Erika Heald is the host of the weekly #ContentChat LinkedIn Live video podcast for content marketers, held Mondays at noon Pacific. As a B2B marketing consultant, she helps organizations define and execute content marketing strategies that drive business and professional growth. As a creator, and gluten-free blogger helping people discover gut-friendly farm-to-table food. She frequently speaks at B2B marketing industry events on employee brand advocacy, content strategy, customer experience, AI readiness, and social media topics. You can find her on her blogs erikaheald.com and erikasglutenfreekitchen.com.
The #ContentChat Bulletin: Content Governance Needs to Show Up Where The Work Happens
|
My partner and I trekked to the Coast this past weekend with our bulldogs, taking a long weekend road trip to celebrate my birthday. I wanted to listen to and see the ocean, and have a hot tub available for soaking whenever I wanted. We found a great vacation rental in Sea Ranch that ticked all the boxes. When we arrived and started unpacking, I noticed a few things that made this vacation rental a lot different than any I'd had in the past: Everything was labeled! And not just labeled to show us where the silverware was, where to put our trash, and which towels were OK to use for muddy dog feet. There were notes everywhere! "Please remember to close this window before you go to bed. The raccoons want your food and have broken in through it twice so far. " "This window sticks and can be hard to open. But it does open. Really." "These wooden blinds are very heavy. Please only raise or lower them when absolutely necessary. Use the strings or wooden rod to open and close them to let in/block out light." "Some people think this faucet leaks. It does not." And my favorite: "If there aren't any bugs out, please leave the screen door open. You wouldn't believe how many dogs and humans have crashed through it knocking it off its tracks and requiring a handyman to fix it." This note was in a polite, gold-toned frame, with ample white space around the message, directly next to the sliding glass door's handle. Every sign was placed close to the item it pertained to. It was a just-in-time reminder of the house information the owner sent us before our arrival, and had placed in binders on the counter. I couldn't help but tell my partner how this is how content governance should be done but so rarely is. Since it was my birthday, he nodded and let me ramble on excitedly. While it is absolutely critical to have your content governance tools and guidelines documented and collected in a central repository, it's also important to put them at the fingertips of the user wherever they might need them. No one is ever going to remember which SharePoint site or Google Drive folder the style guide lives in, or what its latest version is. But if there's a link to it wherever they are inputting content in one of your publishing tools, it's a whole heck of a lot more likely they might make use of it as part of their workflow. This doesn't mean you don't need to onboard people to the guidelines and tools you put in place to keep your content operations on brand and consistent. Onboarding is a great way to introduce those new to the organization—or to creating content for your brand—to what good looks like for your company. But it can't hurt to give people some friendly reminders along the way. Only, skip telling them it's a "friendly reminder," OK? ;) Coming Up on #ContentChatContent Chat is my weekly LinkedIn Live video chat focused on sharing expertise and ideas amongst the content marketing community. Join the conversation on Mondays at noon Pacific / 3 p.m. Eastern. RSVP for our upcoming conversations by clicking the chat date below to get a reminder and to access the chat.
Until next time, stay safe and be well! Cheers, Erika |
The #ContentChat Bulletin
Erika Heald is the host of the weekly #ContentChat LinkedIn Live video podcast for content marketers, held Mondays at noon Pacific. As a B2B marketing consultant, she helps organizations define and execute content marketing strategies that drive business and professional growth. As a creator, and gluten-free blogger helping people discover gut-friendly farm-to-table food. She frequently speaks at B2B marketing industry events on employee brand advocacy, content strategy, customer experience, AI readiness, and social media topics. You can find her on her blogs erikaheald.com and erikasglutenfreekitchen.com.
If I were giving today’s #ContentChat talk in person, I wonder if I’d be met by picketers holding signs reading, “Boycott all writers who use AI!” Everywhere I’ve gone online over the past two weeks, I’ve seen increased hostility toward AI use, like the Threads post from someone outing another writer for using AI. As it turns out, though, they were using it to create ads to sell their books—not to write the books themselves. Yet, this was somehow still grounds for ruining all the authors’...
It's probably an anomaly that it's taken nearly 10 years of volunteering with shelter animals to have one of them happily poop on me. But that just happened. She was a Frenchie with coloring very similar to my own Kupo's. I'd been giving her all the scritches and scratchies. She'd been having an amazing time. Then, all of a sudden, she hopped up onto her bed, moving as far away from me as was possible in her kennel. I misinterpreted it, at first, as her being overstimulated and done with our...
Summer is meant to include BBQ, leisurely strolls, and making a dent in the to-read pile stacked on my desk. Instead, I've spent the past two weeks battling some sort of viral ick—but at least I've gotten to do some reading! This year, however, Summer is ALSO something else really special to me. It's the 10-year anniversary of my taking on hosting #ContentChat and going out on my own as a full-time content strategy consultant and fractional content leader! For those who weren't around here 10...