People-Focused Content Strategy Workbook CMA | Building Content Strategy February 6, 2013

ariad.ca

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Business Riddle: Define your organization’s business challenge that you’re solving for: Example: A local environmental NGO is thinking about redoing its website. The organization received feedback from donors that the site doesn’t look very professional. The group has also been struggling to secure donations online to accommodate regular donors who would find it much easier to make payments electronically rather than call in directly. Processing payments manually also eats up a lot of the staff’s time, as does mailing tax receipts to individual donors. Sandy, the NGO’s Executive Director, also feels that the organization isn’t doing a good enough job telling their story: “We do a lot of great work in local communities. We need to brag a little.”

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Audience Overview: Audience Information Relevant data and information

Gender

Age

Education

Spending Behaviour

Market Size

Online Activity

Addition information

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Exercise 1: Tell your story. Using the space below, write out your organization’s story. Describe how you got started, your greatest successes, competitors and greatest challenges. Be creative.

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Exercise 2: Mapping your stakeholders Understanding who the players are that can impact your project is key. Use this template to map out the lay of the land.

• List each stakeholders name • List their job title • Describe what motivates them • Outline how content can help with their job

Stakeholder Name

Title Motivation How Content Helps

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Exercise 3: Outlining Business Objectives Use this template to articulate your business goals. Here’s how:

1. Write down the greatest challenge(s) your organization faces (this is the thing that keeps you up at night).

2. Next, write down how you might address this challenge (this is your business objective).

3. Finally use the MFB criteria to determine if your proposed solution is a good objective.

M=Measurable F=Focused B=Business Imperative

Challenges How to address challenge M F B

         

         

         

         

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Exercise 4: Audience Overview List your audiences in order of priority. Write as much as you can about each, it will help you later (i.e. what motivates them, how old are they, etc.)

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Exercise 4 continued…Uncovering Audience Insights Remember empathy is a key part of marketing. Thinking about your priority audience now, use the template to map out how they think and feel. Also outline their pain. Really try to get inside their head.

Think & Feel?  

Hear?  

See?  

Say & Do?  

Pain?  

Gain?  

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Exercise 5: Mapping Business Objectives to Audience Goals This is where your strategy really starts to take shape. With this template, your goal is to find the overlap between your business objectives and your audience’s goals. Here’s how:

1. Start by listing your refined business objectives in the left-hand column. 2. In the right-hand column, list your audience goals. 3. Use lines to connect similar business and audience goals.

Business Objectives Audience Goals

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Exercise 6: Identify Brand Themes Start by putting the name of your organization in the centre of the page. Now brainstorm the themes your brand wants to be known for. For instance, “DIY environmentalism.”

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Exercise 7: Creating a Strategy Statement Look back on all of the work you’ve completed so far. Distill this thinking down into a one sentence statement about the strategy you propose – this is your content mission. The statement should address the needs of your organization and audience. Then annotate the statement. The annotations are the rationale for the strategy.

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Exercise 8: Aligning Content to Goals Use this template to start to map out the topics and format of content required to achieve your goals. Here’s how:

1. List audience goals in the left-hand column. 2. Add in the topics you think will address these goals. 3. Outline the formats that are best suited for each goal. 4. Think about the content you have back at your organization, can any of it be

reused?

Audience Goal Topics Format Reuse

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Exercise 9: Crafting Content Requirements Select a piece of content that you’ll likely have to produce from scratch and give the template below a try. Communication Goal: List the purpose of this piece of content (i.e. readers should feel persuaded to learn more).

Copy points: List key information to be included, or include a link to source content.

Tone and voice: Describe how the content should sound. (For instance, professional without feeling formal.)