Breaking Through Content Silos: Aligning Your Content Across Departments

Breaking through Content Silos

Laurel Nicholes Director, Product Content Experience, F5 Networks Niki Vecsei Harrold Director, Community Strategy and Social Media, Transamerica

Agenda

1.Workforce Silos

2.Content Silos

3.Problem to solve

4.Content Potluck, defined

5.Getting Executive Buy-in

6. Find your Champions7.How does Content Potluck work?

8. Gains for you and your audience9. Success Stories10.Best Practices


Workforce Silos


• No longer an issue limited to enterprise sized companies

• Silos grow because the need for speed trumps the need for knowledge sharing.

• Which teams are effected most?

Content Silos


• Workforce silos create content silos

• Redundancies, misalignments on vocabulary, tone of voice, brand elements etc.

• Customers don’t care who wrote what, they care that their problem will get solved.

Problem to solve….


51% of companies surveyed do not

ensure consistent

content across channels.

Why?


• No unified content strategy (42%)

• Tool chains don’t connect

(41%)

• Manual Terminology management (71%)

Content Potluck


● Interlock between siloed teams.

● Mine your own content.

● Enterprise-wide content ideas

● Content managed from a centralized location

● No one can hide!

● Social Media

promotion

Results?


● A rich assortment of

content

● Support for different

information foraging styles.

● Team and strategy is unified,

but content format is

diverse.

Solve the problem


A single forum can address:

● Unified Content Strategy○ Common content goals

○ Audience identification techniques

● Disconnected Tools○ The current state

○ A roadmap forward

○ Build enterprise solutions together

● Terminology

○ Collaborative term definitions

○ Terminology compliance automation

Executive Buy In


Find your Champions


● Inventory current content owners

● Identify groups that have rich insights

● Who is passionate about

customer experience?

● Identify barriers to entry

The right talent


The best contributors:

• Understood the audience• Created content that helped solve a

problem

Identify the profile or profiles of an

ideal content contributor regardless

of their “official” function or title.

The right profile


Every community needs a wide variety of content creators, but they should share some key characteristics:

• Show a passion for connecting with customers

• Display deep interest in how our customers experience

our product or service• They want to learn as much as they want to share

knowledge• Have empathy for customer problems and a desire to

help

• Understand that helping one person online can

organically scale to deflect hundreds maybe even

thousands of identical support cases.

• See community/content participation as a career

advancement opportunity.

Get them to the table


In these gatherings (preferably over lunch or breakfast) we discuss:

• Content projects in flight, by team.• Content types currently in production• Publication dates, so we are constantly offering a

steady stream of content to our customers.• Themes from customer support, customer visits,

and community forums to spark new content project ideas.

• Customer feedback from social media, communities and content portals.

A list to get you started


Traditional Content Developers

● Digital & Product Marketing

● Information Development

● Product Management

● Training

● Knowledge Base Authors

Broaden the scope:

● Professional Services

● Customer Service

● Sales Engineers

● Evangelists

● Engineers

How the Potluck works


● No slides!● Discuss:○ Projects in flight.○ SR themes

● Build an editorial calendar.● Identify gaps and solutions.

Interlock Agenda


▪ Set goals

▪ Track attendance

▪ Share and engage

▪ Assign action items

Editorial Calendar


● Color coded by content type

● Assigned to owners

● Hard delivery date with reminders

Gains for the customer:


● Real world, trusted content

● Diverse points of view

● Networking and career growth

● Rich variety of content types

● Platform to co-create

● Caveat: clearly mark corporate content.

Gains for you:


- Grow content audience, community

membership.

- Real-time feedback

- Sentiment analysis

- Gap and depth analysis

- Avoid duplication, build consistency

- Content investment ROI

Proving Success: Content Potluck


Content metrics:

● Unique views

● Time on page

● Video views

● Most liked (Kudoed)

● Content or author

● Traffic referral source

Community:

● Change in returning vs. new visitors to site

● Traffic pattern within the community

● Depth of conversation threads

● Questions resolved by peers or SME’s

● Time to resolution

Success Metrics:


Uptime Bulletin (pdf) to HTML: 111 views to 8,901 views

Marketing video: 50 views vs. SME blog post: 10,005 views

Social Media Sharing: 250% growth in engagement (raising 5.3x per post)

AMA thread on average 4,053 views vs. regular pages ~2256

views (~80% growth)

KP referrals are 3x likely to register on the community than other sources

Best practices for Content Potluck:


▪ Find diverse group of Champions

▪ Keep Champions engaged

▪ Keep the meeting periodical

▪ Share feedback on success and failure with the Interlock Group

▪ Identify rewards for participating

Contact us on

social media or

Contentpotluck.com


Do you have stories

or projects to share

about breaking

down silos?

Thank you for your attention!

Nikoletta Vecsei Harrold

Director, Communities Strategy and

Social Media, Transamerica

@Nikschen

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolett

avecsei

Laurel Nicholes

Director, Tech Comms Services,

F5 Networks

@LaurelNicholes

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurelni

choles

http://www.twitter.com/nikschen

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolettavecsei

http://www.twitter.com/laurelnicholes

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurelnicholes

Appendix

Champion

EngagementMBO’d & RecognitionBadgesUser MeetupsSuper User programsAMA sessionsTweet Chat Facebook LiveBlogs

Champion Engagement

Breaking through Content

Silos

Use All the

Content

Now What? Syndicate your content for better exposure:

● Social Media

● Communities

● Webcasts/ Webinars

● Customer Meetings

● Channel/ Partner marketing

● Intranet/ Internal Wiki

Insert information about you/your brand we will design it if needed