The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web

Rule 2: Involve Stakeholders Early and Often

Last year, I worked with a company on three projects: a core messaging strategy, a new design for their Web site, and content. About six months into the project, just as we were getting ready to approve the final content, the person who originally hired me to consult—we’ll call him Jeremy—suggested we talk to a new set of stakeholders. This was a group I had never met or interviewed. Jeremy and his team had omitted them from our initial discussions, thinking they would get buy-in at the end of the process.

Sure enough, even though Jeremy thought that this particular group of stakeholders was not important enough to include in the initial go-round, they did have vital input. More important, they had political clout. Because they were unhappy with certain parts of the messaging strategy and content, we needed to go back to the drawing board to develop a different strategy and information architecture. This delayed the project by another six months and cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Lesson learned: All of the stakeholders matter.

Who Are Stakeholders?

We’ve already explored two types of stakeholders: your audience and the C-suite. In this rule, we are going to:

• Define internal and external stakeholders
• Identify and prioritize stakeholders
• Understand the importance of stakeholders to content
• Learn how to talk to stakeholders
• Achieve stakeholder buy-in
• Set up a roadmap for stakeholders
• Learn to assign stakeholder tasks

As we learned in the story of Jeremy, we need to include stakeholders in the process as often as possible because they affect and sometimes even control the outcome. Learning to manage stakeholders is an artful process, but one that will result in a better end content product.

Defining Stakeholders

Stakeholders are people who really care about the product or service and have a “stake” in the outcome. As Tomer Sharon, a usability expert, says, “Stakeholders are our clients, whether internal or external to our organization. These are people who need to believe in what we do so they will act …” (Sharon, 2012).

Stakeholders are the people who have vital information about everything in the organization that affects content management and production. They are the people who can provide vital information that you can turn into content; they are also the people who can describe current content workflow and challenges.

When managed properly, stakeholders will help you create the detailed, robust content your audience craves. They may be the people who set the strategy for the business overall, or they may be the data czars. In journalism lingo, stakeholders are the “sources.”

In other words, stakeholders give you the critical information you need to help you be successful with your content endeavors. So pay careful attention to them—they can make or break your content process.

In Chapter 2, we talked about the C-suite and ensuring that you have senior executive buy-in for content. Sometimes stakeholders are your C-suite, or a part of your C-suite. Other stakeholders may be elsewhere in the company’s hierarchy. For the sake of getting the information you need, a stakeholder does not necessarily have a high pay grade or power. In most cases, the closer a stakeholder is to the front line, the more they can tell you what you really need to know.

Content Is a Shared Asset

When you look at the content lifecycle, what you see is a continuous system of planning, creating, delivering, and governing content. As a content professional, you interface with other professionals with a large and varied set of skills, all of whom have a stake in the content because it supports the organization’s goals and objectives. Content is a shared asset within an organization.

As the person responsible for content within your organization, you “govern” or lead the effort. That doesn’t mean that you make all of the decisions or tell everyone what to do and how to do it. It means that you are the guide: You know what matters, how to build consensus, inspire ideas, and encourage information flow in order to create content that works. (Leibtag, 2011; Sharon, 2012).

Because content is a shared asset, it is important to talk to all stakeholders on a project before you begin planning. This helps you know you are on the right track. It also keeps your stakeholders confident because they feel involved. You also build relationships, which is invaluable later when they communicate to you about content that is old, stale, or in need of revision.

As we’ve discussed already, content is a piece of information distilled into a format that is easily recognizable for your audience. (We’re going to talk about content formats in Chapter 3.) Stakeholders possess information. That is the central reason to involve them in content development early and often.

Internal Versus External—Stakeholders Versus Your Audience

The external stakeholders are the members of your intended audience(s)—your customers. Internal stakeholders are your clients: bosses, executives, content creators, and anyone who touches content during its lifecycle. In the case of internal stakeholders, you have their attention and interest, and you actually can interview them.

We have already talked about how to learn more about your external stakeholders, that is, your audience in Rule #1. In this rule, we’re going to focus on how to work with your internal stakeholders.

Internal Stakeholders

Very often, there’s a vast difference between content the audience wants to consume and the content your stakeholders want to create. I call this the internal versus external push-pull. The only way to win this argument is to have strong market research to back up your claims about what types of information and content your customers want.

Your clients may tell you to create content that you know from experience your audience will not read, consume, or share. That’s a sign that your stakeholders do not really know their audience and what types of information they crave. That is why Rule #1 about starting with your audience is so important. That is why it is the first step in creating meaningful, valuable content.

You will probably need to educate stakeholders about what types of information are truly important to external customers, and which content they are simply producing (or asking you to produce) to satisfy what they think is important to the audience.

When presented with research that shows what customers want to consume, many stakeholders are willing to listen. When stakeholders give me their observations about customers, I ask them, “How do you know that?” If they answer, “We just know,” you can introduce them to the data and research you have accumulated. If you are well prepared, your case against “we just know” thinking will be rock-solid.

As a content professional, you must challenge your organization to move away from a culture of assumption to a culture of data. Basing your decisions on things you know and can know is far better than guessing. In a famous scene from the movie Top Gun, Kelly McGillis, a flight instructor named Charlie, is analyzing a contentious interaction between two fighter jets, one flown by a Russian pilot and the other by Maverick, an American fighter pilot, played by Tom Cruise.

Charlie: The MIG has you in his gun site, what were you thinking at this point?

Maverick: You don’t have time to think up there. If you think, you’re dead.

Charlie: Well that’s a big gamble with a 30 million dollar plane, Lieutenant.

Convince your stakeholders to take their time to think, and more importantly, know what information your audience truly craves. Don’t gamble with content decisions.

Build Personas of Your Internal Stakeholders

If you are going to get buy-in from stakeholders, you need to know whom they are and what they care about. Prepare to meet them by building personas of who they are. For example, you and your team might build a persona of an orthopedic surgeon. That persona might tell you that the stakeholder (the physician) is:

• Extremely busy
• Intelligent
• Concerned about his or her patient’s expectations for surgery
• Unconvinced of how a Web site matters for his or her practice

When I first interview this orthopedic surgeon, I’d show him what the competitors have on their Web sites and blogs in order prove that his potential patients need and want to know how long it takes to, for example, recover from joint surgery. In fact, one thing I always tell writers I train is to be on the lookout for the information the stakeholder doesn’t want to include in the content. This is usually because he or she thinks it will turn people off or make them hesitant to follow through on the call to action.

Hiding vital information is a bad idea for your audience—the more transparent you are with the facts, the more you will convince potential customers to do business with you.

By giving people information up front, and not making them hunt for it, you let them know that their interests are at the heart of your organization—not your own. This makes for a better relationship. The goal of content is to build better relationships through stronger conversations.

Prioritizing Stakeholders

Your task is to identify the appropriate stakeholders and decide who is central to the project, and who may have secondary information that is important, but not vital. As I demonstrated in the Jeremy story, when we don’t identify and prioritize stakeholders, we run into trouble.

Stakeholders will tell you what you need to know about your customer audience, types of content needed, what hinges on content performance, and so much more. Content is a shared asset within the organization—its main purpose is to drive business objectives. Therefore, the information you can glean from your stakeholders is vital to content success.

As we’ll learn in Rule #4, when you create and publish content, you need different, overlapping talents to create the best possible product. In the same vein, stakeholders should be a mix of different people within an organization: subject matter experts, executives, content creators, salespeople, and so on.

When I create content for a department within a hospital, my primary stakeholders are the physicians and staff who run the department. They have the deepest insider knowledge—it is my job to translate that information so I can create the best content for their defined target audiences.

However, there are other stakeholders as well—marketing managers, executives running the overall marketing strategy, and the hospital’s Web team. So, do I need to talk to each stakeholder? Do I even have time to do that? Will they make time for me?

In an ideal world, you should talk to each and every stakeholder. In reality, this is not always possible. Realistically, a large hospital’s VP of Marketing will not have time to sit down and talk about the Web content of one of the hospital’s dozens of departments.

So, where to start? Your main source, the person who recruited you for this project, or who requested you internally, is your starting point. In the Jeremy story, Jeremy was the main client, as he was the one who brought me in as an external consultant.

What can your main client tell you?

• The basic sketch of the project: This is probably the most important part of those initial conversations.
• Some important details: Your main client will also fill in some important details, but remember, they are her observations. When content is a shared asset within an organization, it is important not to derive conclusions based on one person’s opinion. Act like a journalist and gather others’ opinions before you make decisions based on that information.
• Who the stakeholders are: Determining the identity of these stakeholders usually comes from an in-depth conversation with the main client, listening, and asking tons of questions. You should ask for an org chart—either for the entire organization or for the department you are working with directly. The org chart should give you a sense of how they internally organize their people, leading to a sharper understanding of whom you should contact. Ask the main client to make introductions, so when you contact stakeholders, they recognize your name and the role you play. I’ve learned that I won’t always talk to the senior players (depending on the type of project), but my main client can give me a lot of that information—as long as I know to ask for it.
• Prioritizing stakeholders: The central objective you have when identifying and prioritizing stakeholders is to ensure that any individual with a decision-making or supervisory role is involved in the group you engage. Your job is to connect the dots, to listen carefully and jump, like a frog, from one lily pad to the next. Using this approach, I always feel that I am getting as much information as I can from the people to whom I have easy access.
• Additional internal or external resources: Your main client will also provide additional resources to help you, as long as you can identify why you need them and how they will help the project. Don’t be afraid to ask to talk to more people. Just run it by the main client to ensure you don’t step on any toes or ignite some political wildfires without realizing it.

By listening carefully and fitting the puzzle pieces together, you will create the fullest picture you can of what is happening on the ground as it relates to the content you must shape.

What You Need from Stakeholders

Stakeholders are critical for creating a successful digital strategy roadmap for content. By following the rules in this book, you will create content that will drive sales or propel you toward your achievement threshold. Identifying and interviewing stakeholders and negotiating for their buy-in is the only road to creating and publishing better content. There are two parts to interviewing stakeholders:

1. Gather information that comprises the building blocks of your content
2. Understand their part in the content lifecycle

Stakeholders as Information Sources

Stakeholders possess valuable information about their area of expertise within the organization. Therefore, you need to position yourself as a researcher and investigative journalist to find out everything they know. Doctors can give prospective patients information about new technologies or techniques for treatment not available elsewhere. Government employees can explain what people receiving social security claims can do if their payments stop coming. Engineers can explain how to troubleshoot when something goes wrong with their products. The list is endless and the information infinite.

Understand Stakeholders as Part of the Publishing Lifecycle

Corey Vilhauer, a content strategist, explains:

“Content strategy and UX (user experience) are dedicated to enriching the experience and understanding of the people who will come in contact with our Web properties, but those Web properties are run by professionals who are deeply affected by the changes and shifts we put in place.

Our job is to help make useful, usable Web things. Our job is also to ensure that the passion is passed along to the next in line—that we provide some level of empathy and empowerment for the people who will work the content long after we’re gone” (Vilhauer, 2012).

Your job is to ensure that content management efforts continue longer after the initial development of content. You also need to see yourself as a champion for your stakeholders; you help them achieve success with their content. And, as Vilhauer so aptly puts it, you need to empower them to feel ownership of the process, so they feel compelled to continue to engage with content throughout its lifecycle.

So, how do you capture the information you need to create great content? And, how do you talk to stakeholders to understand their unique place in relation to the production and management of content within the organization?

Your Job Is to Gather the Facts

You do not want to come to interviews with preconceived notions. When you ask stakeholders for their input, you need to let them know you are really listening. Be sure to listen for the information they want to give, not the information you think you need. That means listening carefully, not interrupting, asking tons of questions, and absorbing all of the information. When you introduce bias into this process, you will erode results.

You job at this point is to gather the facts. As Sharon says, “Don’t think too much. You are in information-gathering mode. Think army intelligence. You don’t plan your moves now. You don’t think about the data in front of you. All you do now is collect and gather. Later on, you’ll think about it. If you think too much, you don’t listen.”

Melissa Rach, a well-known content strategist, uses a slightly different approach:

“During the first conversation I have with a client, I go over vocabulary. I ask the client things like: What does ‘content’ mean to you? What does ‘strategy’ mean? I share my definitions, too. Then, we work together to define what key terms mean for the purpose of this engagement” (Vilhauer).

Villhauer points out, “I’m also there to listen. To listen to workflow issues that have become so common at the company that they’re ignored. To listen for cues as to who is going to spearhead this project. To listen for politics, for under-the-breath backbiting, to the people who are clearly afraid they’re going to feel the brunt of the added workload. And they’ll say this out loud because I am non-threatening and because I’m listening” (Vilhauer).

Anytime you meet with a new stakeholder you should have a set of questions you are prepared to ask. Having said that, don’t be afraid to depart from your script. Most important is to ask detailed questions and read between the lines.

Here is a great stakeholder story: My client, an orthopedic surgeon, wanted to tell patients how long after a joint replacement surgery they had to wait until they could resume having sex. He explained, “They are too shy to ask. I’m a doctor! I know people have sex. But, they can really damage their new joints if they have sex too soon after surgery. So I’d rather put it on the Web site. I’d rather they know than risk that they won’t listen when I tell them at the pre-surgical evaluation or that they’ll be too shy to ask. Also, their wives read those Web sites and will tell them.”

He chuckled as he said it, but I took the point to heart. Here’s a stakeholder who truly knows and understands his audience. Creating that type of content will go a long way for both him and his patients.

Uncovering Group Dynamics

Part of what you want to understand when you interview stakeholders about content is how they work together. Another excellent piece of advice from Sharon regarding talking to stakeholders is to uncover group dynamics:

“Encourage a conversation. When there are several stakeholders present, it’s a golden opportunity for co-discovery. When you ask a question, try facilitating a conversation between stakeholders. It will help you understand the many aspects and layers behind answers. It might also uncover hidden political forces and tensions you were not aware of that might affect the future of the study and its impact.”

Those hidden political forces and tensions are critical to any content project, as we will see in the next section.

Ownership: Setting Up a Roadmap for Stakeholders

In order to ensure stakeholders feel they own the content, you need to create a roadmap for them—a plan for how you are going to take them from where they are now to where they want to be. Then you will all feel confident (Figure R2.1).

Make sure it is a roadmap ordinary people can follow. Try not to show them one of those fancy project plans with graphs and bars and dates and timelines. Just make it simple, on a spreadsheet or in a Word table—clearly describing each step. You might even consider using a shared document system. Every line should have a due date, the responsible member, and the goal.

Often a calendar works well in these situations, with simple dates and deliverables listed. People appreciate simplicity: Their lives are already complicated by overflowing streams of information. Make sure that they understand the process. If you expect anything from them, make that very clear on the roadmap you give them—double underline their part, highlight it, send them reminder emails—whatever it takes.

Questions You Might Ask

The questions about information you need to glean from your stakeholders will depend on the facts you need to gather to help shape the actual content.

The following questions are about the content lifecycle: how the organization plans, creates, publishes, and manages content. Designed to uncover the content lifecycle workflow and current processes, their answers will help you build that roadmap.

Roadmap Step #1: Where Are We Now?

You must describe where the organization is now in relation to content creation before describing how you’re going to change it.

• What are the data and analytics that describe where we are? How is content currently performing?
• What are the business objectives surrounding this project? Why are we currently not meeting them? What business case do we have that makes us think content will help us? Where are our pain points, i.e., our real or perceived problems?
• Do all stakeholders and content creators within the organization understand the overall business strategy?
• Who are the stakeholders? Who are the content creators? Who gives input to the content creators?

Roadmap Step #2—Where Are We Going?

Make it clear that this process has direction.

• What is the business case for creating content?
• Does this content align with our brand?
• How do we want our customers to feel about us?
• Is our messaging and branding strategy well mapped? If not, who is in charge of that process?
• How does our audience interface with our content? Which devices do they use?
• Which content types are most popular?
• What is the average cost of producing said content type?

Roadmap Step #3—How Will We Get There?

This step puts everyone on the same page regarding the process.

• Do we have the right talent filling the proper roles within the organization to create the content we need?
• Do we have the budget to produce the content we need?
• Do we have the right technology and platform to create the content?
• With whom can we partner to help us get there faster or better?

Follow-Through: Keeping the Stakeholders Involved

Once your roadmap is set, and the process of content creation begins, don’t forget your original stakeholders. Make it a priority to keep them in the loop, sharing milestones, and asking them for input along the way.

It’s time consuming, I know, but I have used this approach, and I’m convinced of its tremendous value. Stakeholders have a deep investment in content, feel great about being asked for their opinions, and will provide viewpoints you very well may have ignored or brushed aside.

It’s not just worth the time—it’s essential. Your worst nightmare would be to complete the project and present it as a fait accompli, only to have the stakeholders ask why you didn’t tell them how it was going and then demand changes.

Let’s remember Jeremy—he and his group didn’t put the time into identifying crucial stakeholders, and they paid the price.

Stakeholder Tasks for Content Editing and Development

There is one other important part of identifying stakeholders and including them in the content process. At some point, they will need to take an active part in content editing and development. As Karen McGrane, a Web and usability expert, points out, your stakeholders will need to make conscious decisions about content, including:

• Keep as is
• Revise
• Delete
• Create new content (McGrane, 2012)

So, at some point, let your stakeholders know that they will have to do something with the content. You may want to consider creating a two-page document about:

• Readability online
• How people use mobile devices
• How people use social media to find and share content

This is a leave-behind document they can use when thinking about which actions they should take with their content.

Summary

When creating content, it is vital to include the project’s stakeholders in the process. Get input from people for whom the content is important, and who have the necessary information you need to build great content.

Rule #2 includes the following actions:

• Find out who the stakeholders are
• Find out what is important to them
• Bring them into the process during the early stages
• Create a roadmap so that they can see where the process is taking them
• Keep them in the loop during the process
• Assign them certain tasks

Most importantly—have great conversations with them all along the way—this will lead to great relationships with them and by extension, great content.

Now you are going to meet Paige, who followed both of our first two rules to create content for her organization that produced results.

References

Leibtag, A. (2011, March 14) Getting started with analytics: How to get buy-in from your team. Retrieved from Content Marketing Institute.

McGrane, K. (2012). Content strategy for mobile. New York: A Book Apart.

Sharon, T. (2012, November 30). “Listen to your stakeholders: Sowing seeds for future research.” Retrieved from UX Magazine.

Vilhauer, C. (2012, October 11). “Empathy and content strategy: On teaching, listening and affecting change.” Retrieved from Eating Elephant.

Case Study: XONEX

Case Study: XONEX (Holden, 2012)

Imagine a richly appointed restaurant with blood-red carpeting, mahogany dining tables, steak knives that could slice through fabric, and wine glasses designed for celebration. In an industry where deals are handshakes made over a three-martini lunch and sales pitch, how does content become king? When traditional sales methods stop working, what does a company that wants to win need to do?

XONEX, a B2B corporate relocation company, found major success with content when their old sales approach of lunches and courting stopped working as well. XONEX administers relocation services on a global level, but sales are focused nationally in the northeast, southeast, and southwest. They have an extremely long sales cycle of 3–5 years.

Breathing New Life into an Old Sales Approach

Paige Holden began working as Director of Communications at XONEX in 2010 and immediately identified some major marketing challenges. Holden explains, “There were no marketing goals; marketing wasn’t clearly defined. We were limited to doing some events around the country with trade association groups. We had a booth, but barely had a corporate brochure. We had ads in our trade association publication, called Mobility, but it was expensive, and we couldn’t track what type of return we were getting from buying that advertising space.”

Further, they lacked an effective email distribution plan. Anything XONEX sent out was incredibly sales-y and did not seem to satisfy the needs of the target audience.

Before she started implementing any solutions, Holden interviewed all of the key people within the organization: the CEO, CFO, head of operations, and some central sales people. She asked them to define the target audiences in their minds, as well as what they thought the company’s greatest assets were.

Doing Research to Get Answers

After those interviews, Holden was a woman with a mission—she needed to understand the content “holes” within the organization. After a month of research, which included digging online to understand XONEX’s brand equity, Holden examined the online competitors to gauge the industry conversation.

After investigating her top five competitors to see their digital marketing objectives, Holden breathed a sigh of relief. “One of the comforting things I found was that they weren’t much farther than we were—it was a great feeling to know we could still do something. I realized I was not playing catch up as much as I thought I would be.”

Holden knew she needed to begin with defining her target audience so she could determine how to better attract and track leads (Rule #1: Start with Your Audience). All of her research pointed to the following business objectives:

1. Create awareness of the brand
2. Generate leads
3. Modernize the IT system and build a new relocation product—a cutting-edge mobile app that would revolutionize the industry

Organizing the Content around Business Objectives

Holden knew that the first step in a successful digital strategy required that she define her customer personas. She continued on her quest to define her target audiences. By the end of 2010, she determined there were four:

1. Human resources professionals, as they define relocation benefit packages
2. Industry peers in relocation and housing
3. Employees who are relocating (transferees)
4. Procurement, as more companies tighten the purse strings

Her next step was to involve stakeholders early in the process and to keep them involved (Rule #2: Involve Stakeholders Early and Often).

Part of the surprise in the project was that the XONEX sales force disregarded transferees as a target group and could not prioritize between HR and procurement. Further, and perhaps more puzzling, the majority of the marketing investment went to support industry groups, as opposed to buyer events and publications.

After lengthy discussions of business objectives and several group brainstorming sessions, the sales force realized that they needed to reach HR professionals first and foremost, as they were still the lead buyers. They did not feel they needed to reach industry peers, because they felt that “the person(s) using the product are the ones we need to concentrate on.”

However, Holden decided to keep the transferees as a target audience within her persona development. She felt eventually her teams would realize that XONEX’s end users could have a great impact on the company’s reputation in the long run, especially in the digital, social world.

Once Holden understood her audience—her potential leads—she needed to find a way to attract them. From her understanding of business objectives, as well as her research about the media mix, content holes, and competitors, she knew content was the answer.

After Holden received executive buy-in to move ahead with content, as well as her sales force buy-in (the internal stakeholders) around February 2011, she started to put together a content marketing strategy, based on Joe Pulizzi’s system (Pulizzi, 2013). This includes:

• Tweet daily
• Blog weekly
• Distribute a newsletter monthly
• Create a whitepaper or eBook quarterly
• Develop a bi-annual event program

Holden focused on creating a relevant blog and publishing it with five posts so it would immediately look robust. As soon as they launched in August 2011, the XONEX team received very strong feedback from industry peers. “Competitors’ ears perked up and they started asking ‘who is this XONEX—what are they doing?’”

As Holden explains, “No one wants to be sold anymore unless there’s a hook that’s really interesting. So we give our target audiences content they care about. For example, in March we release blogs and white papers about corporate tax issues, which are the pressing issues on their minds then. In May, we publish about relocation challenges, because it’s the beginning of the relocation busy season.”

What Worked?

Holden followed a system to create change, both at the marketing level and the organizational level. She:

1. Understood and defined her business objectives
2. Defined her sales cycle, as well as the lead generation process
3. Thoroughly researched the marketplace, as well as her competitors
4. Sought stakeholder involvement and executive buy-in
5. Launched a smart content marketing program using a strategy that tied directly to her business objectives

Holden comments, “Your goal as a marketer is to gain the respect of the sales team by showing your efforts can produce changes. It took a year for them to really feel like we were making an impact, but we’re about to close a major piece of business we can tie directly back to our content marketing, including our white papers” (Holden, 2012).

Holden also acknowledges an early win in the process that helped convince internal stakeholders this was going to work. About four months into the content marketing program, the sales team was at a relocation event, and the keynote speaker used their blog as a shining example of a leading blog in the relocation industry. “That was a huge victory and an early win,” Holden remarks. (Remember, it’s important to share wins with the C-suite, so they understand where those budget dollars are going and, more importantly, that they are working!)

Continuing the Success

Holden continues to work with the sales team regularly to continue the success of the content marketing program. She commented: “For example, I’ve encouraged the sales team to specifically ask to sign people up for the blog in order to keep in touch with them. We also have an editorial calendar that we plan at quarterly sales meetings. I rely on my sales force to bring me back intelligence from the field—what are people talking about? What blog posts might resonate with our audiences? It was a huge challenge to get them thinking that way, but now they’re turning into journalists in front of my eyes.”

Now XONEX is working on a mobile app for the transferee group—that very same group her sales force rejected at the beginning. As Holden explains, “We’ve identified that target audience needs content, but delivered in a different way. When we reach that business objective, we will need a whole new content line for them.”

XONEX’s story demonstrates the critical aspects of digital strategy that we have addressed:

• Define your customer personas
• Tie content development to business objectives
• Involve stakeholders early and often in your content development and management

What’s Next

Now that we understand why and how content drives the sales process as well as how to unearth the valuable information within an organization that shapes the content, we are going to discuss how to design your content so that it floats. How do you spark, conduct, and continue a conversation with your target audiences in this vast digital ocean?

In Part 2 of The Digital Crown, we will learn about constructing the conversation, preparing your content for multi-channel publishing, and engaging your audiences on different channels. We’ll also talk about why it’s so important to have a variety of talented individuals involved in creating and managing your digital content. 

References

Holden, P. (October 31, 2012). Interview by Ahava Leibtag.

Pulizzi, J. (2013). Content-marketing strategy: how to engage influencers in your industry. Retrieved from Content Marketing Institute.

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