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6 Things I Learned at Confab: the Content Strategy Conference
Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Senior Strategist May 26, 2011 0 Comments
Confab: the Content Strategy Conference ended two weeks ago: so why has it taken me so long to write this blog post? Honestly, Confab made my brain hurt. After two full days of keynotes and sessions—and the many conversations I had with fellow attendees—I needed time to process. What are my strengths? What could I be doing better? How do I share what I learned with the team here at Rock Creek?
Now that my head has stopped spinning (and I’ve caught up on sleep), I’ve started working on organizing the information I brought back from Confab into a few categories: 1) Things we’re already doing on our projects but need to formalize or implement more consistently. 2) New things we can immediately start doing as part of our content strategy projects. 3) Things we can implement in the future, weaving them into our overall process and through cross-team collaboration.
As the team and I continue to synthesize all this information, a few Confab highlights:
1. Content strategy crosses industries. No matter what industry we’re in and what kind of clients we work with, we all have a lot to learn from each other. Confab attendees came from organizations as diverse as universities, hospitals, advertising agencies, and international brands (Disney, eBay, Facebook). And although each sector and industry faces its own challenges and has unique success metrics, there was something to take away from each session I attended and each conversation I had. (Even though there were no government content strategy sessions this year, Kristina Halvorson indicated that this wouldn’t be the case at Confab 2012.)
2. Testing content can help ensure plain language. The government plain language community, in particular, would have been interested in the sessions on testing and measurement such as Angela Colter’s session on testing if your audience understands your content and Christine Perfetti’s session on measuring content success. Ensuring content is appropriate for the intended audience is an important part of our work at Rock Creek, so it was great to learn more about methods such as the Cloze test for reading comprehension and inherent value testing.
3. Case studies sell, and storytelling is key. The sessions that told real stories, about real projects, were among the most popular. Organizations including eBay, Groupon, and Johns Hopkins presented their approach to content strategy through examples and use cases. And what worked at the conference has everyday applications too. Whether you’re a government agency that wants to influence positive behavior change or a business that wants to book more reservations, engage your users with a story and show them real-life applications of your service or product.
4. Content strategists should get used to using the technologist zone of our brains. Sessions like Relly Annett-Baker’s “Love Thy Geeks” and Jeff Cram’s “Learning to Love Your CMS” reinforced that technical knowledge is critical. While I can’t code, sharing a vocabulary with the people who do enhances our collaboration, which in turn benefits our clients. Here at Rock Creek, the strategists and technologists already have a great working relationship, but in the past several weeks, we have started working even more closely together, including planning sessions for Maryland Drupal Camp and submitting a session on content strategy to Capital Camp.
5. More conferences should have cleverly named signature drinks. At Confab, it was the delicious Lorem Sipsum (bourbon, pear brandy, fresh lime juice, and cranberry juice). Who doesn’t love puns and bourbon?
6. And on a sappy note: Confab reinforced that I work with and for some awesome people. The team is embracing content strategy, not because it’s a buzzword but because they understand that content strategy solves problems and adds value. We build it into project scope and timelines. We’re practicing it as part of our own website redesign (stay tuned for more on that). And Rock Creek continues to sponsor and host local content strategy events, so that the team here has plenty of opportunities to both grow and share our knowledge.
And speaking of local content strategy events: I hope you can join us on June 27 for the next DC Content Strategy Meetup. We’ll talk a bit about Confab, and then about content strategy deliverables.
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Senior Strategist
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