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How To Recognize (and Solve) Wicked Content Strategy Problems

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How To Recognize (and Solve) Wicked Content Strategy Problems

Content strategy is a wicked problem.

Don’t worry. I didn’t adopt Bostonian lingo.

A wicked problem is hard to solve because of “incomplete, contradictory, or changing requirements that can be difficult to recognize.”

I like information researcher Jeff Conklin’s description of wicked problems as those “not understood until after the formulation of a solution.”

I see wicked problems a lot in content strategy. One of the toughest is recognizing why you need to change when you can’t see how things are broken.

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One of the toughest things to recognize is why you should change when you can’t see how things are broken, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Cooking up a wicked problem

My wife and I get around our kitchen just fine. We cook. The kitchen gets messy. We clean up and put things back where they go. We do the same thing at the next meal. It works fine for us.

Recently, a friend who came over for dinner wanted to help us cook. It was pure chaos. “Nothing is in the right place,” our guest said. She went to our junk drawer looking for silverware and opened our spice cabinet seeking plates. “Don’t even get me started with how the refrigerator is organized,” she said.

My wife responded, “This is how we’ve been doing this for years. It works for us.” Then I chimed in, “It’s the way we do it. It’s an optimized process.”

Our friend played along and said, “No. It’s the way you do it. But it’s not optimized.”

She was right. As she pointed out how things could be more efficient, we realized we had a problem.

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A wicked problem.

In content strategy, experts often say documentation indicates a business’s commitment to its content. At its surface, a document seems oddly bureaucratic. How can creating a robust Google Doc or PowerPoint presentation be the lynchpin of a content strategy?

Spoiler alert: The document isn’t important.

However, having documentation means you’ve thought through the details of who’s responsible for what and how content works in and for your business.

Imagine how different our friend’s cooking experience would have been, for example, if we’d given her a detailed map of our kitchen and meal preparation workflow to review before her visit.

As the chef, she still could have pointed out the sub-optimal parts of our workflow and “asset management” strategy. But she also would have functioned better and, more importantly, could have seen where our kitchen organizational hacks made pragmatic sense.

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It’s a lighthearted example, but it shows how documentation takes a lot of wickedness out of the problem.

#Content strategy documentation can take a lot of wickedness out of a problem, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Questions with no answers (yet)

About three months ago, I worked with a large, fast-growing technology company to roll out a new governance model, workflow, and content lifecycle management plan. The people who’d been with the company less than a year rejoiced. They loved it.

On the other hand, senior leaders and many veteran marketing and content practitioners didn’t. They agreed the solution sounded fine, but they didn’t see the problem it would solve.

Wicked.

I hear this question from CEOs and CFOs all the time: “I don’t see the problem. Tell me what’s the benefit of fixing it.”

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The answer: We don’t know – yet.

Good people always lose to bad processes

Engineer and professor W. Edwards Deming once said, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

What does that mean? For example, I can’t describe the process of writing this column every week, but I still get it done. I know what I’m doing.

But Deming doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s that the organization doesn’t know what it’s doing.

For example, I talked about the technology company’s content creation process with the two global marketing practitioners responsible for translation and localization. I asked them to explain the process for how the hundreds of content pieces are selected, planned, and prioritized for distribution.

Here’s how they described it:

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  1. They select articles based on gut feelings. Sometimes they have email conversations about the options, but sometimes whoever has time chooses the pieces.
  2. They list the chosen content on a spreadsheet, prioritizing each asset by highlighting it in red, yellow, or green.
  3. They upload the assets to an external file-sharing service because their internal digital asset management system doesn’t allow access by the agencies doing the translation and globalization.
  4. The agencies return the translated files to the two managers through the file-sharing service.
  5. The global marketing managers email the translated files to the local marketing managers in the correct regional offices.

How were other regional offices made aware of the content? How were the translated assets made centrally available? The two managers would upload them when they had time.

If those two managers left the business, the business would have a big ball of tangled translation and localization twine for the new person to unravel.

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Cleaning the occurrent kitchen

Let’s return to the wicked challenge.

How can you answer the executives’ question about the potential value of fixing problems the business doesn’t know exists?

You can’t.

But you can develop a culture of examining occurrent behavior.

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Occurrent behavior is what happens in the business vs. what is supposed to happen or what the business perceives is happening.

The technology company offers a great example. From the CMO’s perspective, nothing was broken. She perceived the operating model she inherited as working. When I showed her the translation and localization “process,” she said, “That’s not the way it was designed to work. But if it’s working, it’s working.”

Thousands of similar examples exist in every company. How people think things work differs from how they actually work. How many times have you onboarded an employee with advice like this: “This document says to email this department to get this answer, but just email Jane. She’ll get you the answer 10 times faster.”

Examine your content strategy ‘culture’

Stack up all that tacit knowledge, and it becomes the “culture.” Whether you conduct an audit, a review, or a simple set of experiments, really examine the occurrent behavior of your content strategy.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Figure out what’s going on

Develop a team to examine and document the occurrent behavior around your content – ideating, creating, managing, activating, publishing, promoting, measuring, and archiving.

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If necessary, start with one area, such as marketing or thought leadership. Even better, start with one area of the customer’s journey. Document what happens (not what’s supposed to happen.) Identify and categorize the obvious challenges and where approaches go outside perceived models (even for good reason).

2. Plot the obvious gaps and inevitable costs

With the gaps documented, identify the costs, missed opportunities, or high-probability risks if they remain as is. For example, at the technology company, the siloed content creation process prompted employees to create new content rather than reuse content created from another silo. They found one e-book had 32 versions. What is the cost of the time spent on 31 unnecessary e-books?

3. Take a dragonfly view of estimating the challenge

Dragonflies see 360 degrees around them. People don’t. No one can develop a perspective that encompasses every aspect of every business process. But after looking at one area, you may be able to estimate the value of fixing your wicked problems based on the audits or experiments you’ve run.

Look at the costs for the obvious things (like the 31 extra e-books). Assume similar issues lie in other unexamined areas and extrapolate the costs. Include estimates based on what organizations similar to yours have found if you can.

Answer the value question

These steps should give you a helpful estimate of the value of developing or improving your strategic content processes.

People (and businesses) are reluctant to change, especially when they’re not feeling pain. But take heart. I’ve worked on more than 300 content strategy engagements and found companies that struggle to build a case for content strategy change end up finding the most success.

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They’re already cooking, making meals, cleaning up, and succeeding, and they fear a change to that working routine will mess things up.

They’re not wrong to be reluctant. If they can’t understand the problem, looking at solutions can be confusing.

It’s a wicked problem.

But, if you don’t examine ways to improve incrementally, you’ll always have to fix things disruptively. You may not solve the wicked problem, but you might just pull enough wickedness out of them to be helpful.

Get Robert’s take on content marketing industry news (in just three minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries
Want to learn how to balance, manage, and scale great content experiences across all your essential platforms and channels? Join us at ContentTECH Summit this March in San Diego. Browse the schedule or register today. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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