---
title: Content Strategy
date: 2021-02-02T05:00:00-05:00
author: Sean Smith
canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-4/content-strategy/"
section: Podcast
---
<!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Guest Marlene Oliveira
Marlene is a communications advisor and copywriter focusing on branding, storytelling and website content for nonprofit organizations.
[ ](https://twitter.com/mo_flow)[ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marleneoliveira/)
Season 04 Episode 4 – Feb 02, 2021
46:35 [Show Notes](#show-notes)
## Content Strategy
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[](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-04/Content-Strategy-master.mp3)
Today Marlene Oliveira of moflow discusses the value of conducting a website content strategy, and why you should do it before anything else.
### Show Notes
- What is content strategy?
- Measuring the success of a website build
- S.M.A.R.T. goals
- How to collect and document material for a content strategy
- The format of a content strategy
- The value of consulting with internal stakeholders
- What communication looks like during a content strategy
- How long does it take?
- The value of engaging in a content strategy
- Advice for do-it-yourselfers
### Show Links
- [Developing a website content strategy for a new nonprofit site: elements to include](http://moflow.ca/website-content-strategy-new-nonprofit-site/)
- [How to create communications objectives from nonprofit strategic goals](http://nonprofitmarcommunity.com/how-to-create-communications-objectives/)
Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology.
**\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hello, and welcome to the website 101 podcast. I am Mike Mella, and with me is my co-host, Sean Smith. Hey, Sean, how's it going? Hey, Mike. Glad to be here from the depths of the lockdown. Yes, that's right, we're still in lockdown. So today, we are talking about content strategy and the importance of starting with that when you're building a website. And we have a special guest with us today, and that is Marlene Oliveira. She is a communications advisor and copywriter at MoFlow. Hi, Marlene, how you doing?
**\[00:30\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Hi, thanks, I'm good, thanks for having me.
**\[00:32\]** **Sean:** Glad to have you here, Marlene. So do you want to just kind of tell us a little bit about yourself and the work you do?
**\[00:40\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Sure. All right, so I am, as you said, a communications advisor and copywriter, and I work with nonprofit organizations. So what that means basically is I help organizations to plan and figure out what content they need, and then I'll write it for them. And I do this in three main areas. So that is number one storytelling, number two branding, and number three, or maybe I should have made that number one for today, website content. So when it comes to helping clients with website content, before they start building a website, before they start working with anyone, I help them figure out what they need on their site, and then I write it for them.
**\[01:19\]** **Sean:** OK, so that's, yeah, it's pretty all-encompassing then. So you help them with branding as well, Like actual, like, so if someone had, you know, didn't have a logo or anything like that, I mean, obviously you don't do logo design, I assume, right?
**\[01:32\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Correct, yes. So when it comes to branding, it's still the content side. So a very important part of your brand is the messages you deliver. So I will help with what I call, what many people call a brand messaging platform. So that's things like your brand positioning. And this does overlap with the work that some graphics folks do, but I'll work on developing the brand positioning Developing the key message brand personality and then the content that flows from that to have a strong brand things
**\[02:01\]** **Sean:** Like your boilerplate copy. So does that include things like tone and voice because Voice is very important part of messaging as I understand it because it could be like fun light-hearted Serious corporate all there's all kinds of different ways to communicate
**\[02:18\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** It does and that's why I do get involved with brand personality because the voice and tone flow from the personality
**\[02:25\]** **Sean:** Okay, now you mentioned up front that you work with nonprofits, so just a heads up to our listeners that Marlene's advice will be based on her experience with nonprofits. But a lot of this, I think, could be extrapolated out to a for-profit company and Sean, I know you work with a lot more for-profits than either Marlene or I, so if you can find a way to apply some of this to the for-profit world then by all means do so. I think that there will be a lot of universal principles when you're talking about content strategy. You just need to understand those principles as it pertains to the parameters of your own business. Right, right. Okay, so let's start at the beginning here. What exactly is content strategy in your opinion?
If I came to you as a client and I'm like, I want to build a website and I heard I have to do content strategy first.
**\[03:21\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** What is that? Content strategy is about connecting your plans for your website to your organization strategy. And that might be going all the way up to connecting it to your strategic plan and how your website can help you deliver on your strategic plan. It can be a connection to your communications plan if the organization has one, not everyone will, depending if it's a smaller or larger organization. But it's sort of your compass. So before you make any decisions, including about content, it's knowing why you need a new website or what you need to be different about your new website, what you want to achieve through the website from a communications point of view. And so I say communications point of view because it's things like, how will the website support your communications? This could be signups for email newsletters or downloads of specific resources. So the purpose, it's getting clear about audience. So again, making all of your decisions knowing how you've prioritized your audiences and who the website needs to serve. It touches on voice and tone as Sean alluded to as well for the copy you're going to have on your site. Very importantly, it's going to include, and this is the meat of it, a list of the content your site needs to feature to deliver on that strategy. So overall buckets and individual pages of content. So that's it in the gist of it. Your purpose, your audiences, the key messages, the site needs to deliver, the outcomes you want, and then the content that will make that all happen. So it's a document at the end of all of that.
Fitting my business into an existing theme? Well, I'm going to quote something Mike has said before that I've quoted many times, which is that content is the thing that gets designed, right?
**\[04:53\]** **Sean:** So you prepare this document with all of these content types and stuff like that ahead of time before they go into the website design phase or is that done after or how do you generally recommend it?
**\[05:09\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I know what I recommend. So I always say I think people should put content first. So it would be...
**\[05:17\]** **Sean:** Often does that happen.
**\[05:18\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I realize it doesn't have that often but you know what I'm lucky to work with a lot of clients who actually do that, and so yeah, it would be before doing anything else because it's before I'm a non-techie helping non-techies usually, before they get involved in any of the design and development. So it's just about getting organized and getting strategic. So it should be the very first thing in my opinion.
**\[05:40\]** **Sean:** Okay, one more question here. So we're doing content first. Now our audience is generally non-techie or do it yourself first using like a WordPress kind of thing, right? So if they don't want to do content first, what are the disadvantages to just going out, grabbing a WordPress theme and
**\[06:04\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** So instead of retrofitting bits and pieces of content, it's not just about having the copy, though, for your page content. Again, like when we talked about with branding, my work might overlap with what a lot of web developers do if they help clients get clear and get strategic. So it's about having the big picture, the bird's eye view. If you go and pick your theme first, it might not be set up to deliver on that overall strategy. It might not help you deliver your key messages, it might not facilitate the actions you want people to take. So those would be big disadvantages.
Okay. Yeah, I'm always amazed at how...
**\[06:52\]** **Sean:** Okay. Yeah, I'm always amazed at how, because obviously a lot of what you do is, is like Sean and I do similar work, probably not as in depth as you, but when we're working with clients to build websites and I often ask them things like you just listed like what, what is the goal of your website? What's the point of having a website, things like that. It's amazing how that can stop people in their tracks, just saying that.
Because we've had an episode before where we talked about, do you even need a website? And a lot of people would just laugh at that and think, okay, everybody needs a website. But we listed several and you can dig this up in the previous episode's catalog there. But we've listed certain businesses that may not actually need a website.
**\[07:39\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** So that's amazing.
**\[07:41\]** **Sean:** Can you sit there and really think about what do I want this thing to do instead of just well, I have a company or I have a nonprofit and therefore it needs a website. Really think about it. It kind of brings out the best in a website I find.
**\[07:55\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** That's so true and it actually relates to a step in the strategy process which is I ask people to think about which audiences the website needs to serve or at least on a priority basis. It's very similar to what you're saying. If you're identifying businesses that may not even need a website, it's because the people that they need to reach aren't looking for them on the web, presumably. And I would say, many times with clients, of course everyone starts thinking my website and all my communications are for everybody.
But once we start working together, we will usually, you know, make some reality checks that actually this particular group of stakeholders, we're going to be talking to them offline or in-person or other ways to be successful, the website needs to serve this other group that's a larger group or a more online group. So it comes up to during the strategy development.
**\[08:49\]** **Sean:** Yeah. I noticed in one of the articles that you shared with us, this article is called Developing a Website Content Strategy for a new non-profit site and we'll link to that in the show notes. Your number two point is priority audiences and I made a note to myself before the show. If your target is everyone, your target is no one.
And I think that's really kind of what you're saying. Because I've talked to people, I want to make my website and I want it to be for everybody. But if you make it for everybody, no one's going to look for it. No one's going to find it.
And you're not going to end up making money or whatever you want to do out of your website.
**\[09:32\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I agree. I come across that for every single thing. for websites for a brochure, for any marketing materials, it's, people tend to start thinking we don't want to rule anybody out. But I always say if you do a good job and it's compelling for one group, first of all you'll serve the group you actually want to reach. But secondly, it might be interesting or compelling to others. But when it's a general public or it's everyone, it's rarely good quality or compelling or useful.
**\[09:59\]** **Sean:** Right, good business advice is you need to niche down. you need to narrow your focus. And I've heard that in many different places and that really fits into what you just said about priority content and priority audiences. Yeah, when you mentioned the general public, it's often when I work with clients and I ask them who your audience, they might list potential volunteers, people in this, and they go on and at the end, they tag on and the general public.
And it's like, well, you just basically said everybody, you didn't need to go through that first list if that's it, because everyone's in the general public. You want to be the Walmart of business. Yeah, the web development equivalent of this I find is when you're making a navigation menu, and they go through all the things that the very end they tack on tools and resources, and that's just a place where they put everything else that they think for some reason has to be up there, but maybe it doesn't belong anywhere, maybe. Sounds like you could just title that miscellaneous.
Yeah, right. Just title everything miscellaneous. I just have a big word miscellaneous. That's your only navigation.
**\[11:08\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I'm worried we're going to see now that you spoke it into being.
**\[11:12\]** **Sean:** Something a new trend, it's the new navigation, the new normal. OK, so let's talk about measuring the success of a website. Obviously, as we mentioned earlier, you're supposed to at first establish what it is your goals are for your for your website. So presumably once the site is built, you should go back to it and monitor it and see, well, you know, did it do the thing we wanted it to do? What advice do you have as far as measuring the success of a project?
**\[11:46\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah, so I think this is another stumbling block for a lot of people because they don't realize it can be quite simple. If they're connecting their website to their communications objectives, they, you know, overall for their communications, because I work with nonprofit organizations, many are membership organizations. One example would be, overall the organization is seeking to grow membership, or seeking to grow their constituents that they can reach. So, you know, a website, very simply, you can set yourself up for meeting those objectives by making sure getting email subscribers is a priority, is a call to action you feature throughout the website. And then that is obviously very easily measured in whatever the service provider you're using for your email campaigns, and as long as it's connected to the website.
And then you can get more complicated by, and this is where I do not set these up for clients, but getting into Google Analytics and looking at the traffic flow over to the signup form and measuring what content is channeling people over to take this specific action. But I would say it definitely depends. It all depends on the strategy and it all depends on the business objectives. So for me, when I work with nonprofits, there's a big range of really meaningful ways that we can tell if a website is successful.
So I'm just referring to my little list here. So it could be things like, actually, surprisingly, I work with a lot of organizations that want someone to get in touch and speak with the human. So using their contact form is a big objective, if they haven't been reaching people. It can be purchases, lots of nonprofit cell products. It could be registrations for an event or a membership as I alluded to, contact customer support, download, sign petitions, apply for volunteer roles, apply for jobs. So these are all paths I try to highlight for people that make meaningful content that leaves people to engage with you and then talk to your web developer to measure the uptake and then the traffic to these important pages or important areas of the site with the call to action.
**\[13:58\]** **Sean:** Yeah, again, going back to how you can learn so much if you really ask these kind of detailed questions of a client. One of the other things is if you say, how would you measure the success? And very often people say, well, we want more visitors to our website, but I'm always pressing them Well, how does that translate to your business succeeding? Like does someone going to your site simply mean that you're doing better somehow, or do they have to engage some way by donating or whatever, and I try to get them to think that way.
Sounds like it's similar to you then. Yeah, you need something that you can measure. Like, are you getting contact form submissions, are you getting some sort of engagement on and social media like people are sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or whatever.
**\[14:49\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah, and I think this also speaks to the niching down or thinking small because people feel like they're on the web so everything has to be big, big, more visitors, more traffic. And again, if they're really thinking about some of those priority audiences, it might be a relatively small number that they want to take meaningful action. So things like traffic to the homepage in itself meaningless unless they're going down a path of engagement.
**\[15:16\]** **Sean:** In another one of the articles that you link to how to create communication objectives from non-profit strategic goals, one of the key things in your is that don't forget to make smart objectives. Marlene, can you tell us what a smart goal is? I used to be a teacher and I taught smart goals to my students. I'm curious what your thoughts are on it.
**\[15:41\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** So that article is written by one of my guest authors over on that blog, Natalie Knowle. So I have to give her credit for writing that post and for encouraging people to connect with their strategic plan. That's why I shared that post. And now my grade four has come home with her smart goals and they're different. So Sean, you're going to have to correct me if I get them wrong.
**\[16:00\]** **Sean:** I don't think it's correct. I don't think it's correcting. It's evolved. And I was a teacher over 10 years ago, so things have changed.
**\[16:07\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** So I'm pretty sure Natalie would have, if I'm remembering correctly in a post she would would have said, you specific, measurable. Did she say attainable and realistic?
**\[16:17\]** **Sean:** She said, relevant, not realistic. I use realistic in mind, so that was a different story. Time oriented, time based.
**\[16:24\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah, and so yeah, really, I think those kinds of principles, again, really help people, I'm always thinking of people who are intimidated about their website. And when you bring these principles of setting smart goals and connecting the strategy, these are things they know they need. So I'm not thinking about features and functions and widgets. Let's just talk about the business connection and what you actually need for your organization.
**\[16:50\]** **Sean:** Right, and smart goals can be used in all aspects of your life or your business. It doesn't have to be specifically to your website. It could be your general business goals about how you want to grow the business or develop different aspects of it or even in your personal life, like losing weight or making new friends or whatever it could be. All right, so let's dive a little deeper into the website goals thing.
So let's say a client has, okay, I'm on board, I'll go for the whole content strategy first before we dive into any kind of design things, which in my experience is often what they want to do, but I'm trying to say, hold off. So how would you go about collecting this kind of information, both from a sort of a technical viewpoint as far as like what documentation do you do, but also more sort of high level.
**\[17:48\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** So you know, I rarely find that I'm working with the client who there's two things that would be valuable that I rarely get access to. I rarely have clients who are collecting meaningful Google Analytics, but that would be nice. And I also rarely get anyone who's conducted a full website content on it, because those would be pieces of information I would be interested in, but that's okay. I often reassure people that, you know, again, I as the external person, but an internal person doing this for themselves, can look at things like, you know, John alluded to the business plan or for nonprofits, it's off in the strategic plan and how it's operationalized.
And then something I do, so this will be different for individuals doing DIY websites. But because I work with larger organizations, I always ask to speak to internal stakeholders. And it's for a couple of reasons, but one of them is to collect audience insights. So obviously it's second-hand information, but I ask to speak with people who have a direct connection to the same group of people who would also be website visitors, so the audiences, someone who can speak to me about the audiences. And I go through a series of questions to ask them things like, what would this person be coming to the website to learn to do? What questions would they want to get answered?
And I flip it around and also ask them from their point of view and their roles, how can the website support their business objectives and their day-to-day work and help them to serve people better? And so it's a little bit, it's hard to break down into step-by-step because I personally use a combination of review of any background information and data, internal stakeholder interviews.
And then I synthesize it all and recommend the content that will support all of this coming together.
**\[19:37\]** **Sean:** That sounds like a really high level analysis. And you're also pulling in when you can data from Google Analytics, is that correct?
**\[19:46\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Well, like I said, it's rare that I get handed the Google Analytics. So I'm usually operating without it. I'm usually working with clients who have neglected their website for a long time, they know they have, they need to do better, and they haven't been monitoring performance in the past. But if I get handed in, I will look at things like, I will look at things like popular pages and traffic flow through the site.
**\[20:11\]** **Sean:** So what would popular pages or traffic flow through inform you about how to develop the content? And I'm actually asking for myself, I feel like I could improve the content on my website.
**\[20:24\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Well, I partly don't want to make recommendations to eliminate any content that is already popular or that will disorient people when the site changes. It also helps me to understand where to build in calls to action or what content can work with other content to create that idea of a flow and engagement and keeping people on the site and having an idea of where people leave the exit pages. Just gives me ideas for how we can better support them or move them along.
**\[20:56\]** **Sean:** Hi, hope you're enjoying this episode. We're always looking for topics suggestions. So if there's anything you'd like us to discuss on the show, please let us know. We're also looking for guests.
If you have a guest that you think would be great for a podcast, please let us know. If there's a guest that you would love to come back, let us know. So you can do that by visiting website 101podcast.com slash contact. I know what you mean about consulting with internal stakeholders and how that can offer a lot of value.
I have an example of that I was working with a client that actually this site launched just today as a matter of fact. And when we were building it, I had spoken to someone internally who, because initially on the mobile view of the site, I was going to have it so that, you know, there's like a little hamburger menu that opens up the menu. That's very common these days. I was gonna put the search box that lets you search the site inside the menu.
So you get both the navigation menu and a search box in there. And I spoke to someone internally and she pointed out that she knows for a fact from having spoken to a lot of their audience that a lot of people fire up the website on their phone and just go straight to the search. And they want, like they're used to seeing it at the top in the header without touching any kind of icons to reveal it. So we ended up designing it in such a way that that's how it works on the mobile view.
The search box is really prominent because for that reason that you mentioned, I didn't want that segment of the audience to suddenly go away to me. And it wears my search box that I use on every day, you know what I mean? Nothing more frustrating than something that you expect to be there and it's not there. Yeah, especially in a, in a refresh that's supposed to be an improvement, right?
**\[22:39\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah. You want to frustrate the people who we're going to come back.
**\[22:43\]** **Sean:** And this is a really good example of why you should take a look at your analytics and audience information when redesigning and redeveloping the site, because you don't want to lose aspects of a site that are important to your existing audience. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that you may not realize are important, right? Yeah.
That's another in the same way that we said earlier that sometimes people think, I need a website because I just need it. I find a lot of clients also install Google Analytics just because they think they need it, but no one ever actually looks at it. I'm guilty of not looking at my analytics, myself on my own website, and we're actually gonna record an episode about that. So I'm not gonna give anything away, I'm just gonna say that I've moved on from Google.
Oh. Yeah, we've talked about that a little bit before. So it certainly is intimidating. So I don't blame people for not getting into it too deep.
So just before we move on, Marlene, do you do any kind of exercises like card sorting or usability testing or anything like that in your work?
**\[23:48\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I don't. I know most of my clients are working with a designer developer who's going to incorporate that into the process. So I know I'm not an expert in any of that. It's purely, it's really coming from the messaging and strategy point of view and when I'm working with clients.
**\[24:03\]** **Sean:** Got it, okay.
**\[24:04\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Although I will say I was delighted that a client did their usability testing, are they tested out, you know, what happens for me is I told refer to content buckets, the main buckets of content and then all the topics pages and often a client will use that or start using that, or their designer, developer will use it as navigation, preliminary navigation and I have had my content buckets test better than the proposed design and the design agency revert to just using what I intuited from the stakeholder interviews as what people are looking for.
**\[24:40\]** **Sean:** Yeah, that's great. Wow, that's a really powerful testimony on actually doing these interviews and analyzing the data at a time.
**\[24:49\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I agree, yeah.
**\[24:50\]** **Sean:** Whereas a web developer is like, I know what I'm doing. I've been doing this for years. I don't need someone to tell me. Oh, we need a home page and a boat page services, page, and a blog. That's the nav. All right, so just briefly, when you're compiling these website goals, what format do they take in the sense that, you know, what does it look like when you are looking at it in the end? Is it kind of just a bullet list of things? How much detail do you go into there?
**\[25:19\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** So I think the number one thing is just that it's documented, is it documented somewhere? me when I'm working with a client. It fits right into the strategy. So again, the website content strategy is simply a document.
It's a document that reflects a lot of thinking and planning, but I will literally have, you know, one of the main first pages of the content strategy is the purpose page and it outlines the goals and objectives. I will have an audience section. We'll have something I haven't mentioned, which is it used to be kind of what I just used behind the scenes, but now I incorporate it into the website content strategy, which is the list of questions the website needs to answer to be successful. And so that is something that comes from the stakeholder interviews and also comes from my analysis of the stakeholder interviews and the background information.
But that's the whole section in the strategy and then that allows me to show clients. You have to answer these questions to meet the needs of your audience, to get a little less internally focused. And then the following section of the strategy is the buckets and topics list and it's a nice check and balance I use, I'm doing it today for a client where I can go back and forth and make sure there is content that answers every question that we identified.
**\[26:29\]** **Sean:** All right, so when you're preparing this document, do you typically use like a word document or an excel sheet and then send it to them like that or as a PDF or do you collaborate with like Google Docs or some sort of project management software like Trello or Basecamp?
**\[26:48\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** It is simply a word document that I convert into a PDF and send over, and I would say this relates to people who are doing it in house for themselves in that I think someone should be the lead on the strategy. So the collaboration and the input happens in the stakeholder interviews, but someone should at least have the opportunity to be the one who brings it all together and makes sure all the pieces work together, make sure all the goals work together, figures out, I hire hierarchy of, you know, what are the, you might need a hierarchy of what are the primary actions or goals and maybe other things that are secondary. But I think it, I think there should be ownership of it at least as it comes out in the first place. So people can see recommendations and that's what I do.
So people can see the recommendations I make from the bird's eye view and then we can tweak it and get input.
**\[27:39\]** **Sean:** All right. So I have a follow-up question to that. So looking at an internal people trying trying to do what you're doing, or a smaller company that wants to do this themselves rather than hire somebody. I mean, they should go to you, but you know, not everybody has a budget, right?
How do you have any recommendations on how to avoid, forget what the term is, but basically everybody's making input so that the thing just grows and grows, and you're not getting a focused document at the end. a group think or something like that? Yeah, because I mean, getting input from multiple people is good, but eventually you need somebody who's gonna say, that doesn't belong. That should be here, that shouldn't, we need to narrow it down.
Like, how do you encourage that? Like, I'm sure you have a problem when you're sending it off to the board or stakeholders and one guy wants to put a stamp on it, but it's the wrong approach based on what you know. Or is, are you the one who plays that role? Like, are you the one who kind of rules things out as part of your involvement?
**\[28:51\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I definitely am when I work with clients. I'm definitely the one to say, you know, this came up. I'm letting you know, but I don't think we should focus on it. And, you know, when it comes to internal folks doing this, I think of the website as being under the umbrella of marketing and communications.
And so it's really tough because it depends on the organization of the culture and reporting structures and all of those things. But I think that's about setting roles and responsibilities at the very beginning. And acknowledging that someone who has the marketing and communications point of view, and that this is part of that umbrella, empowering them to make some calls. And it's never going to be perfect, nothing ever is.
But empowering them to say this isn't, because I work with nonprofits. So this isn't a fundraising site. This is a site that has to represent whole brand and so letting them establishing that role at the beginning and then because later it is hard to fight people off the website, basically, get people to stop fighting over the home pages, Mike and I have talked about. So yeah, empowering that person, and you know for me as an external person, hopefully people are not bringing me into then allow this to become an internal mess all over again.
I'm there to provide outside counsel.
**\[30:11\]** **Sean:** Right. Okay. In the web design world, I know that it's often, you know, I like to involve clients as much as possible as well, but sometimes in the design world, I'm actually pushing back in the other direction where I say, okay, well, I really think that only a handful of us should kind of oversee the whole process because you have this design by committee thing where everyone gets a say and it doesn't have any cohesive identity and it kind of gets all at a place. But do you feel then that involving internal staff heavily in this process is mostly beneficial, as long as it's sort of monitored in the way that we've been talking about?
**\[30:51\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah, I think that is one of the reasons. In addition to the great information that you can glean, that's one of the reasons I include internal stakeholder consultation at the very beginning. It's a little bit political, to be honest. It's making sure that all of the people that you know Now we're going to fight over colors and precise word choices later that they are told this is how you can meaningfully participate in this process and make sure your business objectives are factored in and considered.
But that and it's a one on one I do you know you talked about design by committee. I know part of my process ever involves getting everyone in the room at the same time. It's one on one conversation so people are truly heard and the nuances of their work are thought of and the nuances of their audiences are considered and then you know it helps it does help to build trust that they were listened to for a full hour or more and someone is going to take care of incorporating you know all of their all of their business needs into the final product final product being the strategy. And the strategy lets you sorry I just had one closing thought on that it let it helps later with those design by committee.
Because you can point back to the strategy to say, look, this is what our compass, this is what our guiding principles are for this website. Why are you, you know, there is no need to be quibbling over a color because we decided on the voice and tone for the site and the design choices come from that. So that's just an example.
**\[32:21\]** **Sean:** Yeah, whenever people start to deviate from the established strategy that everyone’s agreed on, you can just go back, well, look, and just kind of point out the paper. Look, it’s right here. It says, is that it three weeks ago, remember? I like that as a way of reeling in people who are going to derail the process. Yeah. So you mentioned a second ago there that people are heard and that you’ve gotten to speak for an hour. If someone were to hire you personally for this kind of work,
Obviously, I guess you don't meet in person these days with COVID and everything, but when you do consult with clients, Is it on the phone? Do you like phone every stakeholder and speak to them for an hour? Do you have multiple calls? Is it email? What kind of communication is that?
**\[33:06\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yes, COVID hasn't changed my hermit life in any way. So it has always been phone consultations. I mean, it hasn't changed my life in that way. That's more clear. Sure. So it is, it's one-on-one phone conversations. I ask them for an hour of their time. And it's depending on the organization and how much everyone is anticipating this new website, and eager to get involved. It can be somewhere between three people and 10 people, it's usually not more than 10 people that I speak with, and I don't really recommend going that high anyway. But yeah, it's one-on-one telephone interviews.
**\[33:44\]** **Sean:** Cool. Okay, so you go through the interviews, you understand about what the company wants and their goals and things like that. How long does it take you on average to develop content for a small company, develop a strategy, and also develop content. Because you did say that you actually write the content that's going on the pages as well, correct?
**\[34:09\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I do, yes. So depending on how far the client wants to work with me and keep going, they may have internal folks, they might do their own writing, but the strategy itself, it’s usually around two months, it can be a little bit longer,
And that’s almost entirely to do with once we say, we’re going to do phone consultations, those logistics can, that’s usually the biggest variable. It can be two weeks or it can be five, depending on how hard people are to pin down. But I’d say roughly two months. About a month is gathering all of the information and just gathering it. And then within the next month, this strategy can come together.
And to answer your question, Sean. So normally, you have this document, what happens with the document? Well, first of all, I like to say to clients it can be a brief for your designer, it can be a brief for your developer, because it outlines so much of what you would want to know. But then behind the scenes, once that starts rolling along, that list of content buckets and topics becomes spreadsheet, ideally. And I do help clients with this, sometimes they do it on their own. But it becomes a planner. It’s a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet says, who’s going to write everything when it needs to be written, who’s the reviewer, the internal subject matter expert, and of course the really important for me, the key message, the audience, the call-to-action for that page. So that planner becomes a complete brief for every page that needs to be written for the site. You can get into the details for pages that need to be updated or reused, but just reviewed. And then the writing starts. So that planner phase can often take a month for a big site, maybe a little longer because again, I work with the client, so it depends how fast they can move.
And then I’ll write the copy and that, you know, I usually write a few key pages, some cornerstone pages of copy and the clients often write their own so that can be a few weeks, you know, it just depends on the scope.
**\[36:03\]** **Sean:** So it is a process and as with everything, it depends on the size of the project.
**\[36:09\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Mm-hmm.
**\[36:10\]** **Sean:** Definitely. Imagine that has a lot to do with availability of the stakeholders that you're speaking with, right? The duration of your project, if you're going back and forth with different people all the time, that might contribute to the duration, I would assume.
**\[36:24\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** It can. Yeah. I've had good luck in recent years. I had a couple of runs with the website content strategy that just was so hard to nail people down and it really dragged on for months, but more organized clients, they are keen to get moving on the actual site.
So I give them all the heads up at the beginning. We kick off the whole process with getting really clear about who I needed to speak with. And then I either ask them to just leave it to me to schedule, do all that scheduling, or they get involved. But people are pretty interested when they hear that they have the opportunity to have their say, especially when the old site is painful.
**\[37:02\]** **Sean:** Sure, you get to make your mark on the company's presence on the web for the next few years. So do you ever have challenges convincing your clients or convincing whatever potential clients of the value of this whole process? Like do you have, I imagine a lot of time they kind of just give you the, I know my content, I don't need anyone outside to come in and tell me how to manage, you know, cause I know my business I've been doing this for 20 years blah, blah, blah. Do you have to struggle against that ever?
**\[37:33\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** I'm sure the struggle happens and I never know about it because I'd never hear from those clients. You know, they look at what I'm offering and they think that, you know, I don't want to spend that much more before I even build the website. I don't want to add those weeks on of planning. I just want to get this thing going.
So I would never hear from those clients. I hear from the savvy clients who either really, you know, they think strategy first and they could, I always say I never do anything for clients but they probably couldn't do themselves unless they're really bad writers. But it's all in there. They, like in terms of the business objectives and all of the connection to their work, they have it.
I just create a space and a system for pulling it all out and helping and supporting them along the way. So I do attract people who recognize the importance of this kind of a step. Or I attract people who are just completely intimidated. And they can tell when they read the description of starting with strategy that they don't have to know anything other than their own jobs and then how I can fill in.
**\[38:41\]** **Sean:** I think the idea of creating a system makes things easy because it's a repeatable steps that you can do over and over and you can pass it on when you bring on new hires into the company. All right, well now you're responsible for writing our blog content. Here's the process. This is the goals for each blog article. So I can see a lot of value in there. I could also see some people rolling their eyes and going back to what Micah originally said. Yeah, but I know my content.
**\[39:12\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah. And then those are the projects that take two years instead of the six months.
**\[39:16\]** **Sean:** Yeah, exactly. So one closing question. Do you have some advice for do-it-yourselfers on how they could put together a content strategy for themselves? So, you know, like the solopreneur is just getting started. You've got to put up his website. What's the best approach?
**\[39:39\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah, I think the main thing to remember, it's all sounding very elaborate right now because we're talking about organizations and all of these stakeholders and all of these steps. But the most important thing is being willing to create the document to document your thoughts and plan them out. So this might be two pages. If it's a small business and someone who's doing it him or herself, just commit yourself.
You know that post you refer to Sean that I shared, I think you're going to link to the How to Create a Strategy for New Website. Use that as a guide and just give yourself permission to stop and think and write down what your purpose is. You probably know it. If you're a small business or solo, it's probably all in your head.
It might need to get organized and finessed, but write down what, why you need the new site or why you need a site if you don't have one. Write down what you want it to achieve for you. be intentional and write down and don't let yourself write general public write down who you want to visit the site.
**\[40:35\]** **Sean:** Mishdown.
**\[40:36\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Yeah. Mishdown. Yeah. And then key messages, I didn't really talk a lot about key messages, but I asked this question of Clansela and this solo person can do the same thing. Ask yourself if my website had the opportunity to say just one or two things to their intended visitor. What would it say? What would it communicate? So you're just giving yourself more guideposts.
**\[41:02\]** **Sean:** Kind of like an elevator pitch for the website.
**\[41:04\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** You know what, it's not even, I mean, I can see why you say that, and it is similar. I'm trying to think of an example. So could you give me an idea, an example of this, do it yourself for who would be building their own site, what would their business be?
**\[41:18\]** **Sean:** Oh, how about this? We've got a lawyer. He's leaving the big firm, and he wants to open up his small firm. He's bringing the secretary or receptionist along and Jerry McGuire. Yeah. Hey, I've got a one man lawyer for him. I'm in real estate law or family law.
**\[41:37\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** So, you know, overall for his website, instead of the reason I'm hesitating from elevator pitch, because elevator pitch implies fitting everything you need to say in it. When I talk about website key messages, it's sort of like if you're, if someone it lands on your about page, what's the one thing that needs to come across? And we're using this totally fictitious example, but this person might, his approach might be a non-intimidating, the thing he wants to get across is when you work with me, it's gonna be really comfortable and I'm just gonna listen. And he fits in, when he articulates that for his about page, he's going to fit on all his credentials and all of the compelling reasons why you should work with him, but the key messages are what needs to come across is I'm the approachable guy.
And, you know, when you get to his client list, you know, maybe what he wants to say, and sorry, what kind of law did you give for this example?
**\[42:34\]** **Sean:** I don't know, family law or real estate law. It could be anything.
**\[42:39\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Okay. But yeah, so, you know, when he's thinking about different pages like his work or his client list, it's about the spirit of it that comes across and the tone. Okay. So those are things that I think people, especially solo folks, will not think about and they'll try to get really official and worry about not having enough pages.
So these are things, again, purpose, audience, key messages, voice and tone, the actions people want to take, and then that will lead to the list. What do you actually need? What content do you actually need on your site? So sorry, a long way of answering your question would just be make sure you're creating a document.
Use those steps as a guide, those elements as a guide, and just write it down. you're probably ready to talk to your developer at that point and maybe fine-tune it a little bit. It doesn't have to be complicated, but it should be written down.
**\[43:33\]** **Sean:** And I would say the benefit of writing it down, and this goes back to teacher Sean, is that it's now a draft, and you can put it aside, come back to it a day or two later, and make revisions and improve it and fine-tune it. Rather than just keeping it in your head where it's gonna, when you speak about it,
**\[43:51\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** It's more off the cuff. Yeah, and when you distill it like that when you let it sit, you sometimes you see how things connect or how you could better connect content or again, the pathway through the site.
**\[44:03\]** **Sean:** Yeah, exactly, right. Okay, well, this has been really insightful. Marlene, do you have anything else to add or Sean, do you have any more questions to ask? I think we've covered a lot of. All I wanna say is Marlene's been a fantastic guest. I really enjoyed this conversation.
**\[44:17\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** Oh, thank you. Well, I'm definitely fired up about putting content first. You can hear the, I'm passionate about it. And I hope that really helps people to just not be intimidated by websites. Because again, as Mike said, the website is the thing that gets designed. So the content is the thing that gets designed. So just think about, just put it first and relax before you're moving on.
**\[44:39\]** **Sean:** And you've provided a few articles that Sean mentioned earlier. We're going to put them in the show notes. One is called Developing a Website Content Strategy for a new nonprofit site, elements to include. That's on your own website, mowflow.ca. Again, I'll put the exact link in the show notes. And another article is on your other site, the nonprofitmarcommunity.com, which is how to create communications objectives from nonprofit strategic goals. That's the one we alluded to that was written by another author, is that right? The one with the smart goals.
**\[45:14\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** That's right, yeah. So that is a blog for nonprofit communicators just to help them do their day-to-day work. And it's primarily written by other people. It's the managing editor and host of that site.
**\[45:25\]** **Sean:** Right. And we'll put those in the show notes. So Marlene, where can our listeners find you online?
**\[45:30\]** **SPEAKER\_00:** So my website is moflow.ca, M-O-F, like Frank, L-O-W, .ca. And I'm pretty much only active now on Twitter as well. So I'm at Mo underscore flow on Twitter.
**\[45:44\]** **Sean:** Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks. Thank you both for having me. It was a great conversation. The website 101 Podcast is hosted by me, Sean Smith. You can find me on LinkedIn. My username is caffeine creations or on Twitter, where my username is caffeine creation. C-A-F-E-I-M-E-C-R-E-8-I-O-M, or at my website caffeinecreations.ca And by me, Mike Mella, you can reach me online at belegwater.ca and also on Twitter and LinkedIn where my username is Mike Mella. That's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-A.
Close Transcript
Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact).
[](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 04
- 1 [ 'Click Here' Hurts Your SEO and UX: Why It's Time to Change](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-1/click-here/)
- 2 [ How to Talk to Your Web Developer: Communication Tips for Clients](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-2/how-to-talk-to-your-web-developer/)
- 3 [ Red Flags](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-3/red-flags/)
- 4 [ Content Strategy](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-4/content-strategy/)
- 5 [ Accessibility](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-5/accessibility/)
- 6 [ Improving Your Website Without a Redesign: Content Audit, Usability Testing & More](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-6/how-to-improve-your-website-without-doing-a-full-redesign/)
- 7 [ Content Marketing](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-7/content-marketing/)
- 8 [ Alternatives to Google Analytics](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-8/alternatives-to-google-analytics/)
- Bonus[ Listener Survey - What Topics do you Want to Hear More of?](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-/listener-survey-what-topics-do-you-want-to-hear-more-of/)
- 9 [ Website Optimization and Speed](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-9/website-optimization-and-speed/)
- 10 [ Exploring WordPress Website Development with Laura Bailey](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-10/wordpress/)
- 11 [ From Novice to Bootcamp Instructor](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-11/from-novice-to-bootcamp-instructor/)
- 12 [ Pimp Your Typography](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-12/pimp-your-typography/)
### All Seasons
- [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/)
- [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/)
- [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/)
- [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/)
- [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/)
- [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/)
- [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/)
- [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/)
- [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/)
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