Secretary Clinton: We are counting on you to bring the Bower boys home.

 
It’s 6:00 a.m., August 31st–the last day, for me to post in my “Live with Abundance: Social Media for Good” series, this month. I’m coming in, just under the wire for my August post, mainly because we were away for two weeks on vacation, camping in NH.  

We came home on Sat., and have been in a whirlwind of back to school shopping ever since. Today also marks my son’s sixth birthday, which is why I’m squeezing in a post, at this early hour…With the kids’ first day at school today and a birthday party tonight, my day will be full.   

But not so full, as to forget the commitment I made to myself about a year ago, to use social media for good, once a month. Sometimes, I’ve felt feel a bit pretentious carrying on with this series. Who am I to think that I can make a difference through this blog? And yet, the more I write about this abundance principle, the more I come to recognize and cultivate abundance in my own life. And the intent to do good remains.   

In the spirit of my recent vacation, I was planning to write about gratitude and family this month, but I hadn’t formulated my thoughts. Then, while I was still away, I read Chris Brogan’s post, Bring Noor and Ramsay Home. It starts, “Imagine someone taking your kids…” From there, Brogan goes on to describe the family ordeal of his colleague, Colin Bower.   

What a jarring contrast to the vacation activities and back-to-school preparations most parents are in the midst of experiencing right now. And what a wake up call to each of us, about holding even more dear, what matters most.   

As I mark my own children’s milestones today, I urge readers here, to visit the Facebook page set up to help reunite a caring father, with his boys. If you can spare two minutes, you can make a further difference, by asking Secretary Clinton for help, during the Egyptian government’s visit to Washington this week, for the Middle East peace talks.  

Related Links  

• News Center 5 Story: Father to Travel to Egypt in Hopes of Seeing Kids
• Colin Sends Another Message to Noor and Ramsay [HD]
• 7 News: Man claims ex took kids to Egypt, wants them back
  

Laidlaw expands on this definition, by citing Kristina Halvorsen, content strategy guru and founder of content strategy consultancy, Brain Traffic. According to Halvorsen, content strategy includes editorial strategy, web writing, metadata strategy, search engine optimization, content management strategy, and content channel distribution strategy.

Laidlaw offers five steps to developing a content strategy, for your blog: 

1. Set Content Goals.  Analyze what specific need your blog meets for a given audience. What is your blog’s point of difference? On paper, set down how your audience members’ needs align with your business needs. Laidlaw suggests these examples, as content goals: publishing frequency, traffic objectives (per-post, per-month, or per-category), topic emphasis, post type, media used, the quantity and quality of comments, discussions and feedback.

2. Complete a Content Inventory. List each piece of content on your blog, and note its publish date, category, tags, and any other metadata associated with it, Laidlaw advises. Through this process, you’ll get a clear idea of your existing content’s strengths, as well as its weaknesses. Over time, Laidlaw suggests revising outdated posts, incorrectly categorized or tagged posts, broken links, spam comments, and typos. To meet your business goals, work on filling in content gaps that  become apparent, as a result of your analysis.

3. Review/Revise Categories and Tags. Review, and where appropriate revise, your content’s metadata. Perhaps you’ve overlooked some important tags, or the tags you’ve used don’t reflect the terms audience members usually search for, Laidlaw suggests. Address these issues, by creating additional tags, categorizing your content as logically and intuitively as possible, and ensuring that the mechanics of your content are closely aligned with your content goals.

4. Identify Content Tasks and Responsibilities. Consider all the tasks and responsibilities that you’ll want to answer through your content strategy. For example, you’ll need to think about a schedule, publishing tools, copyright issues, fact-checking, editorial and proofreading issues, adding categories and tags, developing content, managing older or outdated content, and so on. “The guidelines you’ll want to set at this point will depend on the nature of your blog, and where you want to take it in the future,” Laidlaw advises.

5. Set Your Plan. As your last step, set action plans to implement strategies and tactics that will help you achieve your goals, over time. Long-term, work on filling large-scale content gaps, planning the direction of future content, and reusing or repackaging evergreen content to achieve the greatest possible ROI.

Content Strategy Takeaway: In five steps, Laidlaw shows how you can reshape your blog (and its underlying process and management) to help support your business goals. With a strong strategy in place, your content assets are bound to appreciate—not devalue—over time.   

Source: Problogger. Read the full article: Blog Content Strategy 101.

Related Links

• Three Ways Documentation is Strategic Content
• Five Ways to Optimize Your E-Commerce Site

Describing the evolution of the user manual, Fulkerson recalls ten years ago, when documentation was considered a cost center. In contrast, today’s product and services documentation is a core business asset that can drive revenues.

According to Fulkerson, here are three ways technical documentation is critical to your business:

Documentation as a Sales Tool and Revenue Generator. Fulkerson reports that for some companies, documentation is bringing in over 50% of qualified leads, through organic search results. At MindTouch, 70% plus of site traffic comes from organic sources, with the documentation generating more than half of overall site traffic. More impressive, MindTouch documentation drives over half of all lead generation.

Documentation as Customer Experience. Good documentation drives down support costs and  drastically improves your customer experience, Fulkerson asserts.  According to Forrester research, the average call center call can cost a business as little as $5.50 on average, or as much as $50 per call. For technical issues, support costs can go as high as $150 per call. If a customer consults a piece of documentation or a forum instead, the average cost is usually less than a dollar. “In fact,” Fulkerson explains, “Forrester’s research indicates that the average is about 10 cents.”

Documentation as a Way to Foster Relationships. If your startup has an API, or if like everyone else you are positioning your product as a “platform,” Fulkerson maintains your success depends on your ability to attract and foster productive and valuable relationships with developers. As examples, he points to Apple’s SDK and AppStore, as well as the mobile phone war. Fulkerson observes, “Documentation is at the center of every relationship between a platform and a third-party developer.”

In summary, today’s documentation isn’t “just about the bottom line–it’s about “business strategy and outmaneuvering competitors in your market.” Fulkerson’s key points apply to the enterprise, all the way down to the least technical businesses in the country. 

Content Strategy Takeaway: “If you’re not paying attention [to your product and services documentation], you’re going to lose, and lose hard,” Fulkerson predicts.

Source: Forbes. Read the full article: The Evolution of User Manuals.

Related Links

• Three Roles for Technical Communicators on the Social Web
• The Role of the Gatekeeper is Changing: Guest Post by Sarah O’Keefe
• Six Emerging Trends in Technical Communication (via Scriptorium Publishing’s Recent Webcast)

Though the authors were referring to a different scenario (having multiple social objectives, within the enterprise, versus a single objective), the section really resonated with my issues as a technical writer, because it’s one of the few commentaries, where I’ve seen a multidimensional scenario (similar to the multiple objectives and audiences served via technical documentation), discussed.  

Addressing objectives for social technologies within the enterprise, Li and Bernoff note:

In chapter 4 we told you to build applications with a single objective in mind: listening, talking, energizing, supporting, or embracing. This approach also applies within the enterprise, but…these objectives tend to blend together in internal applications. Management’s relationships with employees—and employees’ relationships with each other—are multidimensional (p. 219).

Then, Li and Bernoff go on to illustrate how Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation accomplishes all five of the objectives for an internal social strategy, including listening to the groundswell, talking to the groundswell, energizing the groundswell, supporting the groundswell, and embracing the groundswell…

Earlier, in the business to business section, Li and Bernoff recommended focusing on a single external objective, mainly for measurement purposes:

…But your strategy should be designed from the start to focus on a primary objective, and its progress toward that objective that you should measure. Then you will be able to measure the return of your groundswell investment. And that, based on our experience, is the path most likely to lead to success…(p. 70).

In Bernoff and Li’s description of the internal groundswell scenario, I see so many parallels to the multidimensional nature of technical writing deliverables. One likely reason for the parallels is that technical documentation often supports other  in-house objectives, with Quality Assurance, Marketing|Sales, and Customer Support as unofficial, but important secondary audiences. If there is a multidimensional “feel” to the doc objectives, it may be because these internal audiences and objectives are far more important to the organization than traditionally recognized.

The multidimensional nature of technical documentation doesn’t stop there. Externally, technical documentation traditionally serves multiple objectives as well. In my ten plus years as a technical writer, I’ve reported to Development, Quality Assurance, Marketing, and Tech Support/Professional Services, because in the various organizations I’ve worked at, the technical documentation function has aligned most with the external business goals, served by these respective business functions.

In reality, the technical documentation always serves all these functions to some degree, which makes measuring the full range of its value more difficult.

If technical writers take Bernoff and Li’s recommendations to heart, we would narrow our objectives to a single focus, to better measure success. But does that really make sense for such a multidimensional function? And for that matter, especially when applied to social technologies, is it ever really possible to separate listening to,  talking to, energizing, helping, or embracing customers? To me, this approach to measurement seems to only reinforce the silo culture. Isn’t there a more sophisticated way to measure multidimensional business functions?

Related Links

• Why Groundswell Is Still My Favorite Social Strategy Book

That book was one of the earliest books I read on social media, and for me, it’s still one of the best, especially if you’re looking for guidance on not just how to get started, but on why getting started is so important, in the first place.

The book remains unique among the many books available on new media because it is written for the entire enterprise, not just for one discipline. It shows how relationships with customers are always more important than tools, and it provides Forrester’s tried and tested process for developing (and evaluating) social strategies.

In its concluding chapters, it describes the internal corporate transformation, so necessary for attaining social business objectives as well as the individual mindset that helps ensure success. All this–with numerous case studies, relevant examples, and supporting ROI data, presented in a highly readable, conversational style.

That book, of course, is Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s now classic Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

The Groundswell, Defined

Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. If you’re still wondering about the groundswell, what Li and Bernoff  describe as “a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect” (p. x), then this is the book for you. So, exactly what is the groundswell?

Simply put, the groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies…The groundswell phenomenon is not a flash in the pan. The technologies that make it work are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, but the phenomenon itself is based on people acting on their eternal desire to connect. It has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. This book exists to help companies deal with the trend, regardless of how the individual technologies pieces change. We call this groundswell thinking (x).

How the Book Is Organized

Groundswell is organized in three parts:

• Part I: Defines the social trend known as the groundswell and describes the basic technologies (such as blogs, social networks|virtual worlds, wikis and open source, forums|ratings|reviews, tagging, and rss|widgets) in the groundswell, according to how people use them and what they mean for companies. It also describes a tool that allows people in business to examine and then create strategies based on the groundswell tendencies of specific groups of people (see Chapter 3, The Social Technographics Profile).
• Part II: Defines the four-step POST process for creating strategies—people, objectives, strategy, and technology—and reveals why starting with technologies is a mistake. It further defines the five primary objectives for groundswell strategy:
  Listening to the Groundswell (Research). “Explains how to use the groundswell for research purposes, with tools like private communities and brand monitoring” (p. xii).
  Talking to the Groundswell (Marketing). “Shows how to use the groundswell for marketing and PR, with techniques like user-generated video, blogs, and communities” (p. xii).
  Energizing the Groundswell (Sales). “Illustrates a key strategy—charging up your best customers and enabling them to recruit their peers, through techniques such as ratings, reviews, and communities” (p. xii).
  Helping the Groundswell Support Itself (Support). Provides a strategy for saving money and gaining insight by helping your company’s customers support each other, through for example, community forums and wikis.
  Embracing the Groundswell (Development). “Explains how to accomplish the most powerful goal of all—including your customers as collaborators in your company” (p. xii).
• Part III: Describes how the groundswell spreads with a customer-centric organization and provides steps for organizations to prepare for a transformation. It provides strategies for nurturing the internal groundswell, including internal social networks, collaborating on wikis, and contributing to idea exchanges. It concludes with a scenario on the future of the groundswell, as well as steps on how to develop the right attitude for groundswell thinking.

Highly Recommended Reading, Especially for Enterprise 2.0

I’ve been noticing a bit of a backlash, on the word “strategy” these days, in the social media community. It’s becoming a catch-all phrase, with lots of folks claiming to be strategists, in the same way that a year and a half ago, everyone was a social media expert. However, if we go back and review Groundswell— for many, still the bible on social strategy—we are reminded of what developing a strategy is really all about…

Social Strategy, Defined

According to Li and Bernoff, a social strategy is a measurable plan for meeting objectives, on how a company wants to change its relationship with customers.

Changing Relationships through Social Technologies

Does your company understand how it wants to change its relationship with customers, through social technologies? What are your company’s objectives? Are you interested in listening to, talking to, energizing, helping, or embracing customers?  How do these goals tie back to the way your customers want to engage with you?

Post Method: A Process for Developing Strategies

Li and Bernoff provide the POST method (p. 67-68), a systematic framework for assembling your plan. Also valuable are the series of questions for evaluating new technologies (see The Groundswell Technology Test, p. 35).

Five Objectives for Groundswell Strategy

The chapters in Part II. Tapping the Groundswell, fully illustrate each of the five primary objectives for groundswell strategy, with compelling stories from the people who make the groundswell. Here, the authors take an inclusive approach, illustrating how groundswell thinking and objectives apply across the organization’s various disciplines.

These objectives are linked to existing business functions in your company (Research, Marketing, Sales, Support, and Development), “except that they’re far more engaged with customers and include more communication—especially communication that happens between customers” (p. 69).

Transforming Your Organization

Through Part III. The Groundswell Transforms, Li and Bernoff provide what may be the most useful strategy tips of all, with ways to nurture groundswell thinking, within your own organization.

The approach here seems especially relevant to Enterprise 2.0, and builds on the advice in the earlier section, “What about business-to-business?” which reminds readers that “businesspeople are people, too” (p. 70).

In business to business settings, picking an objective first is still the best practice. You can listen to, talk to, energize, support, or embrace your business customers—businesspeople—just as you would consumers. And if you don’t start with a clear objective, you’re just as likely to go wrong (p 71).

The Groundswell, as a State of Mind

Li and Bernoff conclude by providing tips on not so much what to do, but rather on how to be; that is, they describe how to develop the right attitude for making the transition to groundswell thinking. These principles (p. 240-241) are what make Li and Bernoff’s book so timeless, and well worth re-reading, before you develop any social strategy or choose your next tool:

1. “Never forget that the groundswell is about person-to person activity. This means you must be ready to connect to people you haven’t met.”
2. “Be a good listener.”
3. “Be patient.”
4. “Be opportunistic. Start small and build on success. Get moving when you get a green light or have a great idea.”
5. “Be flexible.”
6. “Be collaborative.”
7. “Be humble.”

Related Links

• Shannon Paul: How To Develop a Social Media Strategy: A Roadmap for Integration
• Other Convergent World Posts: Search Engine Strategies, Keynote: Charlene Li on How to Prepare for the Future of Search, Social Business (also known as Enterprise 2.0), A Collaborative Writing Model for the Social Web, and Book Review: Conversation and Community by Anne Gentle.

• Reporter/Observer
• Enabler/Sharer
• Collaborator/Instigator

Reporter/Observer Role

In the Reporter/Observer role, technical communicators use tools like Google Alerts, blog-only searches (via Technorati and Google Blogs), and Delicious to listen to conversations on the social web. They then aggregate information and curate content from users. 

Enabler/Sharer Role

In the Enabler role, technical communicators enable comments and conversation through their user assistance deliverables. In the Sharer role, technical communicators share content through linking and syndication.

Enabling comments.  JS Kit ECHO embeds the comment form on web pages and stores comments locally.
Enabling conversations.  DISQUS – Hosted comments provide threaded conversations and moderation features.
Sharing Role: Linking.
AddThis – Register on the site, embed the code, and configure the sites, on which your users can share content.
TweetMeme– Add a retweet button to any web page.
Sharing Role: Syndicating Content. Offer users notifications of content updates. Embed content from RSS feeds.

Collaborator/Instigator Role

For the Collaborator/Instigator role, Gentle advises applying best practices from Social CRM to identify your organization’s influencers. She also advises thinking of your alignment in the organization. What corporate objectives does the technical documentation support? 

• Marketing & Sales – purchasing decisions
• Service & Support – notifications, sharing, reciprocity, reputation
• Invention & Development – users sharing ideas 
• Collaboration – shared goals, shared tasks
• Customer Experience – convert prospects to customers
• Learning & Education – study groups

Are You An Instigator or Enabler of Conversation?

In her book Conversation and Community:  The Social Web for Documentation, Gentle explores these themes in greater detail, in the chapter, “Defining a Writer’s Role with the Social Web.” In that chapter, Gentle refers to a post from the Web Worker Daily site, in which Anne Zelenka discusses the information age, versus the connectivity age.

Gentle expands on Zelenka’s post, with the following question for technical communicators: “Are you an information worker or a connection worker, and does your corporate culture support you more in one model or another?” (p. 72).

Gentle defines the instigator of conversation versus the enabler of conversation, in these ways:

An instigator provides a starting point for a conversation, perhaps by communicating a controversial decision or a highly debated strategic choice. A writer in an instigator role should know customers’ business needs and be well-connected with those he or she plans to talk to online.

An enabler of conversation understands the underlying concepts of a product or service well enough to help others understand those concepts as well. An enabler gives a community the authority to make decisions or provides patterns that help a community develop and grow. (p. 73)

“Whether you’re an instigator or enabler, you can repeatedly gather knowledge from communities and conversation, then bring it back and incorporate what you’ve learned into the documentation,” Gentle concludes.

What’s Your Business Goal?

In summary, what business objectives does the technical documentation serve in your culture?  Where is your natural alignment in the organization? Are you more of an instigator or enabler of conversation? What role on the social web—reporter/observer, enabler/sharer, or collaborator/instigator—best supports your company’s business goals for the technical documentation? 

For me, these questions are among the most important take-aways from Gentle’s STC presentation and book.  The answer to these questions are probably at least as important as the answers to the traditional audience analysis questions, which technical writers are trained to always ask.  And the answers about business objectives for technical documentation are as diverse, as each of our organizations. The cross-disciplinary and often inconsistent objectives for technical documentation (across various corporate cultures) remains the greatest ongoing challenge for positioning the technical communication discipline for the future, on the social web, or otherwise. The diversity of business goals that technical documentation deliverables support is simultaneously technical communicators’ greatest business opportunity.

Related Links

• How to Bring Web 2.0 to User Assistance (and Vice-Versa)
• Book Review: Conversation and Community by Anne Gentle
  

Content Strategy: 5 Tips for E-Commerce

Are you finding it difficult to search optimize your e-commerce site? If so, you’re not alone. In a recent MarketingProfs post, Adam Thomson explains how most e-commerce sites lack unique, relevant content for search engines to find. 

Often, e-commerce websites contain navigational pages (with little content) and product pages (with mostly duplicate content). Though it takes time to overcome these SEO challenges, Adams explains you can drive more traffic to your e-commerce site, with a simple content strategy, in place. 

Here are five ways to get unique, keyword-relevant content on your e-commerce site. 

1. Write Category Descriptions. For many e-commerce websites, keyword optimization is limited to category pages, with mostly images and links. Instead, write descriptions or introductory copy for each category, to display above or below the product listings. 

2. Rewrite Product Descriptions. Rewrite generic manufacturer descriptions to make your product pages more unique and findable by the search engines. Capture long-tail keyword opportunities, by selecting the products for which your site isn’t ranked No. 1. 

3. Write Expert Product Reviews. Write and publish expert product reviews, including images, video, detailed product testing and analysis, and other value-added content that shoppers would find useful. 

4. Write a Mish-Mash Page.  Thomson describes mish-mash pages as pages that include various types of content, targeted at a specific keyword. Write a very short article about your targeted keyword. Below that introduction, include images, videos, reviews, guides, or any other relevant content. 

5. Write Buyer Guides. Write in-depth articles, optimized for primary and secondary keywords, teaching consumers what they need to know to select and purchase the best product for their needs. 

According to Thomson, adding content to your site can be easy or difficult, depending on your e-commerce software. “If your e-commerce software includes a CMS, great; otherwise, you can just add a CMS (like Drupal or WordPress) to your website,” Thomson concludes. 

Content Strategy Takeaway: Don’t despair; it is possible to optimize your e-commerce site. Develop strong keyword-targeted pages, filled with useful, relevant content—perfect for users and search engines alike. 

Sarah reflects on the benefits and challenges that user-generated content poses for technical communicators. She calls on organizations to develop a content strategy, identifying the specific scenarios where user-generated content is valuable, alongside a different set of scenarios, where professionally-generated content is still highly relevant. She proposes an emerging role for technical communicators, as content curators.

I remain very indebted to Sarah, not only for this guest post, but for all the content strategy resources she generously offers the technical communication community.

Without further ado, here’s Sarah, in her own words…

The Internet is removing the traditional gatekeepers for content.

Until quite recently, content distribution was a challenging process that required expensive equipment (printing press, video production facilities, trucks, warehouses) and in some cases government permission (TV and radio broadcast licenses). Now sites like YouTube and software like WordPress make content distribution trivial.

This change has profound implications for professional content creators of all types. In this post, I want to focus on technical communicators — people who create information to explain complex technical products.

(Technical communication is also called technical writing, but that phrase is falling out of favor because it excludes non-text communication, such as graphics and video.)

For technical communicators, the rise of user-generated content is a decidedly double-edged sword.

Benefits for technical communicators

Technical communicators can communicate directly with their target audience — the end users of the product. If technical documentation is published on the Internet, end users can provide comments or edit information directly. This feedback helps technical communicators improve their content by identifying errors or unclear writing.

There’s never enough time for in-house professionals to create all of the content that’s needed. Contributions from the user community can provide additional support and build on the official core content. The organization’s strategic plan for content should identify areas where users are most valuable (such as unusual ways of using the product) and areas where corporate technical communicators add the most value (such as information that requires high production values, configuration/installation instructions, and conceptual information). The overall content strategy can then ensure that the various content contributors have appropriate frameworks in which to operate.

Challenges for technical communicators

There is a temptation for business executives, especially in cash-poor start-ups, to dismiss their technical communication staff and simply rely on the community to provide documentation. There are a number of problems with this approach, but let’s take some obvious ones:

I believe, however, that we are entering a new era of accountability. Web analytics software makes it quite easy to measure whether content is being viewed. Technical communicators — and their management — can see how many people are accessing their content, and specifically which content is most or least popular. These metrics will drive decisions about not just technical communication but also product designs, marketing, and more.

More on this topic:

Many thanks to Peg Mulligan for sharing her space!

Photo credit, tutescin

Sarah O’Keefe, President, founded Scriptorium Publishing in 1996 to provide editing and production services to technical writing departments. From the beginning, Sarah focused on efficiency—-selecting the right publishing tools, creating templates, and training writers on how to use their tools.

Today, the company is known for expertise in cutting-edge tools and technologies. With a dozen employees, Scriptorium specializes in streamlining publishing processes for numerous high-profile clients in telecommunications, defense, technology, and other content-rich industries.

5th floor Mural, MA ESE

In this month’s Live with Abundance: Social Media for Good post, I focus on the unique opportunity I had these last six months, contracting as a technical writer for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education‘s Technology Department.

The opportunity synthesized so many parts of my background and interests, including both a love of technology (as a practicing technical writer), and of education (as a former licensed English teacher, at the secondary level).

Coming right on the  heels of my attendance at Seth Godin’s Boston speaking engagement, the contract experience brought home to me anew, what important work educators do, and how much Godin’s term “Linchpin” has always and continues to apply to them.

Are You Indispensable?

In his book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, Godin defines the Linchpin, as an artist:

Art is about intent and communication, not substances… An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally…

The art of running a meeting, counseling a student, conducting an interview, and calming an angry customer. The art of raising capital, buying a carpet at a souk, or managing a designer…

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient…If art is a human connection that causes someone to change his mind, then you are an artist (p. 85).

Educators as Linchpins

Godin’s words so perfectly portray as linchpins, all those who work in education, including those who design the future of education.

In his talk, Godin also had much to say about the continuing need to transform education, with a greater emphasis on the problem-solving and leadership skills so necessary for all employees to demonstrate, in the twenty-first century workplace.

1st floor Mural, MA ESE

What the Future of Education Looks Like

During my time at the Department of ESE this winter through summer, I was able to follow the progress of a mural project, in which Boston artist Thomas Burns collaborated with students at Malden’s Salemwood School, as well as with Department of ESE staff, to develop two wall murals for the Department of Education’s first and fifth floors.

This week, I joined other ESE staff in the first floor lobby, as Commissioner Chester Mitchell unveiled one of the stunning mural hangings. As the Commissioner spoke about the project, I couldn’t help but think how well the mural project embodied student-centered learning principles, encouraging students to co-design their very futures. The focus on technology also complements themes in the National Educational Technology Plan 2010, as well as digital and other emerging literacies, included in the newly adopted Common Core Standards. Most of all, the murals represent to me the potential of our young people, as linchpins and artists in their own rights, with as much to teach those around them, as to learn.

Related Links

• Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, on Facebook
• Applications Sought for Governor’s Statewide Youth Council
• What Is It Like to be a Student Today? ~ Generation Y, Social Learning, and User Assistance Trends

(For anyone who was watching closely, you may have noticed, especially during the fall and early winter months, that I changed my tag-line, in an almost weekly [sometimes daily, if you were watching very closely] display of creative [slightly neurotic?] indecision…I’ve kept this latest tag-line in place for many months and feel like it finally captures the diversity of my professional interests, in a simultaneously cohesive and focused way.)

On SlideShare, I recently found presentations from Rahel Anne Bailie (@rahelab on Twitter ), Content Strategist and CM Consultant, from Intentional Design, which reinforce this blog’s inclusive direction and tie in with the vision I had, when I first set down my thoughts in About This Blog, more than a year ago.

In this retrospective, I pay special homage to Content Wrangler Scott Abel, who has featured Bailie, at his own blog in the post, Rahel Bailie Provides A Content Strategy Primer, and who has greatly influenced my thinking, about the direction of technical communication. In particular, I read Nicky Bleiel’s guest-post (Convergence Technical Communication: Strategies for Incorporating Web 2.0) at Abel’s blog , about the same time I was launching this blog. I find myself still referring back to those ideas, especially as I recommit to this more cross-disciplinary, holistic direction.

Bailie’s presentation describes all the themes I’m trying to capture here, including content convergence, as well as the role of the content strategist in devising strategies, rooted in business requirements, for developing and managing portable content, including subscriptions, marketing content, engineering content, tech comm content, training content, support center content, CRM content, RSS feeds, and user-generated content.

I especially loved Bailie’s eloquent description of the content strategist’s T-thinking mind-set, described as “convergent, synergistic thinking”…convergent, synergistic thinking…yep, that’s what I’m aiming for, here, at Content for a Convergent World…convergent, synergistic thinking, for Enterprise 2.0, and beyond…Another hat tip to Scott Abel, Nicky Bleiel, and Rahel Anne Bailie—for their inspiration and leadership, and for being content strategists, long before content strategy was cool.

Here are some quick notes, from Bailie’s presentation.

What Is Content Convergence?

Content convergence is a move away from content silos (single-use, linear content), paired with content integration, which is combining content from multiple sources. Content convergence means portability—mixing and matching content to fit new contexts. Complex contexts demand concise content…Shape content around a single concept. The ability to re-use content across context increases content value.

 To be portable, content needs to:

• Be structured.
• Have semantic properties.
• Be findable (searchable).
• Conform to standards.

What is Content Strategy?

Content strategy = devising strategies, rooted in business requirements, for portable content.

Content Strategists, Described

• Content strategists are T-shaped thinkers, good at convergent, synergistic thinking (thinking outside the box).
• Questions content strategists explore:
  • What are the touch points?
  • What can be automated for users?
  • What are the preferences of your audiences?
  • What is required by regulatory?
  • What is the best you can provide, in practicality?
  • How creative can you be?

Examples of Portable Content

Blog posts, images, Twitter posts, upcoming product releases, user-generated content, visitor login, ratings information, e-commerce data, audio files, and product descriptions.

Related Topics

• Lee Odden to MarketingProfs B2B Forum: Ten Steps for an Optimized Content Strategy (#mpb2b)
• User Expectations are Changing. Are You? (Scott Abel on Technical Communication and Web 2.0)
• Inbound Marketing University: Converting Leads (CV101, CV201, CV301) (see notes for Class 8: Inbound Lead Nurturing (CV201), Professor: Brian Carroll (MECLABS, InTouch, and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill 2006)