Aaron Conant 0:18

Hey, everybody, Happy Thursday. Welcome to the call today. Starting here a few minutes after the hour, I always like to give everybody enough chance to wrap up all the perpetual Zoom meetings that run over, but it's going to be an awesome conversation as we kick it off here. Hi, everybody, my name is Aaron Cohnant. I'm the Co-founder and Managing Director here at BWG Connect where a networking and knowledge sharing group with 1000s of brands who do exactly that we network and knowledge share together to stay on top of the newest trends strategies, digital pain points, whatever it might be that shape in the digital space on a weekly basis, we're gonna host close to 300 of these virtual events this year. So if there's other topics that you'd be interested in attending, don't hesitate to reach out. As we kind of kick this off a couple housekeeping items you're seeing we start in five to six minutes after the hour, we're just going to also wrap up with three to four minutes to go in the hour as well as to give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. A couple of things here. We want this to be as educational and informational as possible. So at any point in time, if you have questions, you can submit it via the chat the Questions section there or you can always email me questions Aaron aaron@bwgconnect.com And we can feel questions that way as well, that includes an hour after the call tomorrow, next week, you have any questions in the digital space, don't ever hesitate to reach out, we can get you an answer in under a day. With that, I'm gonna go ahead and kick it off. So, you know, talking to 30 or 40 brands on a weekly basis just to stay on top of what those trends are. When the same topics come up over and over again. That's when we we host an event like this. And so you know, custom things that come up quite a bit right now, I would say 20 out of every 35 conversations customer experience. And then also, you know, what is digital asset management look like? I would say he looked back, you know, 18 to 24 months, it's randomly a nice to have. And now it's pretty much table stakes to have something in place and a strategy around it. And so we've got some great friends, great partners of the network over at Adobe and TA Digital. And they've agreed to jump on the phone today and kind of answer some questions across the board, share some key insights are dealing with a lot of different brands within the network and supporting them in a variety of fashion. So we said Hey, want to jump on the call today and kind of help educate the community and the network as a whole. And they agreed. So that's awesome. The other thing is, besides sharing, we want to be able to throw as many questions at them as possible. So at any point in time, if you have a question, like I said, drop into the chat the question section or email it to me directly Aaron aaron@bwgconnect.com so you know, Scott, I'm going to kick it off, you know, kick it over to you for a brief intro on yourself the organization that he can kick it over to Lisa and then we can kind of jump into the conversation with it sound good?

Scott Monroe 3:05

Sounds great. Yeah, Aaron, thanks for the opportunity to be here today and appreciate all of you who have joined us. My name is Scott Monroe, and with Adobe and spent, really all 15 years, my career in some sort of marketing function, started out in public relations, moved into a marketing communications role, and spent really the last seven years in more of a b2b SaaS Product Marketing role. So I was with Workfront for a couple of years before we were acquired by Adobe, back in December, and now part of the the Adobe team, Adobe marketing team, I should say. So, Lisa, how are you?

Lisa Hillier 3:42

Hi, everyone. My name is Lisa Hillier. I'm a senior manager and practice leader of the content over at TA Digital. And that includes everything from content strategy to content development, SEO, and also the more technical side with content engineering, and really any content ops falling under my umbrella. My background, I've worked in the tech space and large implementations for the last probably eight or 10 years before that I was in business management and finance. So I've really brought that knowledge with me to how you can translate your content and the value of that and be able to speak to your executives.

Aaron Conant 4:20

Awesome. So once again, as we kick it off here, if we want to answer questions real time as they come up, so drop them into the chat the question or email them to me, but let's jump into the conversation as a whole.

Lisa Hillier 4:34

So what we're gonna cover today, we're going to talk about like why relevant, personalized content produces better engagement for you, and how to get those results. And we're going to talk about how to avoid those fragmented customer experiences as well as eating the cost of your content. And putting that to work for you and positioning your content investment as an asset for those who manage your budgets. Also, how to lower your costs by reducing redundancies And then how to break down content silos across the organization. So first, I want to dive into that, that why you know why relevant, personalized content produces better engagement and results for you TA Digital, we operate on the guiding principle that content, content is the message and experiences that medium and data is the measure that creates the full customer experience with your website. So content is really the center of gravity for a website driving search results, and really the overall user site experience, so many things really have to be right for content to be able to flow through that digital medium to the end user experience of content isn't clear if it's not organized, if it's hard to find on the site. Or if it can be found in search and reach through your marketing efforts, then really, nothing's happening. It's like that old saying, you know, if a tree falls in the woods, do you hear it, your content can't be reached, or if there's no one there to consume and engage with your content doesn't exist in their universe. So really, to strategize and optimize content, both for users and search engines, you really want to make fluid connections, you know, make those between business strategy that's informed by SEO and data to find your audience and really open those gates. This really allows that customer to then flow through to your site where good UX is a vehicle, but the content that is actually consumed by your user by your customer, that's what leads the customer there. And that provides the answers when they get to their destination on your site. So in order to truly meet needs answer questions, and really, in this day and age, it has to be effortless. your site experience and destination content has to be personalized to the individual. So we want to avoid the fragmented experiences, don't make sure that you're telling your brand story with a unified voice. So now that we know all this, how do we avoid that? You know, the fragmented experience across the journey? How do we make sure that every every touchpoint really your brand story is represented, we want to dive deeper into that first tenet that I talked about. So we're content, the message is really foundational to the greater whole, it's important to understand, I'm going to go beyond words, images of young videos on a web page, that really it needs to be all kind of brought together with good content strategy at the forefront. So you're good content strategy is really going to be supported by four pillars. And these pillars unite to generate that engaging, personalized experience. So content strategy is really supportive first, by purpose. At its core, it means we have that unified vision. It's fueled by a structured framework, it's going to enable content creation and dynamic delivery of personalized messaging. So really, you've heard it all before you know that you're getting your message to the right audience at the right time. And we've got to make sure that it's in line with your business goals. So this means that you know who you're talking to, and how to speak to them. And the strategy really needs substance to it. So substance is when we're going to provide a systematic, that thoughtful approach, we really want to serve the most effective content at the right time. So this is determined through your audience segmentation, your content achieves measurable brand and business objectives, but it fulfills those customer goals. So on the business side, you may have a repository of like hundreds or 1000s of pages of content, but really, your customers only view your content as a resource or a piece to the conversation in their head, even then it answers their questions. So we also want to make sure that structure and workflow is part of that content strategy. It's really the other half of that equation to help you realize the ROI. So the efficiency and how you wrangle your content or create that conversation in a seamless way, is going to be really big to measure your return. And as we're fueling the customer experience with things like a structured content model, your metadata, your schema markup taxonomy, you know, to really match those content assets with the templates and components of your website. This really requires the behind the scenes activities being organized and making sure that you're combining the right technologies, the processes, the methodologies, that you have the right people in place to manage content effectively and efficiently. So ensuring that the content assets that they're successfully managed post deployment is critical, again, to your content governance, and this includes producing and following any kind of internal documentation and policy. And if you don't have that, making sure you develop that

Aaron Conant 9:34

So a quick question that comes in over email is, how have you seen measurement in KPIs change over the past, you know, 12 to 18 months? I think specifically, you know, what they're relating to, you know, to the pandemic and you know, how does it how do you see that changing going forward? brands are struggling with that now is producing content. I know I have content how's it performing? What's the right am I? am I spending too much and making too much content? Am I not spending enough? So a lot of questions out there around content right now and measurement.

Lisa Hillier 10:10

Yeah, and I'm glad these questions are being asked, and that some of what I'm going to dive into as I move further, because content really, you know, was one of the biggest pieces of awareness for internal organizations, as we, you know, moved through the pandemic, they realized, you know, in all these virtual, these remote workplaces, the new normal this year, like we really can't function without digital content and the processes that surround it. And the KPIs are really what are going to speak to leadership teams. And, you know, if we jump to the next slide, I'll talk about a little bit how, you know, really the cost of content wrangling through speaking to leadership teams, and making sure we have these benchmarks. So in order to, you know, ease that cost of ringling really realize the ROI through those personalized memorable experiences that we're all sought. After, you know, to fuel that digital experience, it's really critical that our leadership teams understand that content is not a one and done piece for your website, a lot of a lot of C suite executive level, you know, those who choose what budgets or departments get they they think, oh, we'll write some content, we'll slap it on the website, and great, we'll be done. You know, but really, it's going to grow, it's going to change, it needs nurtured parts of it are going to need Sunset at time. So your business is a living breathing thing. Why isn't your content. So because your content needs to grow and change with your business objectives? It exists really in many stages across the digital experience. So you may need to take a deeper look, you know, are you approaching your content from a migration perspective? Or the development of a brand new site? Are you all set there? Are you looking at content touchpoints, you know, and how they're, we've got to carefully evaluate them and manage them with when we're to the optimization stage of an existing site. And then really all around your contents have to be properly maintained, just like a library. So you know, at face value, your customer is not going to think about your content, separating out like what's technical content, or what's informational, and, and marketing content and all of that, you know, so once you have the content strategy Foundation, you've got to keep that updated. And really leverage the technology at your fingertips. So you can maintain your governance plan for that focus on structuring the content into that conversation. Because the actual content is not where the value lies. And you really need to understand that it's the interaction and engagement with that content. That's what's going to produce that value for your business. So it's helpful to make sure you know that those who determine the budget that they really understand that it's not just about writing that piece of content or creating that video, it really then comes from that engagement. So considering all facets of content strategy, integrating your brand strategy, like I said, your technology that supports it, making sure that SEO is connected with your content. And it's optimized to drive those seamless experiences from customer, like where the customer has the thought to getting the answer and then taking action. So this really makes sure that your website is enabling most relevant and effective content so that it will surface at the right time in the right audience. And then you know, to make sure that it flows to the right channels, the right mediums to get the user to the destination of taking whatever action is needed. So making sure to translate the content into value early on benchmarking, and tracking the right data points to reflect your business goals. It's easy to do a Google search and just find out what metrics are important to content. But it's really important to take your overall business strategy and those goals and objectives that you're pursuing. And match those to a content strategy. So you can achieve, you know, those goals atop the cost of your content strategy investment, and that really helps you calculate and quantify that return. So you know, we talk a lot about content strategy as an asset, we talk about asset management, we throw it around. But we really need to think about you know, how to position your content investment as that asset rather than a cost or an expense. So that can drive that long term value for you. And we don't want your content to grow stagnant. This process usually requires condensing simplifying content for your customers, and investing in the future through careful content planning, encouraging management to contribute their skills and expertise to your content. But if you have to continually start, you know, creating content, blank slate brand new every time that you have a product or a service launch, where every time there's a shift in your market. If you're starting everything from ground zero, there's a there's a big cost to that and the cost is only tucked up as an expense unless you can figure out how to manage and leverage it over time, it doesn't mean that you're not going to make big changes and create new pieces of content, but you need to find ways to use what you have. So you're not reinventing that wheel every time. And like any asset, you you have to be able to keep track of it, you have to maintain your content properly to really retain and grow that value. So the probably find this digital consultants is really that kind of doesn't hold a literal place on the balance sheet. So how to communicate that budget need to strategize, produce, and maintain that asset. So solid content strategy and management of your content assets, are really going to lie at the foundation of what truly shaped that investment, and evolves it from being an expense into an asset. So this allows you to take your site, your message, your marketing, take everything really from that rigid sequential customer funnel, and really fully develop it into a dimensional experience where it's matrix, personalized content, you know, it's just as flexible as your customers attention truly. And it can be created and used and repurposed match to different journeys, different business units, and really fulfill a bunch of different needs to drive that long term value.

Aaron Conant 16:19

So just another question that comes in is, where does this responsibility fall? And I love the question, because with how much is here, I'd love to get your, your, your take on it in Scotts as well. This is almost a whole new organization, right? Is their Chief Content Officer. Right? Is this do you feel it see this, you know, fall into the data group, the marketing group, this is, you know, what's happened over the past 15 months is the importance of content in like you're saying, the creation of it, the storage of it, you know, the the delivery of it, the governance of it, is? It's, it's, it's crazy, it's grown so much. So where does this fall? And then this idea of this, like, you know, Chief Content Officer that's randomly popped its head up? I don't know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. We'd kick it over to Scott and hear his thoughts as well. I know we have other stuff to go through. But it was a great question that came through. And I would love to pull that thread just a little bit.

Lisa Hillier 17:23

It's absolutely a great question. And one that I love to hear because it means you're thinking about that content. The wave, like who owns the responsibility is where you develop the content governance. And many companies, they might be large companies, they might be small there, it's going to look a little bit different every organization when you're talking content governance, but making sure that you, you know, when you start off a content strategy, you want to take a look at what you already have, you know, what, what is your inventory, let's audit the quality and the find ability of that the content that you have let's, let's take a deeper dive and assess the situation. And once you have an idea of like, the size and scale that's needed for your organization, and the content you already have, you can start to see, does it need to be as high as a Chief Content Officer? You know, really something I found transitioning from the finance industry into content and technology over the last 15 years, is that contents really the backbone of everything is, as I mentioned earlier, you know, if somebody lands on your site, there's no content, there's no experience, just point blank. So if you if you don't prioritize that and build out your team properly, there's there's not going to be much of an experience for your customer. And so really, as the backbone, you have to have content able to bridge between the strategy side between content marketing, as I mentioned earlier, you know, my title in a formal sense is I'm over content, strategy and SEO. But that really includes SEO that includes the content strategy, content development, as well as the content engineering and how it's authored to your CMS, and then how it's stored and managed in your digital asset management and everything. And so you really need to evaluate the size and needs of your organization and then start building out the levels of content governance from there.

Aaron Conant 19:21

Awesome.

Scott Monroe 19:23

Yeah. And I think one of the challenges, you know, to your question about where should content strategy, you know, where should it live, essentially, in a marketing organization, one of the challenges I've seen is, is, is lived in different areas. And often what happens is, depending upon that team's motivation, I guess I would call it that's where the content you know, the type of content kind of comes to life. So the example is, if content strategy lives in campaigns, then much of the time that the content being created is is for demand Gen. I've seen it live within corporate comms and in corporate comms, they may be a little more selfish or self serving. To create more thought leadership content, right? I've seen content live within Product Marketing and in that organization or a broader organization, and oftentimes that content can become is it sales enablement content? Right? So I think so often it depends on who the leader is that's running the the Content Strategy Team, and do they really fundamentally understand content strategy? So I don't know that I've ever found a place where it's perfect. I love your idea of the Chief Content Officer, or a VP of content, right, that can really own it end to end. And should that live within a marketing organization? I would say yes. I just haven't seen a lot of the Chief Content officers yet, but I love I love that concept.

Aaron Conant 20:42

Yeah, it was something that's been coming up more recently, because I think what you were saying it is, wherever it resides, that's where the emphasis is. And maybe if you pull it out, you know, maybe it has a more broader, more strategic view. But anyways, no, awesome. Just a great question and just wanted to attack a thing with, you know, routinely that I've been hearing from brands that didn't pop up a year ago. So yeah, super interesting. Anyways, Lisa, sorry for interrupting the the deck here.

Lisa Hillier 21:14

But this is actually the perfect segue into, you know, taking this content strategy and handing it over to Scott to talk more about those marketing challenges.

Scott Monroe 21:25

Yeah, so I think you touched on some of these, Aaron, you touched on some of those as well. And I think when we look at the state of where we are today, right, normally, an event like this, two years ago, would have been probably in person, or we're used to doing these type of in person events. And so we've gone virtual in many ways. And, and that has just really changed, I think, in many ways, what marketing looks like a b2b buyer, a CMO who's looking to buy software may be sitting at home, and looking on their phone and seeing an ad for, you know, this this type of software, which you wouldn't necessarily have seen maybe six, seven years ago. So there's just there's just changes in the market. But I think a lot of these challenges, but on the slide here are universal, the pace of content is relentless. And I think the past 15 months with COVID has just accelerated that, right? If you feel like if you're working on a content team, or you're involved kind of in an adjacent way to a new video, or an E guide, or whatever it might be, you get done with that piece of content, and you almost can't even breathe, because there's the next one. I didn't it. So it just becomes this thing where you work so hard on this content. It's like, did I get to see how this performed? Or did I have to just start working on the next one. And so it, I think the last 15 months just really accelerated that pace of content and creating new content as well. Customers demand more, right? We've seen this, you've got to meet me where I am, and, and provide really relevant fresh content could be on my phone, right? If they just demand more, and they they love that transparency. And we all are guilty of that. And I think that's that's good that customers demand more. So creating content that helps meet them where they are, is is very, very critical. Getting alignment internally, I think continues to be a challenge. I don't know that we'll ever figure that out. 100% is marketing organizations. And it kind of goes back to my point about, you know, content strategy, who owns it? And what's the motivation? What's the the emphasis of why I want content created? Is it for demand Gen? Is it for sales enablement, whatever it might be getting internal alignment, making sure people agree on that strategy is critical. People are burned out, we know that it's summertime, maybe people are taking vacations now. But man that first year, it felt like a COVID people were burned out. And I think working from home is is an interesting concept. Because that I think you see people who really have found that balance, there's others who just cannot shut down. And so being at home feeling like you're on all the time, you know, having wasted time wasted processing for bad processes leads to that, that burnout. And then compliance just continues to be be critical, regardless of the industry. If it's finance, if it's health care, making sure that what you're saying what you're creating is compliant with different federal regulations. But also making sure that your brand is protected, and that you're saying the right things and showcasing your brand and the right way those I think are our universal challenges that I would say most people can can resonate with.

Aaron Conant 24:26

And a cool comment that comes in here and I think it's you know, a lot of it is based on, you know, your comment around as soon as you have something generated. It's, it's now gone and you're on to the next thing. It's a great point. In addition to managing for content to evolve in a repository. We've often seen gaps between web and content teams in development. Right. And so a common pitfall is when websites are developed within with the mindset that the content will remain, as is at the point of development rather than building in flexibility considering you know, scale change, which is true, right? There's different content that's available for upload. Now, that wasn't three, four years ago, you know, everybody's not looking to replatform every one to two years. So you're building something in it that may or may not be able to house content that's generated, you know, a year from now, your thoughts on building in that flexibility?

Scott Monroe 25:24

Yeah, I think it's a really good point. And you do wonder, when I, when I'm sitting down with my team, and we're creating this piece of content, I think, going back to your question of having that mindset of how long do I expect this piece of content to live, we just went through an audit recently, when we were acquired by Adobe to go through and we found some pieces that were, I would say, a little a little outdated right now just looking at like, this is our old brand. These are old screenshots, things, sometimes it's like, we want more content. And so let's just go and add a bunch of content to our site. But you, you almost feel like you need almost that gatekeeper to make sure that, you know, is the stuff they're still relevant today. I worked in healthcare for 12 years before I joined workfront. And you would find stuff like that all the time, where it was this old, you know, he guide or an old white paper that lived on the website somewhere that wasn't relevant that that, you know, item or that news issue was kind of irrelevant. And so, yeah, I think your point about making sure that that I have that that lens of how long do I expect this piece of content to be on the web, or wherever it might be? I don't, if Lisa, if you have any thoughts on that?

Lisa Hillier 26:34

Absolutely. Um, you know, like I mentioned, it's a living, breathing thing, just like how your business grows and changes. And, you know, really, we, that's the biggest struggle that we have is, you know, you get people who understand content, as you know, just the written word that's on your website. But then we also have the technical side of it, that's what makes it flexible, and makes it a little more evergreen, you can use components of it, and pieces of it to continue forward. So again, to bring that content from being an expense into a durable asset that you can use and reuse, and repurpose, and continue to apply in different ways, different platforms, and save the company money while generating that return.

Aaron Conant 27:17

I think an interesting thing, I love this chart, because we inherently tried to simplify everything. But some things can't be simplified, even though we look at it and what they can. And so somebody asks, What is the structure look like within an organization? So this is the perfect, you know, slide to kind of capture that. So anyways, yeah, I'll kick it back over to Scott. Because I think when the structural piece of the allotments because you put the slide up there, like yes, exactly what we want to see and hear about.

Scott Monroe 27:47

Yeah, and I think, you know, going back, like we understand their challenges, and as marketing organizations, we just have to continue to evolve and get better and meet the market where it is meet customers where they are. But one of the challenges that often we find is that marketing organizations are kind of siloed. And they don't have that one place to manage work. And it does have this bottom up approach. And this this top down approach, where kind of this chart illustrates do my executive teams all the way down to my kind of individual contributors. Do they know that they know company strategy actually saw a statistic recently that over 90% of creatives that were surveyed, didn't understand the company strategy. So when we go to these teams and say, Hey, we need you to create this piece of content. You know, it's like, well, they just love pretty pictures. And they love to create, well, no, they want to know why they want to know why they are involved in this project, and how they're going to contribute in a meaningful way. And so that's really where I believe the power of work management comes into play is that extensibility, and the ability to meetings where they are in the field and with that data so that they know why the things are working on are important, how that work contributes to company goals. Again, being able to do things like automate workflows, and when you can start to do that, to optimize the the format so you can optimize the structure of the apps within your work that they work with and how they integrate with each other. When you really start to optimize those things. You can do it across different teams. I think that's really where you can get that that better visibility, better strategic alignment. And what that does then is really improves strategic outcomes, and making sure that my content teams are contributing to those outcomes. And if you go to the next slide, we kind of take this a step further. It's I mentioned the integration automation of work. And what that does is kind of creates this single source of truth, which we call it a marketing system of record. Because there are so many different marketing teams that are that are connected and often they are siloed. And so making sure that my marketing ops team is connected with my product marketing team that my campaign leads are coming into the right place. They're getting fed to the right sales lead. All those kinds of things become so critical to have one place that single source of truth, I do say that that the data that you get out of this is only as good as the data in. So making sure that your teams are are entering, you know, good, reliable data that shows this is where we were on this project. And this is how it's progressing. And there's lots of input, but you know, making sure that that input is happening so that you have good data, good dashboards and good reporting as well. But going back to this idea of the marketing system of record, it really is powered by marketing data that's collected at every step of the way. And when we're working on things, whether we're in the strategy, planning phase, or we're in the you know, delivering, and measuring phase, that data should be coming in and really feeding the type of information that we can provide not only to executives, but to everybody in the organization as well. Just Finally, one more slide for me, just to kind of lay this out more of kind of a, you know, maybe a tactical approach, I realized that work isn't necessarily linear all the time. But there are times where projects, maybe content is linear. So when we start, you know, typically a piece of content starts with a request, we need this type of content, because it will we believe it will do X, Y, and Z, it's going to deliver leads, whatever the reason is, starts with a request. And then we can move down kind of this linear path in this case of, Okay, what what kind of budget do we need? What kind of people do we need resources, things like that, then we get that alignment, we can start creating the document. And whatever that content may look like, right, and making sure that we're aligned on what is this going, what kind of value is this going to bring to our customers and to our organization. We started building that out, there's review and approval processes, I mentioned the, the need to make sure that your brand is protected, that you're being compliant, that there's no typos, right, that this is something that we're all used to doing. But reviewing approve is, is really important. The ability to store and share making sure version control is is I've worked in places version controls and absolute mass. And so I'm getting a piece of content out who a sales rep, are they using the most updated piece of content, right, storing and sharing, making sure that it's easy to use, those are all very, very critical as well. And then just moving into the delivery phase, did we deliver the right content? Was it deployed in the right channels, and then we can measure and optimize to make sure how to perform in the market. When I go back to my creative teams, I can say, hey, the work you did was excellent. And here's the results for that. I think that those things are all very critical. And a marketing system of record is just one element to help deliver great work. But But we we believe in this and this is where you know, we're printing and Adobe applications could really come together for creative teams, for marketing ops teams, really marketing organizations as a whole, not just for content, but for all types of marketing work.

Aaron Conant 32:55

Awesome. Love it. So a question comes in around, you know, content creation and repurposing of it. So what are some ways you've seen content created for one purpose then repurposed and used in other ways? And then another one that comes in how do you work with conversational AI basics? But so we can tackle one of those, both of those. And then a couple more questions that just a reminder to others as well, you have questions drop in the question section there or email them into me, Aaron aaron@bwgconnect.com?

Scott Monroe 33:27

Yeah, I can maybe start with the first one. And Lisa, feel free to jump in as well, um, content that I've seen created for one purpose, and then repurpose in other ways. I think when content is really good when it's really well done. It does feel like it finds other avenues to be repurposed, right, I remember, one that comes to mind is this really well done research report. And it really appealed to a lot of different types of, of brains, I would say, right, I had this really incredible graphical looking field so that people that really learned by graphs, and charts kind of break down the data. And they loved that there was a narrative component that for the people who love to dig into the details, you know, had a statistical component, right? It really did meet a lot of needs, so that the information, the insights in that document were really, really well done. What I saw after that was different teams. And it really was due in large part to a great content marketing team, thought we don't want this to just be something that was delivered to an executive team. We're going to go into going to go out and break this into other types of content. So that report turned into this really cool, interactive infographic. It turned into the basis for some slides that went out with our thought leadership team as they went out to industry events. It turned into LinkedIn posts, little shareable videos, like it just kind of took on a life of its own. But they did a really good job at taking information that was in this report and figuring out how can I make this appeal to other types of audiences. for different reasons and in different mediums and different formats, and so I think when content is really well done, and you got the right team behind that, I think that it can be repurposed for a number of different reasons. And so many of you got good content, make sure it doesn't just, hey, we had this one reason we had a campaign that we use it for, or whatever the reason was, if your reason one was the primary reason, think of maybe 234, or five other reasons or ways that it can be deployed, because I think there's if it's good content, it really can be appealing to a lot of different audiences and people for different reasons.

Lisa Hillier 35:37

And I think, also, to carry on from that, you know, it's been, the technology has been around for a while. But it's almost like companies, large enterprises, they didn't know how to put it to use. And so like management of content, as modules or components, still feels like it's really in the early days, but that is the path, you know, to really make sure that your website can evolve in the future. So this is where you can take chunks of, you know, rich media, text, images, and you can have your content standalone, or you can piece it together as you need, you know, as far as serving content and documents to different audience or different channels. And really, when you can find that modular componentized content and find success with that, you know, you'll find that you're able to apply different parts or ways that you've built out or want to use your your content, you can address different markets, you can work within different verticals, different journeys and audiences that you're trying to reach, and then really take that. And, you know, as long as you're considering your content strategy, you're considering the technology behind it. You know, really just make sure that you've established those standards. What is your structured approach to content authoring? And how can you use that to have your content find new life? You know, we you hear about and data Originally, it was designed for technical document management. But we really use this a lot more now, in website development, redesign migrations. And then really to touch a little bit also, on the AI shared with question, I saw a report from Forrester, pretty recently, and it talks about, I think it was like in from now till 2025, or something close to that, you know, there's going to be a significant shift in how your content, how your document handling evolves. And, you know, we've seen it even just in the last 10 years with search with, you know, with Google and being and, and it went from just a text type into the search engine. And really, now we share the writing credit with robots, we need to be able to speak to the user, we need to be able to speak to the robots. And so we have, you know, voice search, and we have to be able to think about how, you know, we used to think about how does the customer sit down? And what is their thought process to an intent to type something into the search box. But now, we also have to think, how do they speak to a robot into, you know, Google.or, Alexa? And how do they get the answers, because they're going to speak to that differently than they speak to a person. So we need to keep that in mind. And really structuring your data is going to surround your content, and it's going to make it appeal and be usable in that sense. But also be functional and flexible, to you know, as I said, address different audiences, different journeys, and not have to continually be repurposed. So, you know, in line with that structure, making sure that your governance and that you have some you know, Lifecycle Management tactics, and really the technology to support your content and the growth and evolution of your digital space from that experience.

Aaron Conant 39:10

Awesome. So a great question that comes in what are some frequently forgotten considerations when content planning that you all have seen to get through gaps that may not be addressed in a content strategy? One example that comes to mind is noting the lifecycle timeline for refreshing and whether or not a piece is evergreen or timely and immediate. So anyways, you know, frequently forgotten considerations in content planning that you've come across.

Lisa Hillier 39:37

So when you're working with a content strategy, you know, you really have different stages that you're you're moving throughout, and just making sure that you've, you start at the beginning and you follow the steps so many organizations that I work with, have a plan, you know, for a website migration, for example, and they forgot about something with content strategy or with With part of the brand, and they think, well, we have the budget for this now, let's go address that later. But really, if you start with a good content strategy, and you ask yourself the right questions up front, it's going to inform and create that user experience, it's going to save you the cost of going and, you know, revising what you just dumped all your budget into, and iterating and continuing from there. So really, a good content strategy is going to make sure that you're asking upfront, you know, what, what digital content assets do you have? Where are these currently stored? Who's using them? When are they using them? Why? You know, again, what business objectives do those support? You know, is it supporting your brand position, you have brand positioning? Do we need to make sure that strategy for your brand is up front and working with your content strategy? You know, what are the processes and resources in place? Really just doing that discovery, finding out the platforms and tools you have? Or that you might need? and exploring? You know, how, how do these answer for your brand for sub brands? And then you take that discovery information and build that content strategy? And then that really is going to support as you create content and validate it, and that, you know, you're running and optimizing the whole experience.

Aaron Conant 41:18

Awesome. Yeah. I love it. Scott, from your side, any additional thoughts on a common pitfalls or things that are missed as people are trying to put together a content strategy?

Scott Monroe 41:30

Again, I just think kind of goes back to a comment I made earlier, asking ourselves why, first, and really understanding the why of and what it is that we're trying to accomplish. I see that happen a lot, where it's like, we got to get content out there. We need to, you know, for whatever reason, but I think I think asking ourselves take a step back as an organization, a team, whenever you're, you know, whatever the group is, and asking what, why are we doing this, so that we don't go to a ton of work to create, you know, because it does concrete and good content takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, a lot of brainpower, a lot of resources. And if we're not asking the right questions up front, I think that can be a problem.

Aaron Conant 42:08

So going back to, you know, part of the conversation from earlier, you know, if we're talking about different sections of the organization as a whole in different silos that have popped up, you know, how do you see customers, you know, breaking down, you know, those silos across the board and be more communicative thoughts there?

Scott Monroe 42:29

Yeah, I can start that one. I was actually talking to one of our customers a few weeks ago about something similar. And we had a really great conversation. And one of the things that this person bringing up was this concept, or this this topic of visibility, and how they had improved visibility across their entire department across the marketing organization, and how visibility was driving better results. And essentially, what they were talking about was, you know, until recently, I didn't really understand what the creative team was working on, I didn't understand what the content marketing team was working on, or what the priorities were for the campaign team, they now have one place to manage their work. And so having that visibility and those insights into what other teams are working on who's working on what really started to drive better results, because they just just simply having that that visibility was was making a huge difference because it made resourcing easier. Budgeting was better, right, that the right work was being prioritized. They were working on the right things instead of, hey, this really isn't a priority, right? Now, let's maybe move that a month or two weeks, wherever might be, and on and on. But they just kept bringing that up that the visibility was was critical, especially the marketing department, where we'll see where customers or prospects that we work with, just in one marketing word, maybe be using, you know, five or six different project management tools. And often they don't, they don't interact with each other. And so there's always this kind of manual reporting process, and just having that one place to have their work centralized. And having that visibility was starting to drive incredible results and really breaking down those silos across the org.

Aaron Conant 44:07

Awesome, love it. You know, if I jump back over at Lisa, you'd mentioned SEO earlier? How does SEO fit with content strategy? How does it contribute to asset management as a whole would love to hear your thoughts there? Yeah, so

Lisa Hillier 44:21

I think a lot of people, you know, they forget that search engines are really acting as that gateway between the site and the user. So if the if the website and the content, if they're not organized and optimized, then that gateway really becomes a barrier. So to make sure that we can break through it, we have to analyze, you know, the signals, what, what, what are those signals in those search queries? What is the intent of the user? What is their onsite behavior and SEO answers that really gives us a lot of information on how to leverage our content. So instead, SEO really connects the content strategy. The problem that a customer needs to solve an inbound search traffic, the great thing about it is that is offering you completely unedited insight into the customer's needs. Nobody lies to a search engine, they just type in exactly what they're after.

Aaron Conant 45:15

To search. By their, you know, are there other things, you know, as we kind of get to the end here, we probably have about three and a half minutes left, you know, are there key things, you know, at least kick it off with you first? Are there key things that you thought would come up today, that didn't, or that commonly come up that you think, Hey, you know, people should know about this? Or, you know, how to kick that that question over to you are the things you thought will come up today that didn't? Or that people really shouldn't? No?

Lisa Hillier 45:44

No, I think I'm talking about all all dimensions of this, I think we really tackled a lot of what came up in the questions were really great, and really addressed a lot of the concerns that I see when working with clients. And you know, so just making sure that we're keeping in mind, the, you know, the content creation, web based content creation is a different animal than, you know, content creation, considering that AI powered, you know, documentation and, you know, its impact within search, and even just the use of the content, AI is going to be a part of the future is something that we can't avoid, you know, structured content management is critical, and something that's not very well understood at this point. So it's great to, you know, find a partner to engage with to help understand that so you can put your content to use for you. And then really, you know, Scott mentioned this, but making sure that there's review processes that there's collaboration, and then really, you know, not just considering the content, or the omni channel content experience, the site experience, and really, you know, how, how are you putting your content to work? So, it is a conversation for your customer? It is, it is something that, you know, even if it's a conversation in their head, as they're looking to answer a question, and then they're following through to see where that journey leads them on your site, make sure that you help get them to that destination.

Aaron Conant 47:12

Awesome. Scott, I'll kind of kick it over to you. You know, as well as kind of a question I What have you seen? Question this comes in over email? What's changed over the past year? And how do you see it evolving? going forward? Like, is there one major part of content strategy, this changed, that you think is, is, you know, changed forever, and it's going to be different moving forward. And obviously, maybe that wraps into, you know, some things that you thought will come up today. But didn't,

Scott Monroe 47:42

I might take a little bit of a different direction there just because there's, there's a project that I've been involved in, and it's all about data driven creatives and the creative process, and that includes content production. I think there's this common misconception with and I've seen this in a number of different organizations could be through the business, it could be through finance, engineering, whatever it might be, that creatives and content producers don't like data, they like to write, they like to design they like to shoot video, the data that's, you know, numbers, that's not their thing. And there are a lot of studies right now that are especially the past year during COVID, that not only, I guess, backup, or invalidate that thought process, but really prove that creatives love data. So I would just say if you have data to share with your creative teams, your content producers, your writers, or editors, share that with them. Because if you can use data to inform your content strategy to help them understand the why, to show them how the things that they're doing lead to lead generation lead to sales. these are these are really powerful elements for them. And I think it leads to job satisfaction. No, it's not it's I think it takes away some of those feelings of the work that I'm doing is an important what is important. And here's how so using data to feed the creative process and the content production process, but also paying it off with your teams to say we did an incredible job. And here's how or this didn't perform as well, what can we do differently. So I've been on that soapbox for a while about feeding data to your creative and content teams. And I think if you've got any that you can share with them, do that whether it's about company strategy industry, you know, trends, share that data with them, they need it, they love it.

Aaron Conant 49:28

Awesome. I love it. And you know, I want to say a quick thank you Lisa and Scott for your time today. Thanks for being so open to sharing information, also answering all the questions we threw at you over the past 15 minutes or so. It's been all around great conversation. So also thanks for being such great friends, partners, supporters to the network as a whole. Again, encourage anybody on the call today. You know, if you're looking for any additional information, it's worth throwing 30 minutes on the calendar with them and kind of picking their brains and doing a deep dive there on you know resident experts and helping a ton of different orders. within the network out as a whole. So, with that, I think we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up. Thanks again, Lisa. Thanks, Scott. hope everybody has a fantastic Thursday. Everybody stay safe. Look forward to have you at a future event. Already everybody pigging out. We'll be in touch.