Selling content strategy http://simp.ly/publish/kYpXF7

Confab
3:00 pm, May 10

Karen McGrane, bond art + science, @karenmcgrane
#sellingcs

Notes by @brianjameskirk, @technicallym
All notes for the conference available here: http://simp.ly/publish/5GMHGD

SELLING CONTENT STRATEGY

How do you persuade people to care about CS?

'98: Razorfish, information designer/writer; split into IA and CS
IA was on fire, everyone wanted it; In CS, nothing was happening, no book, no conferences

The way a business is setup incentivizes what people care about

2002: bubble burst, things got tough, but shit got done
2004: clearing, ux dept was directors, user research, IA, content strategy

McGrane saw CSs as another solution to problems that IA was trying to solve.

If we do a better job of explaining how we can fix things, we can sell more work

What are the roadblocks people who explain CS face?

Design management
Biz skills for ux people

How do you articulate the biz case? Design sell is easy, visual is visual

What's hard is organizational change... Persuade people to change

First, what are we going to do. Then stuff happens. Then money pops out of the other side

PLANNING

-We are guiding what the definition of the question is.
-You are not selling CS, *YOU ARE A PROBLEM SOLVER*
-You speak the language of every seat at the table. Being sympathetic to all the needs at the table.
UX, creative, tech, MKTG don't want you there and will do anything they can to keep you out. Articulate what you are doing to provide business value. What is it you are doing that rocks what they are doing, makes their job easier.
-You propel yourself further upstream. Good strategic thinkers naturally get pulled into it. They can only have a few people in the room and if you aren't there, you are not adding biz value.
-You are changing people's work habits. People have habits and will defend it to the death. Ae you in agile or waterfall? Understand the culture and habits of an organization. People don't want to work differently just because you tell them to.
-You are selling a process. If you are in a position of selling strategy, be careful of what you are offering, it will effect contracts. You need freedom to do what you need to do.
-You are scoping the work. One of the most dangerous things is that you have the deliverables, the time, and how complex you are describing that work. If I have 3 days, do this, if I have 3 weeks, do this. Given constraints, he is what we can achieve.
-Do not document things to a T, because you will get hooked in for things you don't need to do.
-Our goal is to create business value. You have to understand how that business makes money and how they value what you do. Profit is not the goal of a business, profit is a yardstick. Success is creating a customer, creating value.
-Arguing that you ate going to increase sales is better than telling someone you can reduce costs. They are probably not incentivized by ability to reduce costs.
If you invest time and money into content, you are going to make money down the line

THE HARD SELL, logic
Cost analysis, how many person hours did it take to fix it, how much did it cost?
Usability testing, profound ways of convincing people - showing video of how someone is using the website
Analytics or KPIs, analytics are not vanity, they are diagnostics tool
If you can prove it to them, then they will believe me... No.


THE SOFT SELL, emotion
Pound the pavement, brown bag sessions, take people out to lunch, keep that conversation going, what do you have to domto change their minds
Manage up- frame up, what challenges are your execs facing
Build a public profile, meet up groups are great, having events like this, getting it in trade publications, build profile for the discipline
It runs smoothly when you don't have to convince anyone of anything

Content Strategy is change management
Anything that can be digital will be
Digital change management

"What interests me about this field, is how you can an organization to start thinking in terms of their business as having users. We are in the digital products and design business now. Customers are users. What does it mean to create products services that a user needs?"

Your content problem is high up on the chain and the content person is on the bottom. Work structure is not destiny, but you can diagnose power relationships by how they organize themselves.
You can diagnose by how bonuses are given. How does my boss get a bonus and how can I help him or her receive that bonus.

Competence, likability chart
Competent jerk, lovable fool, incompetent jerk, dreamy rockstar... Lovable fool is who gets the message out

Evalengilizing it: get out on the street
Selling it, tie to biz goals and biz values
Promoting it: you are a persuader
Championing it: change management, what does it take to understand the human side

Notes by @brianjameskirk, @technicallym
All notes for the conference available here: http://simp.ly/publish/5GMHGD