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Reduce translation costs with XML

$0.21 per word.

That’s the average cost in the US to translate content into another language according to Slator, a translation news and analytics site. That number is not speculative; they analyzed the costs per word from over 80 actual proposals gathered by the US General Services Administration (GSA). You can view the source proposals here.

Bill Swallow
July 4, 2016
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Brand credibility Content pitfalls Content silos Structured content

Is your content overhead or a customer delight?

Delight is the difference between what you and your team cost, and the revenue you directly (or indirectly) produce (or protect). This concept is as important to charities as hedge funds.

Andy Kessler & Bruce Clarke

You may not think that “delighting” customers is part of your content creation responsibilities. But when customer delight is defined in terms of revenue and costs, it suddenly becomes a critical part of your job.

Alan Pringle
June 20, 2016
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Brand credibility Business case/ROI Case studies Content pitfalls Content silos Structured content White papers

Creating a unified customer experience with a content fabric

Coauthored by Anna Schlegel (Senior Director, Globalization and Information Engineering, NetApp) and Sarah O’Keefe (President, Scriptorium Publishing)

The interest in customer experience presents an opportunity for enterprise content strategists. You can use the customer experience angle to finally get content proposals and issues into the discussion. Ultimately, the challenge is in execution—once you raise awareness of the importance of content synchronization, you are expected to deliver on your promises. You must figure out how to deliver information that fits smoothly into the entire customer experience. At a minimum, that requires combining information from multiple departmental silos.

Sarah O'Keefe
April 11, 2016
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Content pitfalls Industry insights Structured content

Do I need a content strategy consultant?

Do you need a content strategy consultant? If the following signs are uncomfortably familiar to you, the answer is yes:

  • You have contradictory content across departments. Customers get frustrated when the specifications in product literature don’t match what’s in the sales content they read earlier. They then call support to clear up the contradictions. It’s much more efficient to create the content once and reuse it across departments. Increased consistency and accuracy follow.
Alan Pringle
March 21, 2016
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Content pitfalls Structured content

When strategy meets the storm

plane in a snowstorm

Perfect weather for flying! (image via Flickr: estudiante)

Just before the blizzard that crippled a significant portion of the East Coast, I was returning from a business trip. I did eventually make it home, but the return flight included a bonus three-day layover in Charlotte, NC.

I’ll spare you many of the details, but a few key events and situations really stand out from that trip. The lessons learned are applicable to any corporate strategy, content or not.

Bill Swallow
February 8, 2016
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Change management Structured content

The Force Awakens: Content strategy and project hype

With the most anticipated film of the year—Star Wars: The Force Awakens—coming out this week, I couldn’t help but think about movie hype and how sometimes it leads to disappointment.

The same thing can happen when hype builds around content strategy. Excitement about implementing a new strategy can be good for an organization, especially when the alternative is hostility or resistance to change. But too much enthusiasm can have unintended consequences and result in failure. Here are some of the pitfalls of project hype and how you can avoid them.

Gretyl Kinsey
December 14, 2015
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Structured content

Tech comm skills: writing ability, technical aptitude, tool proficiency, and business sense

Technical Writing is only about what software you know! Is that why every where I read any type of document, web page, or article it is FULL of misspellings, incorrect punctuation, and horrible formatting?!!

That’s what started a thread on LinkedIn that encapsulates long-running debates on the skill sets technical writers need. (The thread was removed from LinkedIn sometime after Friday, unfortunately.)

Alan Pringle
August 17, 2015
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Industry insights Personalization Structured content

Design versus automation: a strategic approach to content

Design and automation are often positioned as mutually exclusive–you have to choose one or the other. But in fact, it’s possible to deliver content in an automated workflow that uses a stellar design. To succeed, you need a designer who can work with styles, templates, and other building blocks instead of ad hoc formatting.

More content across more devices requires scalability–and that means more automation. A strategic approach to content needs to incorporate both design and automation as constraints and find the right balance between the two.

Sarah O'Keefe
August 10, 2015
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Brand credibility Content pitfalls Content silos Structured content Webinar

Webcast: Risky business: the challenge of content silos

In this webcast recording, Sarah O’Keefe discusses how content silos make it difficult to deliver a consistent, excellent customer experience. After all the hard work that goes into landing a customer, too many organizations destroy the customer’s initial goodwill with mediocre installation instructions and terrible customer support.

Do you have a unified customer experience? Do you know what your various content creators are producing? Join us for this thought-provoking webcast.

Sarah O'Keefe
June 25, 2015
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