CrownPeak's VP of marketing describes the importance of content that describes content, then provides tips for getting organized.
In my last article for iMedia Connection, I made a few predictions about digital marketing in 2006 and I thought I'd expand on one of them. As we move into 2006, with our respective digital marketing strategies, meta data -- content that describes content -- will become extraordinarily important to the digital marketer.
So, hold on -- don't click away just yet. I say "meta data" and your eyes start to glaze over, but stay with me just for a second. I'm talking about a different kind of meta data than what we're used to.
We've known about meta data as it applies to search engine optimization for a few years. How many of us populated our websites with keywords trying to boost our level in the search engines? But the practice of meta data creation from an organic SEO standpoint has ironically become counter-productive as the search engines (especially Google) began penalizing websites that tried to trick the system. And thus, on the eighth day, the internet industry begat the SEO consultant.
Meta data is becoming increasingly more important for the digital marketer -- not from a search engine perspective, but rather from a content identification perspective. As the internet and the amount of information on it evolves into overwhelming proportions, filtering content and providing users with an easier way to locate that content will be a hugely necessary task.
As you start your next website re-design or content strategy, strongly consider putting significant thought and strategy around your meta content: content that identifies and describes content. If you're a publisher it means identifying titles as "titles," articles as "articles" and authors as "authors." If you're an ecommerce provider, it means identifying your products and the particulars of those products. Taxonomies are no longer just for cardigan-wearing librarians. It's time for the digital marketer to understand the power of categorized content. Why? Well, let's look at the applications:
On the front end: interfaces
As I also mentioned in my last article, the number of interfaces that are filtering and displaying internet content is growing exponentially. This includes everything from Google Base to RSS feeds to wireless devices, email, Konfabulator widgets and, yes, Internet Explorer and all the variants of Firefox that are beginning to emerge (if you haven't seen the Flock browser yet, you should know about it).
The key here isn't getting all your content into all of these interfaces. Clearly your digital marketing and communications strategy will make sense for only a few of these interfaces. The best plan is to get your content ready to be parsed for as many of these interfaces as will make sense. Once you've identified your content, parsing it into an RSS feed or making some subset of it available to a widget (e.g. a pricelist or index of products) is much easier. If you want to syndicate all articles by a single author, it becomes a quick search-and-retrieve rather than a huge manual aggregation exercise.
The back end: analytics
In 2006, it will be critical to go beyond hits, page views and clickthroughs and really start to determine metrics around the quality of your content. Also, it will be important to measure the "conversations" you're having with your website users. The first step is categorizing your content into pieces you can measure. Identifying your content into bits that can be parsed and recognized makes it much easier to analyze results at a more granular level. For example, if you don't like the way a particular piece of content is performing -- say a particular product description or call-to-action -- try A/B testing it. Or, you could identify content blocks by their distribution method. This way you can track the identical piece of content whether it's in an RSS feed, an HTML page or an email.
Putting it together
So, you'll notice that I haven't used the term XML or other "technical" terms here. Since solving this challenge doesn't have to be that technical, it's not nearly as intimidating as it might appear. If your organization is in a specialized industry such as finance, healthcare or automotive, there are well-defined and concerted efforts to create standards and common nomenclature around describing your particular content. Do searches for taxonomies on your industry. Chances are someone is working on it.
Additionally, just defining your content into categories is a positive step in the right direction toward great search marketing. For example, identifying content within your HTML is a great way to begin. As you consider a strategy for identifying content, consider these suggestions:
- Make sure your content management system is capable of this identification: This means you're looking for a way to not only add tags to specific blocks of content, but also a way to manage those categories as well. In other words, you want to be able to manage your taxonomy within your CMS so that it can grow and expand as your content does. This also means that different output of your content can have different identification. If you're planning on publishing content to a number of destinations (e.g. syndicated content to wireless or other formats), consider content management systems that can apply different categories or identifications based on its destination.
- Consider getting outside help for determining your categories and taxonomies: There are a number of organizations that you can use to get the basics, http://www.xml.org/ is a good one to start with. But beyond that, there are excellent content consultants who can help you think through the strategy around an effective taxonomy and will help you determine the best strategy for categorization and identification.
- Simpler is better: You don't need to boil the ocean on your first pass. Make sure you can phase into these projects and manage the taxonomies and expand upon them as they grow. Your needs will assuredly change, so don't lock yourself into an inflexible taxonomy. This way you can start simple, perhaps with the existing website, and then grow into publishing different formats.
In short, the most challenging part of a meta data or content tagging strategy is the work that goes into the strategy itself. Creating a solid taxonomy and identification strategy is the key. Then rolling out the technology to support that strategy should be very straightforward. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and a brilliant and profitable new year.
Robert Rose is vice president of sales and marketing at CrownPeak Technology. Read full bio.