The backstory is that I am a member of a local music society, and because I have no real musical insights to share with my fellow members, I contribute by running our website and handling our social media presence. I do this in my spare time, which has been quite limited lately. So I left WordPress security training on the back burner while I focused on site updates. I, of all people, should have known better.

Training Versus Performance Support

This whole ordeal got me thinking about the difference between training and performance support. In Bob Mosher’s and Dr. Conrad Gottfredson’s 2010 book, Innovative Performance Support: Strategies and Practices for Learning in the Workflow, they outline their Five Moments of Need model that articulates the difference between formal training and performance support:

1. When Learning for the First Time
2. When Wanting to Learn More
3. When Trying to Remember and/or Apply
4. When Things Change
5. When Something Goes Wrong

The first two moments of need deal with acquiring knowledge and are generally the domain of formal training. The third, fourth, and fifth moments of need center on applying knowledge on the job and are the domain of performance support. “Performance Support is providing intuitive, tailored aid to a person at his or her moment of need to ensure the most effective performance” (Mosher and Gottfredson).

I was clearly at need number five. I (quickly) needed step-by-step instructions for finding my site’s hidden .htaccess file, Unix commands for quickly removing infected folders and sub-folders, and a review on installing a fresh copy of WordPress and linking to my database.

This is where performance support comes in. Even if I had invested in training prior to this calamity, it’s doubtful that I would have remembered every step I needed to take to restore my site. Of course, you could argue that I might not have needed such instructions in the first place had I invested in training and learned how to systematically appraise my site for security risks and had taken preventative steps. Mea culpa. But in this world of googling for answers and navigating by GPS—both performance support tools—a lot of us learn at the moment of need.

I’ve spent a good deal of my professional life leading formal training classes and developing formal e-learning training programs, and I am truly an advocate for organizational training. But I’ve noticed that clients are requesting more performance support learning tools: job aids, FAQs, live and recorded webinars, short videos, and other reference materials. Like I needed just-in-time, step-by-step instructions for restoring my hacked website, our clients have needed similar performance support when applying new knowledge, dealing with changing policies or processes, or troubleshooting.

I fixed my website thanks to step-by-step instructions found via Google and links from the excellent StopBadware.org website. I saved the instructions to Evernote so that they’re readily available in case of another security breach. But I’ve also invested in some WordPress security training so that I’m now able to throw a few roadblocks in the way of the hackers. And hopefully I’ll avoid future emails telling me that our site is full of malware.

SOUND OFF: Does your organization rely on formal training? Do you incorporate performance support tools to assist users at their moment of need?

Your team’s players make or break your fantasy team, just as they do in the NFL. Think about it: what do people pay to see when they go to an NFL football game? No matter how enthusiastically the cheerleaders cheer or how splendid the half-time entertainment is, people pay to see a winning team. The same is true of your website content. No matter how user-friendly, mobile-ready, aesthetically pleasing, and intuitively navigable your site is, people visit and revisit your site because of its content. So let’s look at how winning fantasy football strategies and content strategies are similar.

Draft winning players and content

If you’ve ever seriously played in a fantasy football team, you know that some amount of research is involved in ranking and selecting your players prior to the league draft. When it’s your turn to pick, you obviously want to select the available player who you believe, based on your pre-draft research, has the best potential to score significant points. You wouldn’t waste a high draft pick on a player with low projected fantasy points, and you definitely would avoid a player who’s on injured reserve.

Your website content, both existing and proposed, should be researched, evaluated, and drafted the same way. Do you know who your users are? What are competitors doing on their websites? Do you know what the content for a page or section is supposed to accomplish? Does the content score points with your target audience by being accurate, useful, clear, concise, and current? Is your content SEO optimized so that potential users can even find it? You have little time to engage your audience, just as you’re “on the clock” when making your fantasy pick. Don’t waste a “draft pick” on content that doesn’t serve your users. For example, how many people in your target audience really come to your site to read your mission statement?

Fine tune your roster

When the dust settles after the league draft, you look at your roster with a critical eye. What were you thinking when you drafted that oft-injured quarterback? (Never again, Michael Vick.) If you had a hosting service autodraft for you based on your rankings, what convoluted algorithm selected a kicker in the fifth round? Time to propose a trade or look to the waiver wire to see which players are available to fill in the gaps and improve your team’s chances.

Make similar tweaks to your content roster. If your analytics are telling you that people aren’t visiting a particular page of your site despite a clear navigation path, or that a page has a high bounce rate, then fine tune the content to provide value for your user or eliminate it altogether. Every piece of content on your site, just like every player on your fantasy team, should serve a specific purpose.

Manage, manage, manage

Drafting and tweaking are just the start. The long-term key to success in both fantasy football and content strategy is governance. Waiting until just before the first weekly game to adjust your fantasy football lineup can lead to unpleasant consequences, such as noticing that both your quarterback and backup quarterback have bye weeks, or that a star receiver who was questionable earlier in the week has been downgraded to doubtful. Team managers who finish at the top of their fantasy league—or who win it—don’t neglect their teams until just before the weekly kickoff. They proactively scan the waiver wire for players who will improve their team; they pay attention to promising players such as rookies overlooked in the league draft. In short, they effectively govern their teams.

In The Elements of Content Strategy, Erin Kissane puts it simply: “Publish no content without a support plan.” Too often in the rush of getting content “out there,” nobody plans for its long-term sustainability. Effective governance keeps web content accurate, on-brand, on-message, and useful to users. Tactically, that means clearly defining and documenting roles and responsibilities, content workflows, information and messaging architecture, SEO guidelines, taxonomy and metadata guidelines, style guidelines, and editorial calendars—and managing to make sure all of these things happen. Effectively managed web content meets business and user goals, which is a winning strategy.

So there you have it. Winning in web content and fantasy football begins with drafting, improves through refinement, and is truly successful only when effectively governed. At Fusion Alliance, our content strategists can help you achieve your business and user goals with a winning content strategy. And I personally wish you much success in fantasy football—unless you’re in my league.

SOUND OFF: What strategies and tactics have you used to “win” the content game? Or your fantasy football league? I’m always looking for a new angle.

For Those Who Know Their Way Around Photoshop

If you’re a Photoshop wiz and just need a little instruction on creating infographics from scratch, I highly recommend Lynda.com’s infographics courses on planning and wireframing, area bubbles, and visualizing relationships.

I’ve divided these resources into two groups: tools for creating comprehensive infographics (infographics that incorporate multiple elements such as text, backgrounds, color schemes, charts, pictures, etc.) and tools for creating standalone visualizations (such as charts, tables, diagrams, or word clouds). Use both types of tools together to create stellar infographics of your own.

Comprehensive Infographic Tools

vizualize.me. A fun way to get started with infographic creation is to see yourself as an infographic—or rather, to see the information from your LinkedIn profile as an infographic. visualize.me does much of the work for you by importing your LinkedIn profile. You select what parts of your LinkedIn profile to include or exclude, and then customize the theme and style (fonts and colors) of your infographic. Share your visualized LinkedIn profile on social networks (including LinkedIn itself) with a link back to your visualize.me page.

visualize.me is in beta, and I’ve noticed a few bugs. For instance, my college education and older work experience wouldn’t display in some themes. And I had to redo font changes several times, although I’d saved the changes. But these kinks should be worked out as visualize.me matures.

vizualize.me infographic

visual.ly. You can create a quick infographic on visual.ly so long as it involves Facebook or Twitter. You select a “story,” such as a Twitter showdown or the life of a hashtag, and enter a few bits of information. visual.ly does the rest. In the future, visual.ly promises to provide more customizable infographics “in popular categories like sports, politics, and food.” But for now, it’s a great way to create quick infographics for popular hashtags or Facebook stats.

Need some infographic inspiration? Browse the visual.ly gallery of professionally created infographics (approaching 17,000 at the time of this post). Filter by category, view by layout type, or organize by characteristics like trending, most liked, newest, most commented, or most viewed. Warning: Perusing some of the best infographics on the Web can be a real time sink.

infogr.am. Log in to infogr.am with your Facebook or Twitter account to create an infographic based on one of five templates. You can then customize your creation by modifying the color scheme and adding charts (bar, pie, matrix, or line), your own pictures, titles, text, and quotes.

Piktochart. The free version of Piktochart offers five infographic themes from which to choose. (More available in the paid version.) Modify the base template by changing the color scheme and lorem ipsum text, and by adding or removing shapes, graphics, text, and special “theme graphics” unique to your chosen theme. Save your infographic to the Piktochart site, or download it as an image.

easel.ly. easel.ly is another theme-based Web app for creating infographics or data visualizations. You start by simply dragging any “vheme” (visual theme) onto your “canvas.” Customize by dragging and dropping objects, background colors, shapes, and text. You can also upload your own images.  Save your masterpiece to the easel.ly site, then share by linking, embedding, or downloading to your computer.

easel.ly infographic

Standalone Data Visualization Tools

Knoema. Need charts, maps, or tables on a broad range of topics? Knoema offers such graphic content based on 656 datasets, 19,050,000 time series, and 278,000,000 data points (and growing daily). You can select an existing visualization “gadget” to embed on your site, or export in Microsoft Excel, comma separated value, Microsoft PowerPoint, or Adobe Acrobat format. Better still, you can upload your own data to create mashups with existing data sets.

Knoema chart

Many Eyes. An experiment from IBM Research and the IBM Cognos software group, Many Eyes is a robust tool for creating visualizations using your own or others’ data. Registered users can upload their own data to create visualizations, rate data sets and visualizations, create and participate in topic centers, and select items to watch. Non-registered users can view, discuss, and create new visualizations from existing data sets. More than 20 visualization types are available, including charts, graphs, word trees and clouds, and maps. Share visualizations via Facebook or Twitter, or embed a static or live visualization on your site.

Wordle. Wordle offers a quick way to create “word clouds” from text you provide via cut and paste, blog URL, or del.icio.us user name. Customize the resulting word cloud with your choice of fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Wordle word cloud

create.ly. create.ly is an online diagramming and collaboration tool. Its user-friendly interface offers drag-and-drop creation of professional-looking flowcharts, web mockups, interactive site maps, mind maps, Venn diagrams, network plans, chemistry labs, and other visualizations. Share with team members, or export as an image, PDF, or email attachment.

Hohli. When a quick basic chart is what you need, Hohli fits the bill. Simply select the chart type and size, then add your data and customize for look and feel.

SOUND OFF: What tools do you use to create infographics?

“Warning Signs of Stroke” used with permission from the National Stroke Association, www.stroke.org.

Being “visual learners,” we humans learn better with visual aids. So it’s no surprise that content strategists and content marketers are increasingly leveraging infographics — visual representations of information, data, or knowledge — to educate and influence target audiences.

What makes an effective infographic?

From a content strategy perspective, infographics are no different from other content. All good content is appropriate (for the reader, for the context, and for the business), useful, clear, consistent, concise, and user-centered. Good infographics parlay the characteristics of good content into an attractive design that answers a question or tells a story that’s better understood using imagery versus plain text.

Compelling infographics also share these features:

• Usefulness. Good content is user-centered, not blatantly self-promotional. Provide useful content in your infographic, and that infographic just might be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or other social media sites.
• Eye-catching visual elements. Our eyes naturally gravitate toward colors and shapes. Great infographics use color schemes, typography, illustrations, charts, icons, and text to guide their readers.
• Simplified data. Infographics can distill a spreadsheet full of data into simple, meaningful relationships.
• Judicious use of text with graphics. Most people are glancing at the graphic and absorbing its information at a fast rate. Less is more where text is concerned.
• Original data sources. Credible infographics cite their sources. Readers wishing to see the raw data themselves can explore and verify.

The National Stroke Association’s simple infographic is clear, concise, with actionable content relevant to me, the daughter of elderly parents having stroke risk factors. So what did I do with this potentially life-saving infographic? I shared it on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, of course!

In my next post, I’ll share some resources for getting started with infographics.

SOUND OFF: What infographics do you find compelling? Why?