reviewed is still so low that the change in the margin of error is microscopic.

So where do I begin?

Your sample depends on the size of your site. Here’s a rough table of suggested sample sizes (adapted from market research sampling guidelines):

Sampling doesn’t lead to a perfect picture of your content. But a sample audit can provide useful information to support arguments for funding, make the case for content work, or demonstrate progress. And save you from spending the rest of your life staring at a spreadsheet.

This is a thoughtful, well-written article, but its failure to include content considerations as part of a successful UX strategy is simply irresponsible. … This magazine has published insightful, valuable articles about the necessity of considering content in any UX initiative. I’m surprised and disappointed that this one slipped through the cracks.

I also fired off a few indignant tweets, then moved on.

This week, my attention was called back to the article. So I returned to it … and found a few comments waiting for me.

The author, Paul Bryan, responded:

My current understanding of content strategy is that it impacts only itself—that is, the content, in much the same way that visual design principles and trends impact the visual design, emerging UI patterns impact front-end development, and agile processes impact the way that IT produces new releases.

None of the latter were mentioned because, while important, they primarily guide the contribution of their own disciplines. The 7 ingredients in the article impact the overall direction of the program and every aspect of the design, including the content, for years to come.

Additionally, I’d been reprimanded for being a jerk. @BenJudy wrote:

I’m disappointed to see Kristina Halvorson’s unnecessarily harsh comment on this article. We know you wrote a book on content strategy, Kristina. Believe it or not, content strategy is not central to everything. As I read it, this article is above the details of content, design, or technology. It’s about how UX people can work strategically within the often opaque walls of businesses that need help in ways they don’t understand, so they can provide better experiences for their customers.

What would be more helpful, Kristina, is if you would integrate your own expertise in content strategy with what is said here. How would you extend the seven macro, program-level principles here to include your micro area of greatest concern?

Of course, I totally deserved to be called out—my comment was rude and, ironically, irresponsible. I’d brushed off a terrific, insightful article because I saw its failure to mention CS as a careless omission. Instead, I should have immediately recognized it as an opportunity to engage a smart guy in a professional, important (to me, anyhow) conversation. I hope it’s not too late to do so.

7 Ingredients of a Successful UX Strategy is an article that should inform the work of any content strategist. Paul offers smart options for how to go about gathering critical information through channels that may or may not formally exist. His ideas about how to launch research and testing initiatives that have been previously overlooked or ignored are like gold to people who are currently practicing “stealth content strategy.”

So what’s the issue, here? Throughout the article, there is a clear focus on how UX strategy must act as a compass for decisions about design and technology, with no mention of content. And so while the author by no means excludes content as a consideration, he doesn’t actively include it, either.

Even though it’s true that awareness of content strategy has dramatically increased over the past few years, I’ve observed that UX strategists still focus primarily on design and technology. For this and myriad other reasons, at the project level, content requirements often end up being treated as a “feature set.” This is a big problem. The content lifecycle greatly differs from the cycles of iterative feature design and development, and that key misunderstanding typically results in poor quality content that didn’t get the time and attention it required. (For more of my thoughts on this topic, please refer to my article Content Strategy and UX: A Modern Love Story.)

I believe that this is a problem that has a solution … but it starts with recognizing content as more than a “micro” concern. And that means ensuring content strategy is considered not just at the project level, but in strategy development, as well.

Content strategy helps organizations define the value of content to the business and its users. It’s what shapes the creation, delivery, and governance of content. It is a separate, equally important initiative that can affect organizational design, technology infrastructures, customer experience, and more.

And so although I often speak and write about content strategy in the context of user experience design, I do not consider it to be only a part of UX strategy. However, it’s eminently clear that the two disciplines have countless interdependencies, and for that reason must inform one another’s programs. Just as content quality deeply affects the user experience on any platform and in any context, UX initiatives often affect an organization’s content “ecosystems,” to include the people who create and maintain content; the technology used to manage it; and the policies and guidelines used to govern it.

Upon reflection, I think the real opportunity here is to ask the question of how content strategy and UX strategy can begin to explore and exploit (in a good way) their inherent interdependencies … not just at the project level, but in the context of an overall business strategy. To my knowledge, this is largely unexplored territory in public forums, which is pretty exciting. I know I’ll be thinking more about it in the weeks and months to come.

(And, because it’s my thing, I’ll keep repeating “content matters” as often as possible and wherever I can … but I’m newly committed to doing so respectfully and in ways that will evolve the conversation, not shut it down.)

Photo by Rhiannan Walton

EMERGING VOICES

One of my favorite parts of attending any content strategy conference is hearing from new and emerging voices in the content strategy community. And, CS Forum’s program was jam-packed with `em.

You can check out the entire speaker lineup, but here are a handful people we think you should know about (alphabetically by first name, because alphabetizing is cool):

Daniel Eizans (@danieleizans): Contextually relevant content strategies

This talk introduced a series of smart, detailed ways of understanding — and meeting — the needs of our users based on the contexts (personal, situational, behavioral, etc.) in which they encounter content. We'll likely see a lot more discussion of user contexts and content strategy in the near future, not to mention a lot more bright ideas from Dan.

Diana Railton (@dianarailton): How content strategy supports communications strategy

Diana's talk created a bridge between the practice of content strategy with the closely related world of communications strategy. She was both pragmatic and frank about the challenges both practices face as more communication goes online. So sharp and so good.

Irene Walker (@1rene): Let’s talk accessibility

By introducing us to several friends with disabilities and their online content challenges, Irene made an extremely compelling case for spending more time on accessibility. Not because we’re legally obligated, but because it’s the right thing to do. (Incidentally, Irene works for August Sun, the company that will host the 2012 CS Forum in Cape Town. Yes, South Africa. Right on.)

Lise Janody (@lisejanody): Balance & compromise (Weaving localization into a content strategy)

Content localization is a big, big topic. Some consider it too big for a short conference session, but not Lise Janody. She tackled it head on. In a mere 40 minutes, Lise provided a valuable introduction to localization, globalization, translation, and internationalization. Phew. All that smarts and she lives in France, too. Not fair.

Richard Ingram (@richardjingram): How did we all get here?

Ok, this is cheating. Many of you already know Richard from his brilliant infographics about content strategy. But this was his first-ever talk, and it was a winner. He presented the results of his survey on the varied backgrounds of content strategists. And—you guessed it—he made it all into another interesting infographic. Mmmmm… juicy data.

OH, AND WE TALKED, TOO

I suppose, we should also let you know that the Brain Traffic team also did some talking. Kristina Halvorson moderated the closing panel, and two of us did presentations, which you can see here:

Erin Kissane (@Kissane): Making sense of the (new) content landscape

Melissa Rach (@melissarach): CS Methodology: A DIY project

Thanks to conference hosts Jonathan Kahn (@lucidplot), Randall Snare (@randallsnare), and Destry Wion (@wion) for a lovely time.

Did you attend the forum? What were your stand-out moments?

You might notice the unfortunate photo included in the upper left. When I first saw it, I did a double-take, forgetting all about my task at hand (looking for a microwave). I immediately passed it along to as many people as I could via email, Twitter, and Facebook, wondering what the ad was really selling. Here’s what I imagine happened:

1. Late one night, after knocking back a few beers and knocking down a few walls, guy decides to try and make a few bucks selling his old microwave.
2. In his zeal to get back to renovation, guy quickly creates and publishes a Craigslist ad, accidently including a photo that was supposed to be, ahem, private.
3. Lady friend’s derriere is available for all the world to see.

And what happened as a result? Best case scenario, dude receives many snarky emails in response to his “ad” and quickly takes it down, hopefully never letting lady friend in on the mistake. Worst case, lady friend gets word of her assets on display, which leads to a vicious argument over his general carelessness, which then leads to a messy break up and a half-finished kitchen.

When you’re selling more than microwaves

Now imagine this same scenario applied to a corporation’s website:

1. XYZ product has changed and the website needs to be updated ASAP.
2. The one person who knows how to update the website accidently uploads IMG_4055, the unfortunate photo shown above, instead of IMG_4505.
3. This web publisher, who works on the website in her “spare” time, has a pressing emergency in her real job, and doesn’t check the photo after publishing.
4. With no formal review and publishing process in place, the mistaken photo goes live, unnoticed by the corporation.

The result? By the time the corporation finally becomes aware of the situation and removes the photo, customers have posted the link on Facebook, Twitter, and online forums, along with snide commentary and jokes. The brand reputation is damaged. Sales for the product are down. The web publisher quits. And now no one knows how to update the website, so the company invests in a brand new CMS.

Avoid Internet infamy

In both cases, just a little bit of extra thought could have protected someone’s blunder from worldwide exposure. Dude could have benefitted from asking his lady friend to review the ad before publishing. And the corporation could have benefitted from formalizing roles, responsibilities, and workflow processes to ensure that content is given the time and attention it deserves.

While this is a made-up scenario, examples like the above do, unfortunately, happen in real life. For example, one major retailer who shall remain nameless posted an illicit drug for sale for $25.25 plus shipping, available in 4–8 weeks. While the company eventually took it down, Google has a longer memory.

Let’s do ourselves, our organizations—and our significant others—a favor and cover our assets with content strategy.