“Aikido” translates as follows:

ai: “Joining,” “unifying,” or “harmonizing.” This is the part that gives aikido its dance-like quality, where attacker and defender seem to move together in harmony.

ki: “Energy” or “life-force.” Ki is the Japanese word for the more familiar Chinese “chi,” which you might recognize from t’ai chi, another martial art.

do: “Way” or “path.” In Japanese, this is a beautiful, multi-faceted word that incorporates practice, training, and a state of mind. A way of being, not just a way of doing.

Put back together again, the word aikido refers to a practice of unifying or harmonizing energy.

In my work as consultant, I’ve had clients whose dispositions have ranged from engaged to accepting, from resistant to adversarial. I employ a number of strategies and tactics to make our interactions fruitful, and I’ve found that consciously applying aikido as a lens adds another dimension to my consulting.

Since English translation reverses the order of the word, I’ll start at the end.

do: Finding the Way

I nervously take my place on the mat, sitting on my knees and facing the front of the room.  I bow first to the photo of Morihei Ueshiba (O Sensei, or “Great Teacher”), the founder of Aikido. I then turn and bow to my teachers, who are lined up along the right edge of the mat. I turn and bow last to the person who is taking ukemi for me during my test—Scott, who will attack me, providing the energy that will allow me to demonstrate that I know the first-level techniques that will mark this first rite of passage for me in the dojo.

All of this ritual feels very foreign and formal to me. But in order to be a good dojo-member, I need to adhere to these forms, show my teachers and fellow practitioners that I respect them, the dojo where I train, and the art of aikido as a whole.

My clients’ cultures sometimes feel just as foreign to me. Their traditions, rituals, and processes feel strange and are sometimes frustrating to follow. But a successful consultant knows that understanding and operating within a client’s culture is the quickest way to become a valued team member—and earn the team’s trust.

Consultants have to find the middle way between offering well-considered, expert recommendations for change and respecting their clients’ ways of doing things. If you don’t find that balance, you end up with resistance, which is wasted energy—not to mention detrimental to the project and potentially demoralizing for the humans involved.

ki: Letting the Energy Flow

It’s after class, and my friend Faunette, who also holds a black belt in karate, is helping me drill on some basic aikido techniques. I am taking the part of uke (the attacker), and I move smartly toward her, my hand raised to chop her on the noggin. She steps into me, her own arm raising—and stiffening—as she blocks my cut. “Dang it!” she exclaims. “I blocked you! My karate training is getting in the way…”

Where some of the other martial arts, such as karate, employ techniques meant to block an attack, aikido seeks to use the attacker’s energy, join with it, mold it into a defense. This requires harmonizing with uke and blending or synchronizing one’s movements in such a way that uke’s own energy fuels the defense. If you block the energy, you waste it—along with the opportunities it might have presented for changing the interaction.

Many of my clients have, at some point or another during a project, put up their figurative arms to block something they found threatening. Change isn’t easy. Forward momentum can be blocked by numerous things: Budgets, traditions, politics, fears about surrendering control of something, and so on. But I’ve found that perceived blocks often create an energy of their own that can—if I stay relaxed and focused—provide a way forward through difficulty. Often this means joining with the energy (finding out more about an underlying fear, creatively adjusting scope, providing a little extra context or support to someone struggling with a recommendation) in order to move a project in a positive direction.

ai: Just Love Them a Little

Joe-Sensei demonstrates a technique, reminding us, as he moves through it, to be responsive rather than oppositional: “Stay relaxed. Notice how uke moves, and move with them, guide them, so that you don’t injure them. You need to take care of uke.”

And that’s where the ai in aikido comes in: You have to love your opponent a little. Your aim should not only be to protect yourself but also to treat your opponent with care. Avoid injuring him, but make sure you are containing (or at least guiding) the situation as best you can. And recognize that sometimes “containing” the situation means not struggling against it.

Working effectively with clients requires understanding not only their businesses, but also their motivations, pressures, challenges. Sometimes we can influence the direction in which things are going; sometimes we can’t. But we can always choose how we respond—and struggling against circumstances is a waste of energy. I know. I’ve wasted plenty of energy on struggling during the course of my career.

By staying relaxed, watching the direction things are taking, and engaging compassionately—remembering to love my clients, just a little—I can often help my team see and respond to things in ways that acknowledge the difficulty without creating conflict around it. This often results in better buy-in, calmer problem-solving, and happier clients.

Sometimes surrendering is winning

Staying with a challenge and responding to it harmoniously and consciously is usually a good approach. But aikido has also taught me that sometimes you just have to throw your opponent to the mat. Knowing when to move from containment to control is also an important skill—but knowing when to move from attack to surrender is even more so. And it’s one that takes years to master—both in aikido (as I’ve discovered) as well as in consulting. Sometimes “tapping out”—tapping the mat to indicate that you “give”—is the only way to prevent injury. And that’s true of client relationships, as well. Bowing out gracefully, knowing when you need to shift your focus to things you can influence and away from those you can’t, provides just as many opportunities for improving and learning as does “winning” a fight.

Knowing when to surrender is the skill that differentiates the master from the merely competent.

SOUND OFF: What approaches from elsewhere in your life shape you as a consultant? Or, if you’re hiring consultants, what shapes how you evaluate their effectiveness?

Part guide, part workbook — and crammed with inspiring, surprising, often humorous stories gleaned from dozens of interviews from other carefully-selected entrepreneurs in a wide variety of types of business — The $100 Startup stops just short of launching the business for his readers. Guillebeau’s driving message to his reader: You can do what you love and make money doing it. So get started. Now.

But what does this have to do with “big” business? What can be gleaned from Guillebeau’s book for those of us who have day jobs we want to keep? Entrepreneurs have much to teach all of us, if we just pay a little attention.

The critical intersection: passion + MARKET = profit

In one of my favorite South Park episodes (guilty pleasure), one of the characters is plagued by gnomes who sneak into his bedroom at night and steal his underwear. When Stan, Cartman, and gang follow the thieving gnomes to their underground lair and confront them about their pilfering, the gnomes explain their actions by sharing a simple profit plan:

Step 1: Steal underpants.

Step 2: ?

Step 3: Profit

This is how some business books — especially those touting the entrepreneurial life — feel to me. A clear desire and a clear goal, but what’s that magic that happens in the middle? Guillebeau’s answer is simple: You have to have a market for what you want to do. This holds true, even for companies such as Fusion Alliance.

Guillebeau is encouraging, insistent, and inspiring, but he’s not selling magic lamp oil.  He takes a very pragmatic view of the adage, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Not every dream is a money-maker, and finding the right combination of what you’re passionate about and what others care about is the key to business success. Along with this caveat, Guillebeau serves up numerous stories of how everyday folk found this exact combination and launched businesses that either supplemented or supplanted their day jobs. Their perspectives on both their successes and their mistakes form the basis for a balanced, practical road map to career freedom. Or, for those of us in the corporate world, a way to feed our souls while we fill our kitchen cupboards.

Running a discipline requires discipline

Where other writers simply share success stories and hint at mystical secrets and divine interventions — largely drawn from their own very subjective experiences — Guillebeau analyzes his own and others’ stories for commonalities and offers his readers reproducible approaches and practical tools. He provides checklists for launching and growing a business, strategies for promoting it, as well as ideas for finding funding (of more than $100) and support for it. In other words, Guillebeau lays bare the secrets of his own success, as well as those of other successful entrepreneurs.

On a micro-biz level, the tools he offers represent essentials for connecting the dots between dream and business reality. On the level of creating or maintaining a discipline or practice within a company, those same tools and approaches could improve the health and efficiency of the group. Adaptation is only an insight away.

Who should read this book?

Across a variety of sites, reviews, and social media apps, I see Chris Guillebeau’s work described as “inspirational.” But I wonder: How often does inspiration become action? I also see numerous naysayers, those who believe that Guillebeau is “unrealistic” or somehow “lucky.” And that might be my perspective, too, had he based his book on his experience alone. But The $100 Startup tells the stories of people who lost their jobs and were forced to think differently about making a living; people who found a gap in an existing product or service that needed to be filled; people who stumbled upon a business idea while messing around with something entirely unrelated. Some of his entrepreneurs were intentional, as he was. Some were accidental. Some were immediately successful. Some needed to try and try again.

But the thing they all have in common? They pushed fear aside and did something.

So who is the book for? Guillebeau’s dedication sums it up nicely:

“This book is for: those who take action and those who provide the inspiration“

(Related: See Chris Guillebeau’s $100 Startup site.)

SOUND OFF: Have you read Guillebeau’s books? What insights were you able to apply to your business — or your life — to make it richer?

Goal: Plant the tree.

Desired outcomes: Blossoms in the spring; shade in the summer; fruit in the fall.

Tool of choice: A hammer?

No worries. The claw side of the hammer can be used to start digging the hole. And if I attach a broad, flattened piece of sharp-edged metal to the striker side of the hammer, I can dig an even bigger hole. Of course, I might have to lengthen the handle a bit to get the right depth, so I’ll need to get a pole and some wire to attach it to the existing handle. Sometimes, the wire will flex, causing the lengthened handle to wobble and bend a bit, which interferes with the accuracy of my digging and slows me down, but if I add more wire and wrap it around both handles very tightly eleventy-seven times, the whole thing might hold. Y’know, if the blade doesn’t bend.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Why doesn’t she just use a shovel? It’s made for digging! Now she has a cobbled-together mess that’s going to require constant fixing, and it might not even work in the end.”

Indeed.

Well-defined needs make for better-fitting solutions

As more of our clients are seeing the value of using a content management system, or CMS, to serve up their digital and print content, we are sometimes asked to make do with hammers where a shovel might be more effective — or vice-versa. Budgets, schedules, and technical environments all play into our clients’ CMS selection process — and rightfully so. That’s reality. But all of those considerations can also be affected either by not scaling the desired outcomes to the tool or the tool to the desired outcomes.

Here are a few important considerations for evaluating both the project and the tool:

Content complexity. How complex is your content? Is it contained in a single site? Across multiple, interrelated sites? In print as well as digital media? Are there significant chunks or kinds of content that must — or can — be reused across digital properties or print collateral? Do you have documents, video, audio, or other media you wish to publish through your CMS? Do you have social media content you want to manage through your CMS?

Responsive design. Will your users want to engage with your content across multiple contexts, using different devices? Do you want a CMS that will support responsive design or adaptive content? Does it add its own CSS code, requiring code editing to get the right look-and-feel? How does it handle JSP? HTML5? Web fonts?

Workflow needs. How does your current content go to publication? Who creates it? Who approves it — and at what stages of its editorial journey? Can any of the process be handled through the CMS?

Ease of use. Who will be entering, editing, and approving your content? Who will be maintaining your CMS? What level of skill do these users have — or need to acquire — with the system — or with technology in general?

Integration with other systems. Do you have a customer relationship management tool (CRM) with which the CMS will need to integrate or share data? Email systems? Other business-critical — or even merely important — systems that will affect the publication, distribution, or success metrics for the content?

The amount of customization required to get the job done right. If your CMS of choice requires significant customization — especially work-arounds — to achieve basic functionality, you might want to keep looking. Extensive customization results in potential risk, and that risk is rarely worth the effort. You would be better off looking for a CMS that more closely fits your needs than you would be trying to bend, wire, and duct-tape a solution together.

Vendor service agreements. Your CMS vendor is an important partner in implementing your system. What kinds, levels, and duration of support do they offer? At what cost? Will they assist you with cut-over planning? System testing? Data migration? Do they offer training? Will they provide on-site support? How much? How often?

Not even the right hammer makes everything a nail

In addition to thinking about what you do want your content management system to handle, you’ll need to think about what you don’t want it to handle. If you aren’t intentional about what goes into your CMS — and what stays out of it — you’ll end up with a system resembling the digital content equivalent of a junk drawer. A few questions to ask yourself:

• Should your CMS be your system of record for auditing purposes, or are there other places where legacy or expired content can be stored?
• Must rich-media content, such as videos, be stored in the CMS, or would it make more sense to create a YouTube or Vimeo channel?
• Would you benefit from using a document management system or other repository for printable content, such as PDFs of brochures?

Asking yourself — and your business stakeholders — questions such as these can save time, expense, and frustration.

So can selecting the right CMS for your needs.

SOUND OFF: What challenges have you experienced with selecting the right CMS? What do you know now that you wish you knew then?

My bathroom cabinet is a container for stuff — cosmetics, remedies, cleaning supplies, first aid materials, toilet paper, towels, and so on. Moreover, this container has a structure. It’s a big box, tipped up onto its side. The box has shelves, onto which I’ve placed baskets into which I’ve placed similar items. Or at least that’s what I’d initially done. Over time, things got a little messy as I tossed things that were “close enough” into various baskets. Then I started just putting things into whichever basket they’d fit into. Pretty soon, I had things spilling out around the baskets. And now…this.  

My clients’ websites often go through a similar process of devolving. They start out with a carefully-designed architecture, clear navigation, intuitive labels, a strong linking strategy. Their content was well-mannered, structured, contained.

And then things changed. And changed again. And pretty soon, their visitors started seeing a website that looked like my bathroom cabinet: a jumbled mess of disconnected messages, with disorganized navigation that made it impossible to find what they want or need without digging around for it.

So, how do you keep your digital content from getting out of control? Here are a few tips.

Clear navigation is better than searching

Just because your content is all in a directory, a library, a list, or another type of container, it doesn’t mean it’s organized. Many of the things in my bathroom cabinet are in decorative baskets — but I have to dig around in those baskets in order to find anything. Sure, a search engine is a nice tool to make available to your visitors, but you shouldn’t rely on it as your primary means of helping folks find what they need. Keeping your information architecture tightly organized will not only help your visitors but can also boost your SEO ranking.

Throw away anything that’s expired

Remedies past their expiration dates are often less effective than when they are fresh. The same can be said for digital content: You have to keep it fresh. Unless you have a legal or regulatory reason for maintaining extensive archives with previous versions of pages or posts, throw old content out. If nothing else, make sure outdated content isn’t visible to your end users, where it might be (at best) confusing and ineffective or (at worst) downright dangerous. Move it to a system of record, where you can access it if you’re audited but visitors don’t have to wade through it.

Plan before you add anything

Impulse buying in the beauty aisle is the bane of my bathroom cabinet’s organization. My clients sometimes have similar impulse control issues when they attempt to keep up with changes in their business or in the market. They simply add to their existing site: broader navigation, deeper menus, orphaned pages linked deep within a paragraph somewhere, hastily-created social messaging. Thinking carefully about how new content fits into the overall structure of your digital strategy might reveal that this new “have-to-have” message would be more suitable as a Facebook post or a promotional page — or reduced to a Tweet linking back to an existing page.

Governance controls clutter

Approval processes, expiration dates, editorial calendars, checklists, style guides — who can be creative with all of those rules? Rules are good. Trust me. If they do nothing else, they help ensure that your digital content is intentional. Planned. Carefully constructed. Meaningful.

My bedroom closet is governed by a policy stating that if I haven’t worn something in a year, it goes to Goodwill. In other words, I keep only what I use. My bedroom closet is neat, clearly organized, easy to use. I’m developing a similar policy for my bathroom cabinet: Keep only what I need. This, I believe, will cause me to think before I buy something else to put into it — where it fits, what its purpose will be, why I own it.

And we owe at least that to those people who engage with our digital content.

SOUND OFF: What processes have you implemented to keep your digital content under control and how are they working?

“Great! But what do you do?” you might ask. Happily, Margot Bloomstein’s Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Project provides an answer.

Case studies in content strategy 

Drawing not only on her own experience but on the experiences of others, which she gathers through numerous interviews, Bloomstein builds an enlightening set of case studies around the activities of content strategy. From gathering content inventories to updating the outdated to optimizing for search engines to making content more share-able, Bloomstein walks her readers through how to make our content more valuable, engaging, and manageable. Bloomstein discusses content creation and curation, writing for websites, brand development, and social media in content strategy — as well as how content strategists work with information architects and graphic designers. And she does it all through telling stories from the trenches in a way that enlightens and (oh, yes!) entertains.

From the Tufts University “Light the Hill” project to the Johns Hopkins web team’s work, Bloomstein illuminates how content strategists bring value to digital and social media projects. Careful planning, intentional content creation, and well-considered governance turned many a nightmare-waiting-to happen (or nightmare-in-progress) into success stories. And Bloomfield documents them for content strategy professionals in ways that resonate with and instruct us.

Content strategy: an antidote for that stuff we haven’t updated lately

In the foreword, Kristina Halvorson (one of the gurus of content strategy) writes that “the word ‘content’ immediately inspires anxiety about the stuff that hasn’t been updated lately, or docs that are overdue, or the expensive CMS that still hasn’t been implemented despite months of delays” (p. xi). But content doesn’t have to be a dirty word; and content strategy doesn’t have to be a battle. Bloomstein cements the value of our profession in easy-t0-read stories and thoughtful discussion about what we do, why we do it, and with whom.

If you add only one book about content strategy to your content marketing or content management library, make it Content Strategy at Work by Margot Bloomstein.

And in almost every presentation I attended — and many of the ones I didn’t — adaptive content was a hot topic.

What is adaptive content?

In the second edition of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy, Ann Rockley defines adaptive content as, “format-free, device-independent, scalable, and filterable content that is transformable for display in different environments and on different devices in an automated or dynamic fashion” (p. 134). Put simply, it’s content that’s written and coded in such a way that can be viewed in any digital context, without a lot of manual tinkering or re-creation.

Why adaptive content?

So, what does adaptive content offer, in real terms? I’ll share three reasons (of many) you might consider as part of a content strategy for your business.

1. Adaptive content reduces resource strain.

The idea behind creating adaptive content — text and graphical elements — is that you only have to create it once. If you plan carefully and approach it with intention, there is no need to write multiple versions of the same content. In fact, this is also the underlying principle behind reusable content in a content management system (CMS). The end result is that your already-overworked writers and producers can take a deep breath and focus on what they do best, without worrying about rewriting and reformatting the same content for multiple channels, devices, contexts.

2. Adaptive content feeds adaptive (responsive) design. 

As user experience designers and developers already know: Creating a responsive design allows flexibility and prevents the same kind of resource strain writers are feeling. As the mobile market skyrockets, designing for mobile interfaces has become a crucial part of digital strategy. Adaptive content feeds adaptive design, and that means your content can start making an appearance in places it’s never been before. Like social spaces. And mobile devices. And whatever is next.

3. Adaptive content can potentially make regulatory review easier.

As our clients in regulated industries will attest, regulatory review of content is becoming more complex and time-consuming.  In my own experience with clients in the life sciences, both legal and regulatory want to review the content — ALL of it: graphics, text, metadata — in all its proposed forms before they will approve any digital release. This practice can potentially slow publication to a crawl for a single medium. Imagine the process across several devices, if the content is created separately for each device. However, with careful planning and detailed mapping for how the content will behave, which content will be pulled into which media, and how it will display in each content, regulatory and legal reviewers can feel more confident about what viewers will see without having to look at every single instance of every single digital content release.

Caveats and cautions

Yes, adaptive content is a powerful tool. And, yes, it can deliver as I describe above. But here are a few things to consider:

Adaptive content must be planned.

Adaptive content doesn’t just happen — it requires a carefully-considered content strategy, thoughtful content management workflow, and talented developers who can make it all happen within a technology framework. And content planning, according to many of the folks who presented at Confab (as well as in my own experience), is where clients tend to want to cut corners. Sadly, many otherwise good projects fail because content isn’t well-managed or well-planned. Carefully defining content types and how those types fit together to communicate what audiences want to see in various contexts is crucial to the success of a digital project.

Adaptive content relies on a good style guide.

Part of defining content types is defining what they look like, how they read, and how they will behave as they morph and fold and dance across contexts. As with any publication — digital or paper — good content requires good production guidelines. Standards. Rules. And they must be clearly documented so that when there are governance issues (below), there is an authoritative, approved reference to fall back on. Style guides are tools for writers and editors — even developers — to use to produce their best work.

You must have a governance plan for content management.

The style guide is only a start toward managing content. Keeping firm control over how content is produced, prepared, and published is critical not only to the success of the project, but also to the sanity of your resources. The Wild West is a romantic place to visit in movies; it wasn’t the most comfortable place to live. Governance can tame your content, keep it on the straight and narrow, and provide it (and the people who produce it) a stable jumping-off point for new and interesting forms and messages and contexts.

Having a well-documented governance plan can also ease the way with legal and regulatory reviewers, thereby saving revision cycles and frustration.

Adapt now, benefit now and later

In the short term, adopting adaptive content as part of your digital strategy will pay off by addressing your current users’ needs, contexts, and constraints. But it’s the potential for long-term benefit that ups the ante and makes all the planning, documenting, and governing worth the initial pain. Adaptive content requires a new, more ecosystem-based way of thinking about writing because words and pictures no longer “live” on a page — they are fluid, acrobatic, shape-shifting. New content types will emerge. New contexts, new devices are always on some not-so-distant horizon.  Flexible, scalable, dynamic content that is well-managed and reusable now will be all the more likely to address the unforeseen  contexts of the future.

SOUND OFF: What challenges have you encountered with moving your content from print to web to mobile to…?

Interested in reading more about shape-shifting and mobile experience? Read a UX expert’s thoughts about Optimizing User Experience Across Multiple Devices.

So, here’s my take on Knapp’s five leadership lessons, reframed for my professional context.

1. Speak to people in a language they understand.

Anyone who writes, manages, or plans content understands that translation is never simple. As Knapp notes, even with the most sophisticated technology — in this case, universal translators — “communication is more than just a matter of language.” Culture and values shaped and shaded communication, and Captain Picard knew that the only way to ensure mutual understanding was to go beyond the words and peel back as many layers of meaning as possible.

Content strategists are also required to learn as much as possible about our clients’ business contexts — the language they use, the constraints they work within, what they value, how they pursue those values. Like Captain Picard, we often spend significant time with these  alien cultures, working alongside the natives and adopting their viewpoints as much as is possible for an outsider to do. We understand that businesses are made up of people and that those people are often passionate about what they do. Tapping into their passion, sharing it, and reflecting it back to them can be important to our successful translation of their business goals into engaging content.

2. When you’re overwhelmed, ask for help.

Knapp refers to an episode (“Q Who?“) where Picard has to humble himself and ask for help from one of his most persistent nemeses, a powerful being named Q.  Q not only grants the help but also expresses his admiration that Picard would even ask for it.

Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard

For a content strategist, the potential for becoming overwhelmed can take a variety of forms: volumes of content to be reviewed and winnowed out; complex review and approval processes; maddening scheduling conflicts; blocked communication channels; unclear paths for accountability and authority — the list goes on. Communicating clearly and frequently about roadblocks helps identify and mitigate potential issues, but when it looks like an issue is edging into risk, it’s always prudent to ask for help.

Most clients would rather hear, “I need help with X” than, “We’re not going to make our deadline because of X.” In fact, many clients will admire your forethought and commitment to success.

3. Always value ethical actions over expedient ones.

Knapp next cites my favorite Next Generation episode, “Measure of a Man.” Captain Picard follows his conscience, rather than orders, and argues for the humanity of a manufactured — but sentient — being named Data. It’s a complicated problem, and the episode is definitely worth watching.

In consulting, adhering to the tenet that the customer is always right is generally the more expedient path. It is not, however, always the most ethical one.

If directly challenging your clients’ decisions in uncomfortable, consider the possible implications for not challenging them. Most of us don’t have the power and influence of a Jean-Luc Picard; but we do have the ability to look at issues from many angles, document our concerns, and present solutions that will reasonably address those concerns.

4. Challenge your team to help them grow.

Here, Knapp refers to several episodes where Captain Picard asks his crew members to do things that are uncomfortable for them but result in personal and professional growth. He challenges them, keeps them from becoming complacent, forces them to think critically — and differently.

For me, the “team” includes my clients. I keep my clients actively involved in content planning and production so that when my project wraps up, they feel as confident as possible with creating and maintaining their own content. This is no easy task, especially in the digital space, where tools and media are constantly shifting, and pressures to be visible to and engaged with one’s customers can feel threatening. (OK, really overwhelming. Like being assimilated into the Borg, in fact.) But allowing clients to struggle a little and shape their own solutions for problems that arise (resourcing, scheduling articles and tweets, etc.) not only empowers them but helps them grow.

5. Don’t play it safe — seize opportunities in front of you.

Knapp describes Picard’s cautious nature as being one of “a brave mane whose youthful recklessness has been tempered by wisdom.”

This one’s not easy in the regulated environments in which we operate. “Playing it safe” is often the definition of working with regulatory agencies, legal departments, and other watchdogs— and that can limit opportunities of the seize-able sort. (You think Starfleet Command is strict? Ha!) But, with careful listening and quick thinking, we can bridge that gap between caution and risk and supportively push the limits of what is allowable in the regulated space. Sometimes it takes us a couple of tries to get where we want to go — social presence, new functionality, engaging interactivity — but, with the help of some very talented and imaginative technical people and our clients’ guidance, we can often push the limits just a little. Then a little more. Often with good result.

It also helps when, like Picard, we help our clients take risks decisively. We consider the risk from many angles, think through alternatives, supply options. Then we act (within the legal/regulatory process — see #3, above). The worst that can happen? We’re told “no.”

Content Strategy Leadership

As content strategists in regulated industries, my team and I often find ourselves leading clients where no one in their industry has gone before. And we’re ok with that. We’re not afraid to advise our clients, challenge them, help them to see (and, where possible, seize) opportunities for meeting and exceeding their business goals. I might not be as cool, calm, collected, or wise as Jean-Luc Picard. But I can — and do! — draw from his lessons in leadership.

I have a confession to make, one my employer would likely rather I keep a secret: In today’s terms, I am a Luddite.

I try to minimize the impact of technology on my life. I use it as a necessary tool most of the time, preferring being outside and playing with my dogs or gardening or hiking to having my face stuck in front of a screen. I tiptoed into social media (kicking and screaming, actually) only because my job required it. I’ve never owned an iPod. My phone is not only not “smart,” it falls into the category of “media-challenged.” Until two years ago, I didn’t even own a TV. Heck, I still read paper books. (They’re those things with front and back covers, individual paper pages, and a lovely print-and-binding smell. *sigh*)

But I now own an iPad.

At first, the iPad seemed like nothing more than a cool toy. Business purpose? Puh-leeeeze.

Then it occurred to me that I wouldn’t have to lug my Honking Big Laptop with me everywhere I went if I could just figure out what to do with an iPad. Hmmmm.

So, after playing with one owned by the Digital Solutions Department for a week, I bought an iPad and forced myself to use it. Here are a few notes focusing on some of my own specific needs:

iPad Portability

As all the reviews and blogs note, the iPad weighs mere ounces. I can take it anywhere — ANYWHERE — in a medium-sized (even fashionable, if that matters to you) bag. There are plenty of groovy cases and skins from which to choose, some of which look much like paper notebooks. In fact, no one even knows I have it until I casually pull it out and open the case. (I’m so suave.)

My favorite case, for aesthetic value, is a rather pricey, but beautiful, bamboo case with a tooled leather cover from Grove in Oregon. My colleagues prefer skins that stay true to the compactness and sleekness of the iPad design.

iPad Power and Flexibility

The iPad is not a computer. I repeat: NOT a computer. It has definite limitations. It does, however, have enough power and complexity to handle several business-related tasks creatively and effectively.

Calendars, to-do lists, email, and web access are givens. File sharing is important to me, as content drafts go through their revisions, and apps like Dropbox make it easy. And now there’s iOS 5 with iCloud for backing up data and applications quickly and easily. The bundled Notes software makes taking and finding notes easy, although apps like EverNote allow for more complex filing, as well as cool media additions, and so on. I also use the free version of AudioNote, which allows me to record meetings and interviews, typing keywords to use as reference points in the audio playback. (Sweet! No more trying to find specific points in a recording!)

Where things get challenging, however, is when I need to create client deliverables.

With the affordable iWork suite of products (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote), I can create text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, almost as I would on my PC. I say “almost” because the functionality is somewhat limited, especially where it concerns formatting options.

For instance, adding fonts to the iPad is impossible, so if your company uses specialized fonts — as mine does — for its presentations or communications documents, they’ll have to be added later from your computer. Simple formatting – like adding bullets or numbering or bolding, italicizing, and underlining — is easy to do with Pages. You can even add media, charts, and shapes — but there are significant limitations to what you can do with them once they’re placed.

Nonetheless, as a tool for drafting documents or taking meeting notes, the iPad is more than functional.

Note: Since drafting this post, I’ve downloaded the ia Writer app. I haven’t tried it yet, but I can always addend this post later with my results.

Creating Presentations with the iPad

Can you create and show presentations on your iPhone? Sure! Can you actually SEE them? Well…

The iPad’s screen size lends itself well to sharing a sales presentations, websites, and other media with clients. It’s a beautiful thing to whip out my iPad, turn it to face a client, and show them something compelling nearly instantly, without lugging my laptop along for the ride. And I can hand the iPad to them so they can play with it themselves — bonus points!

Moreover, iWork’s Keynote allows me to insert graphics and media beautifully. And the display resolution… It’s gorgeous.

Helpful iPad Peripherals

“Peripherals?” you ask. “Doesn’t that fly in the face of the iPad’s sleek design?”

The fact of the matter is, some of us require ergonomic ways of viewing our screens. And, for me, a full-sized keyboard has always been crucial to what I do. I write for a living. Even some laptop keyboards slow me down, so the tiny keyboards built into iPad cases are all the more frustrating for me to work with. The non-tactile experience of a touch-screen nearly chokes me, although I’ve gotten good enough at using it for email and typing meeting notes.

Luckily (for me), there are a variety of wireless, fold-able keyboards available. HiPPiH’s iEagle fold-able, wireless keyboard takes some getting used to, but it allows me to type more quickly than the touch-screen does.

Another useful peripheral is a projector. They range in price, but the added functionality — not to mention the cool factor of being able to open up your comparatively small computer bag and pull out a full-scale presentation — will be worth it. I love the Pico products. AAXA’s P4 Pico is flexible and powerful, allowing for projecting your presentation at a easy-to-see size.

Most of these gadgets are built for portability as well as functionality, so they add very little bulk to your bag.

Gesture and Touch

The bottom line here: I have big hands. Or at least it feels that way to me. So the gestural interface poses a couple of challenges for me.

For instance, when I’m looking at web sites I often need to re-size the window to see and interact with page elements. This requires that lovely little pinching-together of my thumb and index finger, then pushing them apart on the screen in what I think of as a “swooshy” movement. (Tah-dah!) I have issues, however, when the page isn’t well-optimized for mobile display. If there are scads of touts or links one atop the other, I often inadvertently “select” something and find myself on another page. Grrrr.

Doug Scamahorn, one of Fusion’s Experience Architects, blogs about Mobile Usability Challenges, much like the ones I faced.

A “Playful” Tool

So, my overall assessment is that, while the iPad has its limitations, it’s still a useful business tool. While it’s not a computer by any stretch, it can add value and it allows me to travel light — which is important to someone who often finds herself running from one meeting to the next without much time to futz with a laptop. I just grab the tablet and go.

Sure, there are other tablets available — some with more computing power — but there’s a playfulness about Apple products that I also love. It’s a breath of fresh air in my otherwise PC-driven day.

For more about how to use the iPad as a business tool, visit the Apple site: http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/ipad-at-work/intelligence.html

You might also be interested in reading Fusion’s post about the growing prevalence of iPads for business use: Mixing Business with iPads.

SOUND OFF: What business purposes have you found for your iPad?

Good question.

Touts are bits of text, sometimes with images, that link to content on other pages or other websites. (From an Art Director perspective, they are images, sometimes with bits of text.)

Touts can have several purposes, depending upon the type of website you’re building. Like call-outs or pull quotes used in print, website touts attract the reader’s attention and are quickly scannable for meaning.

Unlike call-outs and pull quotes, touts have an additional layer of functionality: They move visitors deeper into and around the site through links, providing them with additional ways of accessing content that is of interest to them – which potentially leads to conversions for your company. Touts can also point to external resources – related sites, documents, and applications – which strengthens search engine optimization (SEO).

Web touts can help keep content fresh
Touts give content managers and marketing folks an easy, flexible way of adding bits of new content. They become opportunities for cross-linking without compromising consistent voice in the main text. From a marketing perspective, touts can direct visitors to specific areas of the site to highlight a product or service featured in offline marketing initiatives. The net result is easily-refreshable content that supports SEO and marketing efforts.

“Yeah!,” you exclaim, “We get it! Let’s go tout up our site!” Hold on there… Here’s where I get a bit prescriptive: Touts should be part of an overall content strategy.

Touts are strategic “systems”
A well-designed website is a system. It’s built upon a hierarchy of information, and that information is organized to address different audience needs at various points in the architecture. Graphics, typography, and other design elements work within the system and help shape it by drawing on unique expressions of size, shape, aspect, color, behavior, and so on.

Likewise, touts should be systematized — or at least designed, used, and placed with some degree of thought and care. They should further the site’s story, point to additional areas of interest, and direct audiences to relevant content. Touts should work within and support the overall hierarchy of other content types.

Different types of touts will be appropriate at different places in the site hierarchy. For instance, pages higher up in the hierarchy might benefit from touts driving visitors deeper into the site for more detailed information. Touts pointing to related content — a video exemplifying some part of the page’s message, another part of the site with a related service, etc. — might be appropriate at deeper levels of the hierarchy.

Creating a strategy for what types of touts go where, what they should look like (from a design standpoint as well as a text standpoint), and how they should behave should be carefully planned, decided, and documented for the purpose of future updates. Jerry Velasco, one of our Senior Art Directors created the diagrams in this post to document tout specs for a pharmaceuticals client.

And all of this means you have to be clear about your audience, their goals, and how you want them to engage with your web content.

Recommendations for using touts on your site
Some rough, high-level considerations for touting:

• Tie touts not only to the overall objectives and goals of the site but also at the page level
• Include a call-to-action, a link, something useful to your visitor
• Include keywords, where possible
• Make them useful to your target audience
• Design them to be attractive and eye-catching without distracting from the main content
• Limit the number of touts on a page to balance design and content and to avoid cluttering the page with confusing messages

None of this is to say you can’t or shouldn’t use call-outs. (I do in this post, for instance.) But be sure your site designers understand the difference in their use and purpose — and their limitations in terms of their digital utility.

Tout away! But use touts intentionally and strategically, so they enhance the overall success of your site.

SOUND OFF: How might your website benefit from using a tout strategy?

While portfolios and writing samples are helpful, it’s not always clear how much of the writing is indicative of the talents and capabilities of the individual writer. It’s difficult to assess with any accuracy how much of the writing and decision-making the candidate did on her own and how much was team effort.

That’s why I give homework assignments before I interview candidates.

Forty-eight hours before the interview, our recruiters email candidates with an assignment that in some way resembles the kind of writing the client needs. The purpose of this task is to allow me to evaluate not only the writing, but also the choices the writer makes when putting the document together: How is the document formatted? Why did he or she make those formatting choices? What do they communicate to the audience? Why did he or she include (or not include) graphics? If graphics were included, why select those particular images? And so on…

I purposely leave the assignment open-ended and listen for clear articulation of the choices candidates make as they write. I try to make the task fun, unusual, so that the writer can approach it creatively. As a result, I get a wide variety of results — everything from 18-page manuals to 1-page job aids to bound storybooks.

However, the end product, while important, isn’t as important as the thinking that went into creating it. And the best candidates approach both the task and the conversation about it with enthusiasm and insight.

Providing our clients with top-notch content strategy is important to me. While candidates must go the extra mile for their interviews, I feel better able to ensure both their success and the client’s.

And yet there are many perfectly sane people in the industries we serve who ask their subject matter experts to write digital content. Often with unintended (and, yes, unwelcome) results.

As I’ve said in previous posts in this series, it isn’t that your SMEs aren’t brilliant people. And they know their technical areas inside and out. That’s why we call them subject matter experts. Many of them have even done a fair bit of writing, perhaps published papers in respected industry journals or even written entire books on their subject matter. But, as any good digital content writer will tell you, there’s a big difference between a technical paper and usable, engaging web content.

In Part 2 of this series, I offered a few tools and tactics for supporting your SMEs with their online writing tasks. In this post, I’ll point out a few key places where a content strategist can help you and your SMEs create successful digital content.

Creating style guides. In my last post, I mentioned the creation of a style guide. If you have a visual designer and/or experience architect working with you, he or she will create a style guide defining the various elements that define how the site looks, feels, and behaves. A content strategist can help you define such things as language usage and tone, documentation styles, rules regarding touts and other call-outs, and so on. There’s a lot to think about. The less you leave to chance, the more informed your writers will be, and the more smoothly the writing process will run.

Ensuring consistency. Different people write differently, and neither a style guide nor a template will produce writing that is seamlessly consistent. You want your website to sound like it was written by a single, credible source, not like it was cobbled together by multiple people with varying levels of writing skill. A content strategist can take your SMEs’ “raw” writing and edit it for consistency across the whole site or application.

Marrying content and design. The most successful digital spaces grow organically, with the content and design influencing one another as they develop. Simply plugging content into a design sometimes “breaks” the design if there’s too little or too much content. Trying to fit a design around content is equally disastrous. Neither should stand out from the other; they need to work symbiotically, or you risk them not working at all. Content strategists work with designers to make sure digital design and content fit together seamlessly.

Avoiding shovelware. The term “shovelware” refers to an all-too-common practice: shoveling content out of one medium (e.g. paper brochures) into another (e.g. a website). I know you’ve probably heard it before, but what works well in print doesn’t always translate to the web — and it completely breaks down when squeezed into a mobile site or application. One reason is that print users and web users behave differently, have different goals, and need different things. Another reason is that the technologies behave differently. They have different constraints, different ways of using space, and different contexts. Content strategists know how to work with these differences in users and technologies and optimize your content for them.

You wouldn’t ask me to design and develop your latest widget, your newest scientific breakthrough, or your software upgrade — not if you were planning on continued success in your industry. I wouldn’t ask you to develop your own web content without some guidance from a content strategist. I’ve had the experience of (not kidding here) holding the hand of a weeping SME who felt stupid because she didn’t know how to write about her topic; rewriting an entire website after a client’s team nearly imploded from the stress of writing the first version; translating text that was so technical that only a handful of people would have been able to decipher what it was trying to communicate.

Rescue operations are fine; they make me feel like a hero, once the dust finally clears. But I’d rather partner with you from the beginning and make creating your digital property a rewarding accomplishment, rather than a tragic mistake. I like it when you succeed. It means I have, too.

Thinking about integrating a digital strategy into your company’s marketing intiatives? Contact Fusion Alliance.  We can help.

• They don’t write for your target audience.
• They write too much.
• They don’t write enough.
• They simply don’t write.

(Incidentally, that last item is often a clear indication that you haven’t adequately or honestly answered the questions from Part 1 of this series regarding SMEs’ availability or motivation.)

Before you ask your SMEs to write for the digital space, you need to do some important groundwork. I’m assuming (perhaps naively) that you’ve already determined the business need for a digital property, determined ROI measurements, and built a strategy around your overall marketing, communication, or training approach. No? That’s another blog post…

Three key issues need to be addressed before your SMEs can begin writing:

Audience analysis. You must completely and accurately define your target audience – who they are, what motivates them, what they need, how they interact with the digital space. Understand what kind of “voice” will appeal to them, where technical terminology will work, and when less technical language is necessary. Creating personas – short “stories” for each user type – can help solidify your understanding of your audiences.

Style guide. Professional and trade journals provide guidelines for publication. You should, too. These guidelines address requirements, such as length, formatting, file types, and even – in some cases – guidelines around language and terminology. No need to rewrite Strunk & White or the Microsoft Manual of Style, but it’s helpful to have guidelines for editors, approvers, and writers to use as a reference.

Content calendar. In Part 1 of this series, I mentioned the need for realistic timelines. It bears mentioning again, along with a few ideas for what your timelines should include: draft due dates, editing due dates, approval dates, final sign-off dates, re-review in a production environment, and post-implementation edits. Anyone assigned these tasks should be contacted to ensure the deadlines are manageable.

Once you’ve done at least this basic groundwork, you can engage your SMEs. Here are a few crucial tools for setting your SMEs up for success:

Have a kick-off meeting. Kick-off meetings go a long way for getting buy-in and setting expectations. A kick-off can be a simple gathering in one of your conference rooms, or you can supply food and beverages. In all seriousness, even a bowl of candy can “sweeten” a room full of busy, rather cranky SMEs who have just learned they’ll be content writers for a website. (Don’t get too lavish, or they’ll think they’re in real trouble.)

Provide examples. People need to see examples of successful writing. You might draw from digital spaces whose content you liked – even from your competition. Highlight what function the content in these examples perform and how they’re organized. Briefly explain why these are examples of successful web writing. It won’t be as obvious as you think. Really.

Create templates. Templates can help SMEs organize their thoughts and understand what kinds of content you want – and how much of it you want. For certain components, such as tables or illustrations, you might include size requirements from your style guide right on the template. Just remember to be somewhat flexible, as things will grow and change as you progress. But not so flexible as to negate the value of the templates.

And my favorite tactic for successfully engaging and supporting SMEs (drumroll):

Schedule regular review sessions. Notice I didn’t use the word “meetings” here. Review sessions should be productive work sessions yielding measurable results, i.e. work product. You know: Written stuff. For one of my clients, an agricultural research and products company, this was the single most effective way to write, edit, and translate content for their site’s audiences. It also forced my client SMEs to focus. We met at the Fusion Alliance offices, away from their desks, interruptions, and email.

It didn’t hurt that I baked banana bread (from scratch) for review session participants. Like I said: A little food goes a long way toward getting buy-in and cooperation.

In the final installment of this series, I’ll offer some suggestions for how a content strategist can help you with your digital content, even if she’s not writing it. Because, despite solid preparation, careful planning, and good intentions, sometimes you’ll just need a content SME.

• “And when do you think I’m going to do this writing? In my sleep?”
• “How am I going to get the <insert name of widget> into production if I have to write web pages?”
• “Don’t they have people out there who do that?”

Logistics is one of the biggest challenges for SMEs who are asked to write content – as well as for the project managers trying to get the writing done on schedule for the developers to build the site. The fact of the matter is that, unless you have sprawling deadlines with plenty of buffer for getting your website launched, your SMEs are unlikely to be able to meet their writing deadlines. They might want to, but unless they are freed up from their day-to-day tasks, they are unlikely to.

Before you make your final decision about who will do the writing, ask yourself the following:

• Realistically, how many hours will it take your SME to write a first draft of the content?
• Over what time period will those hours have to be spread in order for the SME to complete it? A week? Two weeks? A month?
• What other deadlines do your SMEs have to deal with?
• Once the first draft is done, it will probably require refining. How will revision work fit into your SMEs’ busy work schedules? Will they be available over that time period?

Honestly answering these questions realistically – with input from your subject matter experts – is key to launching your website on time and integral to your overall digital strategy. Not to mention staying within budget. Mapping them against your project plan will allow you to set your SMEs up for success, rather than failure.

Perhaps the most important question to ask: What’s in it for your subject matter expert? “They get to keep their job” might not be the best answer. Again, ask yourself:

• Will writing digital content, in any way, help them with their career goals?
• Will writing for the web allow them to learn something they find valuable or interesting?
• Is there any incentive you can offer them that they will find worth the struggle of putting their expertise into writing?

As for yourself:

• What business reasons do you have for asking your SMEs to write?
• Will you or your project manager have to exert pressure over multiple locations, multiple company divisions, and on multiple managers or supervisors to ensure that the writing gets done?
• Do you have the authority to exert that pressure (or the buy-in and commitment of someone who does)?

If asking your SMEs to produce content for your digital strategy still seems to make sense, your next step is to provide them with tools to make the experience go as smoothly and productively as possible.

In part two of my series, I will be discussing the best way to equip them with these tools.

Then my boss told me she’d selected me to be one of the bloggers for our digital marketing solutions team. My reaction? Picture Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream.

I’m a senior content strategist. I write for a living. I write every single weekday – and even on most weekends – for hours at a time. I write for other people. I write for myself. I write long pieces, short pieces and everything in between. For pete’s sake, I was head cheerleader for our blogger training. (“Go team! You can do it! We’re here to help you! Yes you CAN write that blog!”)

And, here I was, intimidated by the prospect of blogging for my company.

Take a step back and think for a moment about your own digital strategy. You’re contemplating a website. You’re dreaming of a Facebook page with thousands of visitors “liking” your company. You might even send a shout out through Twitter. You, like me, have scads of bright people working all around you, subject matter experts who (you are certain) will jump at the chance to share their technical knowledge and expertise with the world.

Now, imagine yourself telling those subject matter experts about your brilliant idea. “Picture this,” you say proudly, “Our website, starring…YOU, my new web-writers!”

Their reaction? Munch-face. En masse.

It isn’t that they aren’t proud of their company, their professional achievements, their deep knowledge of their subject areas. It isn’t that they can’t talk – for hours! – about what they do and why they do it. But write about it? You’re kidding, right?

(Right?!)

In the following three-part blog series (four, if you count this introduction), I’ll discuss:

1. What to take into consideration when thinking about asking your subject matter experts (SMEs) to write digital content

2. Strategies for preparing them, should you decide to move forward with that plan

3. How you can best leverage a content strategist’s skills to help your SMEs with their writing

I might not be able to help you completely avoid Munch-face, but I might be able to help you temper it to a quiet whimpering.