Thinking beyond the website

While I’m excited by the rapid growth of the discipline of content strategy as evidenced by last week’s sold out Content Strategy Forum in Paris and the growing buzz about content strategy across the webisphere, most of the conversation is currently centered around web content strategy.

I think the reason the conversation has centered around the website is that most people with Content Strategy in their job title come from the web world, where the website is central to the overall customer experience. Yet despite the website’s central, highly visible role in engaging with customers, content has been an extremely neglected part of the experience. As a result, content strategists have started a movement to address this situation. And while I applaud this, I would argue that the experience expands past the website and as a result content strategists need to think beyond the website.

For example, the Zappos website is their storefront. But people don’t come to the Zappos storefront for the content. They come to buy shoes. And they come to buy shoes because of the service experience. While Zappos sells shoes, it’s primarily a customer service company. While the website is an important pillar in delivering their overall service experience, it’s only one pillar. If you’re part of the school of thought that considers corporate culture = strategy (Zappos and Netflix are two examples of companies who think this way), then internal employee communications (including events, training, social learning, the Zappos culture book, and so on) becomes critical to corporate strategy. Just think of the value a content strategy approach to internal communications could bring to the table.

Because the content exposed to customers on the web is only the tip of the iceberg of all the content that an organization contains, I’d like to see the discipline of content strategy start thinking beyond the website and start asking questions like:

• What story are we telling internally through our employee content experience?
• What story are we telling through our partner and supplier content experience?
• What story are we telling through our employee, customer, partner, or supplier onboarding experience?
• What story are we telling through our technical or how to content?
• What story are we telling through the way we invoice our customers?
• What story are we telling through our correspondence with customers?
• What story are we telling to the rapidly increasing portion of the population accessing content through their mobile devices?
• and so on…

Every organization tells a story through the content it produces, whether designed or not.

And all of this content is in desparate need of a content strategy, what Kristina Halvorson, keynote speaker at least week’s Content Strategy Forum and author of Content Strategy for the Web, defines as “the practice of planning for content creation, delivery, and governance.”

So while it’s critically important to tackle the problem of the web experience, let’s not forgot the larger experience and the central role of content within that larger experience. Because if you haven’t designed your content strategy around the larger experience, odds are the story your organization is telling is a fragmented, unsatisfactory story.

For those new to the field of content strategy and wondering where to learn more, here are a few places to start:

• Search Google for content strategy
• Review the presentations from Content Strategy Forum 2010 on SlideShare
• Check out the #contentstrategy hashtag on twitter and follow one of the content strategy twitter lists
• Read the content strategy knoll
• Check out the Content Strategy Google Group
• Join the LinkedIn Content Strategy group
• Keep an eye on the Business Exchange Content Strategy related articles at Business Week

Related posts:

1. Designing for a holistic customer experience – thinking outside the product