Here is a list of common Content Strategy challenges as well as a recommendation that should help tackle the problem.
1. No one can find anything on our website, and they’re complaining to the CEO
Actionable Recommendation: This could be dependent on a number issues such as: poor labeling, poor organizational structure, and bad metadata. Hillary Marsh points out that content is the key way the organization’s stuff will be found by its audiences, and that these conversations are often about having enough people to truly manage the organization’s content. So my recommendation would be to first look at who is responsible for producing the content and see if new roles need to be made. Once roles are assigned, I would suggest making a new content strategy that would help solve issues such as: poor labeling, poor organizational structure, and bad metadata. Most likely, a content audit is the first step in this process.
2. Practically everyone in our organization publishes content online, and you’d almost never know it was from the same organization
Actionable Recommendation: A style guide is needed to solve this challenge so that the organization will have a clearly defined guide that discusses its voice and tone. Voice and tone is described by Halvorson & Rach as one brand voice that has a distinct personality, style, and point of view. This view can take on different tones in different situations and for different purposes, all depending on the organizations specific audience. A style guide will help anyone who contributes content to the website because they will have a reference that reinforces the organizations brand voice and the many different tones that support it. Striving for a consistent voice across all content on a website will assure to users that they are in the correct place.
3. No one is in charge of the homepage
Actionable Recommendation: To tackle this challenge a company needs to clearly define the roles of each individual so that content contributors know their jobs. Halvorson and Rach say that it’s critical for each person to know what their role is and how it fits into the larger content process. This is why defining ownership and roles is one of the most important aspects of workflow and governance.
4. We can’t add comments because we don’t know how to handle them
Actionable Recommendation: This challenge is for a content manager to sort out and really requires an organization to have a set strategy in place for customer comments. Rusty Weston points out in his article “5 Must-Know Things About Content Strategists” that content strategists need to establish web publishing and content management processes that they can execute effectively.
5. Our audience can’t get the information they want from their mobile devices.
Actionable Recommendation: Fine tune, and trim down content for mobile devices so that only the essential information is presented to users. Nielsen and Budiu point out in Mobile Usability that it’s roughly twice as hard to understand complicated content when reading on the smaller screen. This could be the problem that the organization is having but we will never know until we do mobile usability testing. This usability testing should be conducted on multiple devices to insure the site is being displayed properly.
6. Our content isn’t appearing on Google like we think it should
Actionable Recommendation: Consult with a Search Engine Specialist to figure out which SEO strategies are not working and if new keyword phrases need to be incorporated into the site. Also meet with content creators to guide them through metadata and SEO best practices. My company uses a strategy called siloing that improves SEO rankings and organizational structure. Read more about siloing here.
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