A content strategist/writer can play an influential role in these shifting priorities. With more established product, the content usually exists to communicate the offering. However, in a startup, the content can play a significant role in defining the product offering.

At least, this has been my experience over the past few months…

I really noticed my content strategy defining our product as I set out to build our new product website and e-commerce process.

Because our company consists of mostly developers building our desktop product, we engaged an external firm to help in website design and development. After we’d agreed on a basic site map, I asked when they would need content. The response I got was: “As soon as possible. The content will help us with the design.”

Now, I’m not going to argue whether content or design should come first when building a website. Do a quick search and you’ll find many others have weighed in on that discussion.

What piques my interest is that writing content for this website project actually ended up significantly influencing our desktop product. Here are just a few of the ways:

1. Design aesthetic. We’re a Windows shop, so we were already looking at Microsoft’s Windows 8 (formerly known as “Metro”) aesthetic for our desktop product. And, we wanted the website compliment that design. So, for a while there, the website was influenced by our product direction. But, you can’t build a software website without screen captures and video. So, we had to get the product design sorted out. Ultimately, the timeline for the website was a major influencer in seeing the design take shape sooner. 
2. Product strategy.  The kind of software we’re working on will take a few years to grow to it’s full offering. There’s enough buzz that some people will buy  the product even though it doesn’t do everything yet, just to support us—which is pretty cool! But, this also makes it really important that we’re up-front about what’s coming in the first release and what will wait until later. As I set about gathering this content from the product development team, I believe the conversation that it inspired helped us define the product offering and the schedule for the coming months and years. My quest for content inadvertently influenced our product strategy.
3. Pricing model. You can’t build an e-commerce process without defining a pricing model. We were already talking pricing when the website project started. As the sales team modelled scenarios for revenue and competitor comparisons to settle on positioning, our pricing model got more and more complicated. It had multiple tiers, annual or monthly payments, various bundles and discounts. It all seemed reasonable when you looked at the spreadsheets and a pretty chart, but soon became difficult to explain once I tried to lay out an easy-to-understand price list for the new website. In writing that page and defining its structure, we’ve been able to come up with a pricing model that should make it customers want to buy.

I’ve always felt that good technical writers play a larger role on a software development team than they are often given credit for. They don’t just write documentation after the programmers and testers are done their job. If they’re deeply embedded in the process, they test and influence user interface design too (among other things).

What’s new for me is to see this extend beyond the technical details to the other side of product management, to the project planning and business strategy. In established product companies, it is probably rare to see content development have such a far reach, but for small, new companies and products, there’s opportunity for a content strategist to make a huge impact.

So, I’ll end this post with a challenge. To content strategist/writers looking to extend their influence and skills, consider startups and smaller companies that need people who think strategically like you do. Be open and vocal to non-content tasks and conversations. To business owners and product managers, give your content strategists/writers influence in unconventional areas; their strategic minds can help grow your business.

Knowledge is power, isn’t it? So my first step was to learn from the wisdom of others. As a writer, this means I started reading:

• Erin Kissane’s The Elements of Content Strategy
• Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach’s Content Strategy for the Web
• Colleen Jones’ Clout

I enjoyed all these books. Ate them up, really. Cheered after  particularly good points. Felt empowered that someone had finally articulated the nuance, skill and structure required to go beyond just writing to making great content do great things.

Then, I turned the last page. And I was back to reality. No team to help execute those great ideas. Barely anyone to bounce ideas off of. Just me at the keyboard, with my experience, skills, instinct, and having the guts to start from scratch, facing a “content strategy for one.”

At a startup, you stand alone, the stakes are high, and people are depending on you to be the voice of their hard work. Get it wrong and you may never get a second chance to make a first impression to potential customers and investors

So, after day one of staring at that blank page in fear, how did I move forward?

First off, I counted my blessings. No sifting through reams of legacy web pages, sorting out who owns what, what stays and what gets chucked. No trying to change the habits of a company’s lifetime. No complicated politics and expensive budget distractions.

Just me, my skills, a nose for strategy and a gift for words.

Right off the bat, it was pretty obvious that many of the lofty ideas I conjured up in my reading frenzy just wouldn’t work for my situation. It didn’t even seem right to call them by their names.

My “content audit” amounted to reading about 20 web pages (yes, I followed advice and did NOT skip Chapter 5).  Alignment amounted to getting hired for the job and the vague request to have “a website” and “write some product documentation.” We had few customers, less time. So how was I supposed to create a strategy out of this?

It seemed to me that I’d wasted all this time learning how to build the perfect lifeboat when I really needed was a to just swim. All the plans, books and how-tos in the world make no difference when it’s sink or swim.

Thank goodness for Shelly Bowen’s Magic Layer advice:

My suggestion is to climb on one of those diving boards — those gems of knowledge you know to be true — and dive in from there. Just make it up.

That’s pretty much where I’ve been the last two months. I’m not faking it and I’m not disorganized. But, I don’t have documented analysis, much quantifiable research or a very detailed plan.

Still, I think my content strategy is on track.

Want to find out whether I’m doing it right? I hope to write more about it in the coming weeks. I want to tell you about how one lone “writer” at a startup can go from nothing and come up with a realistic content strategy to help a small business succeed. Hope you’ll be listening.

The vision: SaaS frees you to run your business

Until recently, I worked for a SaaS provider. The big selling point to our customers was that our the technology would “land lightly” on their the organization. This was a nice way to say that they didn’t need to bother their IT departments because we’d take care of the technical end.

This remains the great appeal of SaaS. You can get email services, customer relationship management (CRM) and help desk software, curation tools, marketing campaigns and social media optimisation, all by entering your email address and handing over your credit card.

You can avoid hiring programmers and system administrators and let the experts in each field take care of business for you. Occasionally, you have to do some configuration or pay for a few hours of consulting, but generally, it’s pretty worry free.

It lets you get on with running your business, right?

The illusion: SaaS might save you money

The fees for many SaaS services are actually quite reasonable. Take Google Apps, for example. For $50 per year, you can get your hands on email, scheduling file sharing and office applications.

Even the more specialized services are fairly affordable. Help desks for $20 to $50 per person per month. CRM software for under $25 per user per month. Social media tools for as low as $10 per month. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

The premium tools for things like curation and social media analytics can see you digging much deeper, spending $1000 per month on each tool. Even at these higher costs, they may be worth the money because of the specialized service they provide.

However, this is where you need to start doing the math. Especially if you’re a small business or start-up. Make your wish list of tools, crunch those numbers and prioritize what tools you really need and why. Know how it will affect your bottom line. It’s easy to sign up for this and that and suddenly not realize that your money is flowing out the door faster than you thought.

In fact, the right mix of SaaS services at the start may get you more than hiring a single specialized employee, because you can split your investment into different service needs. However, don’t forget to think about how these costs will grow as your business does.

Also, take a moment to determine your breaking point for breaking up with your SaaS provider. At what point does hosting your own solution or hiring someone (or several someones) to do the work become more cost-effective that your SaaS solution? What would they have to do wrong to make you leave? Having some idea of this at the start of your SaaS journey can help alert you to when you need to reevaluate your solution.

The monsters lurking under the bed: What you shouldn’t ignore

Even if you’re paying attention to costs and planning your SaaS suite carefully, you can still build a nightmare if you forget about the impact on your processes and data.

1. Think about how you will use each service in your daily tasks. For example, you’ll have a username and password for each provider. Are you going to be logging into a hundred different places to accomplish seemingly simple tasks?
2. What about integration? Can you have a single sign-on for providers that play nicely together? Can they share data, so you don’t have to move it around yourself? The last thing you want to do is have several records of your client data.
3. If they offer an integration, what does that really mean? Be skeptical!
   • Look for hidden fees or development costs for allowing integration. Will you need to hire someone to make the API play to your needs?
   • Some integrations only mean that you can view the data from the other service but not use the data or update it. This means you’ll be logging into both services to make things happen; or importing and exporting data to move it around.
   • Understand that your data may be at risk if integrated services cease to play nicely together, even for a short time because one has upgraded or changed their service but the integration mechanism from the other hasn’t caught up.
4. Have a plan for what you’d do if a service goes down (or closes up shop!) Make regular local backups and know where and how you would access this information in an emergency. Lots of providers tell you that you can export the data, but you can only export it if they are running. And, check what format the data comes out in. In a pinch, you can reference a human-readable XML to at least view the data while you’re hiring someone to convert it to the new system.
5. Same goes for if you want to break up with your provider. Can you get the data out and what will that data be like when it comes out?
6. Know what your customers would expect from the data you store for or about them. Some companies want the data stored or hosted in their home country, where it is under the jurisdiction of the local laws.
7. Know the privacy legislation in your country.  Some countries (like Canada) have strict and explicit privacy laws that dictate how you must protect personal information. If you don’t read the terms of use and privacy policy of the SaaS provider, you can’t know whether they promise to do what you need them to do. And, if the SaaS is in a foreign country, if they violate these terms, you may have no recourse either.

Waking up in the morning

Some people might think I’m being overly cautious or overly critical of SaaS providers. Or, that I don’t think SaaS is a good way to go. That’s not the case at all.  By all means, take advantage of the SaaS tools out there. Your business can really leverage the expertise and knowledge behind them.

However, I believe  the popularity, ease-of-use and availability of excellent SaaS tools is making us a little complacent in our choices. If you’re buying a costly tool for your business, you’d do a proper evaluation, right? If you’re hiring a new employee, you interview and check references. You plan and budget and take time to consider risk vs. reward.

Don’t stop doing that just because the price seems cheap and the tool is popular, or you might find yourself having a hard time waking up from a SaaSy nightmare.

The sites I’ve pulled together are really easy to create. With the today’s user-friendly blog engines and improvements to administration panels offered by hosting providers, setting up a new website can boil down to a little courage and a lot of point and click.  For someone like me, who is a bit of a purist about writing her own HTML and CSS from scratch, I almost feel guilty at how I’ve leveraged templates, blog engines and online services. But I’m happy with the results, and have been able to start blogging again weeks sooner than I would have otherwise.

I’ve not done anything that thousands of others haven’t already done before me. There are hundreds of posts on the web to walk you through what I’ve set up, so I don’t imagine I’m saying anything new. Really, I’m writing to encourage those who have yet to take the leap.  If you’re one of them, I hope it helps.

Choosing hosting providers…

A website that doesn’t drive you crazy is one that you understand how to maintain. Our old hosting provider offered good, affordable service when we started with them eight years ago, but nowadays they just didn’t cut it. When we compared the usability dashboard and up-time to current competitors, the service just wasn’t living up. So, redesigning www.kohl.ca included moving the website and email to new hosts.

I’d used Google Apps for Business for email and calendars at work in the past. The price and service is right for small business and the configuration and support is understandable by average techies like me. Google provides good documentation and wizzards to get you through the switch, so the hardest part was configuring the DNS on the old provider. So, our  first step was to move email over to them.

For domain hosting, we ended up choosing DreamHost for a few reasons:

• We could do a free two-week trial to test out the system and dashboard, which gave us a chance to map out the transition plan.
• They have one-click WordPress install.
• They have a quick set-up for configuring the use of Google apps email.
• The pricing for hosting our domains was reasonable and comparable to what we were already paying.
• It came recommended by a friend.

Going with WordPress

I knew we needed a blog engine, and wanted to go with WordPress. Since both sites are primarily blogs with a few other static pages, they were essentially what WordPress is designed for. I also thought we could leverage its engine for other content management features.  And, I like the billions of themes and template options out there that would make it easy to get going.

Of course there are some drawbacks to using WordPress. Take a read of WordPress: Advantages and Disadvantages of Choosing WordPress as Your CMS Solution for a pretty decent list. Knowing what you’re dealing with is half the battle, though. So, I figured most of the concerns could be mitigated by some smart planning, regular updating and judicious use of plug-ins (like Quick Cache to help mitigate any latency issues that may occur if/when the site gets lots of hits).

As I was putting this together, a colleague also reminded me of some of the vulnerabilities of PHP-based websites like WordPress. Just in time, the Kuno Creative came out with a recent post Simple Steps to Safeguard your WordPress Website.

Converting the old blog

The old  www.kohl.ca ran on an outdated version of Moveable Type. With over 200 posts, many followers and a nine years of Google juice, I had to find a solution to keep all that great content and properly redirect the urls.

This is where plugins have come in really handy.

• I used the Movable Type and TypePad Importer plugin  to import the old posts. It did a great job of getting the content in there. However, I did need to review each imported page individually to make sure the formatting was okay and fix any broken images.
• For the urls, I needed a way to redirect the old urls to the new urls so that the search results and any referring links would still work. Quick Page/Post Redirect let me redirect all the old blog urls over to the new locations. It took a bit of work to set up (there wasn’t a quick way to set up the 200+ redirects I needed), but works well once I have it going.

Choosing a design

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about how to develop mobile-friendly websites. I really believe that Ethan Marcotte‘s take on responsive design is an elegant solution to creating a site that works well on both desktop and mobile devices. So, I went in search of responsive WordPress themes.

Someday, I’d like to take the time to develop my own responsive site or theme from scratch, but in the interest of speed, I decided to leverage what was already available on the web. There are a few free templates out there, but I wanted something a little different, so for both sites, I ended up buy responsive templates from ThemeForest. (I’ll leave you to see whether you can guess which ones…)

What I’ve learned after doing two WordPress sites that each theme works a little differently. It is worth reading the documentation and digging through the samples to see what’s possible with each theme. The biggest thing I had to get my head around in each theme was how the pages, posts and theme all work together to give the results I wanted in navigation and display.

How long did it really take?

This was a labour of love–or at least of learning–so I didn’t count the precise hours. But, I moved to a new domain, set up Google Apps, bought templates  and created the WordPress site within the space of a month, in my spare time. All told, I probably spent about five full-time days working on the whole deal (and that may be generous). This includes all the learning and research I had to do to figure out moving the DNS around, searching for the right theme, converting the old blog posts over, setting up redirects, testing and configuring WordPress.

The second site didn’t take nearly as long. Because I had the hosting set up already, it was a matter of buying a new domain, installing WordPress, choosing and configuring a theme. Maybe a couple of days at the most, with most of the work in fiddling to make the site look the way I wanted it to.

Am I happy with the end results?

So far so good. Ask me again in a few months and I’ll tell you whether this holds. (Hopefully, I’ll do a follow-up with any new discoveries or concerns.)

For those of you waiting around to get your website up and running, I hope this has inspired you that it can be done with relatively little effort. Let me know if you do end up getting out there with your own site and what you learn as you do it (it’d make an easy first blog post…) Good luck!

Curated content is powerful.

Before I go much further, I want to be clear. I’m not against curated content. It is a very powerful way to reach your audience. Some of my favourite sites gather the best of the web in their subject area and feed me excellent information. I discover new ideas and new people to follow all the time. It’s a big reason I subscribe to blogs, Twitter and other social media, so I can keep up with what sources I respect are into.

It’s no silver bullet.

The problem is that there’s a disturbing trend in the way people are talking about content curation. While many of those who publicly advocate for its effectiveness talk about the strategy effort it takes to do it right, out in the wide world something sinister is happening.

I hear decision makers looking at content curation tools  as a quick way to get around the real work of generating quality content. In-house writers and editors are being devalued because it seems easier and cheaper to get content elsewhere: “Let’s just sign up for a content curation tool and in a few clicks a day, there you go, more traffic to our site”

Hmmm… Something about this sounds very familiar to me. Over my years in the software industry, I’ve heard similar talk about software test automation (being married to one of the software testing world’s leading bloggers did help raise my awareness ). People often jump at test automation as a solution for gnarly testing tasks. Why pay expensive, skilled testers, when the technology can do it for us… Hmmm…

How to cop-out.

Why spend money hiring more writers? Why wait on the time it takes to edit and proof content? Why bother when the web is teeming with content to point to?

Because, the success of any content curation effort must rest on providing excellent, relevant content.

Remember why I follow certain sources? Because I respect them. This doesn’t mean I love every article they point my way, but I generally trust they will point me to relevant, interesting and accurate content. Relevant, interesting and accurate content takes work, whether it is curated or original writing.

So, while you may not need to hire as many writers, you may need to increase your editorial staff to select the right content. And, this must be more than just scanning a headline and seeing it as mostly relevant to the subject. Someone who understands your audience and your business strategy should carefully choose the content.

Reputation on the web is hard-won but quickly lost.

Other big no-nos.

While my beef today is with this trend towards curation cop-out, I see a few other things that concern me about some curation efforts out there:

• Valuing quantity over quality. One of the reasons I like the sources that I do is because they select the right content for me. I don’t care if I only have one or two posts or tweets a week. I care more that what they select fits my expectations. I’ve given up on some sources because not enough of their content met my needs.
• Content Bombardment. Twitter and other 140-character social media platforms are usually where this frustrates me the most. I realize that there is a delicate balance between getting content out to your followers and getting lost in the mélée of other tweets. But, work hard to find the balance between frequency and your users needs. There are some sources that I have promptly unfollowed because I felt inundated and unable to keep up. Think about your audience and what their lifestyles can tolerate.  Carefully timing and strategic repetition will keep your followers watching you.
• Minimal attribution. A few sites I’ve noticed format the page so that curated content blends in with their own content. Bad examples of these sites even obscure or minimize the original authors’ names. If you’re going to curate, explain what you’re doing. You’re using other people’s content to fuel your search engine juice–at no cost–so the least you can do is plug them appropriately.
• Lack of compensation. For the most part, the currency of curation is to get paid in search engine juice and traffic to your site. Maybe I’m not aware of a system that gives real money kickbacks to original authors. It worries me that independent-minded people are out there writing, unpaid and on their own time, and then larger, profitable organizations will leverage this content to drive their own business.

Who’s left to write good content?

If everybody curates, who’s left to write good content? What will feed the content monster? Junk. Please, don’t short-change your content efforts by copping-out in your curation efforts. Both need thought and strategy. Both are worth investing in.

So, curate to your heart’s content, but please do it responsibly and respect the craft it takes to write good content. You still need talented writers and editors to create good content. And, take the time to consider your audience — it will help you become a respected source for like-minded people. With the volumes of content bombarding us every day on the web, well-written and properly-curated content can guide the right audience to your door. But, that takes time, skill and effort. Don’t cop-out. The investment is worth it.