Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[music].
Hey, everyone. My name is Megan Brown, AKA "that girl Megan". I'm the senior social media
strategist at iAcquire, and I'm here to bring you part one of chapter six of Karen McGrane's
"Content Strategy For Mobile". Chapter Six is all about information architecture, so
of course, she starts talking about how information is received is very different than it used
to be. For example, you used to just only have ink on a page. Once it was published,
it was printed. That was it. However, now, things are a lot more flexible because you
can constantly be updating or changing things online. You need to make sure that your information
architecture reflects that.
Also, people used to think in terms of pages. Now, you need to think in terms of packages
because there's a lot more that you need to put together than just a headline for a page.
You need to make headlines for mobile, for however someone receives your information,
for desktop. So, it's really important to keep these things in mind when creating a
strategy for your information architecture. Also, you need to take into account that you
need to help the user, especially on mobile, find content more easily. This is because
sometimes on mobile, things are recycled, or they're all junked up, or they don't optimize
for mobile. So, it's really hard for a reader to make their way to A: what they want, or
B: even know that they want it.
So, Karen references trigger words, which are words that sort of tell users, tell readers
what they're going to get, as well as entices them to click. Sort of like a call to action,
but also combined with something that's stating what you're going to get when you click there.
On mobile, you don't want someone to be frustrated from tapping all over their phone and just
leave your site or not be interested in what there is on it. Also, you shouldn't rely on
labels. This means that always on mobile, a lot of time is put in by brands into their
home pages for the navigation bar or the sidebar. However, once a user journeys further into
their site, these are gone, or they've just completely disappeared, or they reappear in
a different form that isn't really helpful. You can't necessarily rely on what labels
you use, even on your desktop site, for mobile. You need to make sure that you're accompanying
your user and reader on every part of their journey throughout their site and helping
them find their way.
It's also important to include teasers. Teasers are short little descriptions that also will
entice users to click. You need to use your trigger words in these teasers. That means
include those action verbs. Tell them what they're going to get. Make them know exactly
what they'll receive at the other end of that link. Most importantly, truncation is NOT
a form of content strategy. Don't recycle what's on your desktop for mobile. It won't
look good. It won't sound good, and it definitely won't help your readers at all. First of all,
when you truncate things, there is no teaser, or it's the wrong length. There's no trigger
words, and the formatting is wrong. Something that's a block quote or bullets shows up differently
on desktop than it does on mobile. You need to make sure that your formatting that you
want is reflected on mobile and is best for mobile or any platform that you're distributing
your content on.
Also, you need to get in the reader's head. Like I said before, you need to follow them
on their journey. Know what they're thinking, or know what they're thinking when they're
looking for a specific thing. This helps you sort of come up with the words for your teasers,
as well as come up with ideas for how they're going to travel throughout your site. This
will not only make your content better, but it will also help you better optimize for
the right platform. So, let's get into a little bit the different sections that you'll have
to look at when you're creating your information architecture for different platforms.
First of all, you have page titles and headlines. You need to take in consideration location,
location, location. They aren't just at the top of the page anymore. They're everywhere.
You need to know where they'll be and what exactly they'll say. As she said before, no
truncation. If your page title is truncated, people don't even know sometimes where they
are. Also, she suggests writing a system so that you sort of have page titles and headlines
for every type of platform or every way that the content is distributed. Some different
examples that she included were external SEO, internal search, social, the teaser, as well
as crafted for iPhone and Android.
It's important to take all of these into account because they all have different character
links that they allow and constraints, so that you know that you're meeting the right
constraint for everything. However, most importantly, do not create content for a specific context.
Create content that you can use in different contexts; however, focus instead on the length
of it, the tone, and the style. For example, who are you speaking to? How are you speaking
to them? You're talking to humans. You're not talking to robots. Are you talking to
the search engine? Are you not? As well as, you can create something she calls a super
combo, in which you create a secondary headline that can be a little bit longer that's somewhere
else on the page. The New York Times is a really great example of this. So, if you check
them out on their mobile site, you can see that.
Another section that she goes into is summaries. Once again, no truncating. She uses an example
of saying that Blockbuster recycles all of their content on their mobile site. This means
people don't even know what they're clicking on. There aren't full descriptions. It's very
hard to navigate. However, they recently filed bankruptcy because mostly, their competitor
Netflix. Netflix is on a lot of different platforms, and they've optimized their information
architecture so that their summaries show up completely on all of these things. She
also suggests just like you do for your page titles and headlines, write a system. In fact,
the easiest way to think of things is in terms of a content package. You want all of the
different chunks you need for each platform included together. This means that if you're
creating a system for page titles and headlines, summaries, and any other part of your content,
then you're writing every single different part you need for each platform. This means
that also, it will meet the constraints of a platform, as well as be optimized for its
readers, as well as the length, as well as the tone.
Also, most importantly along with this, you should have a good CMS. A good CMS encourages
authors to actually create these content packages so that they'll understand why they are there,
as well as how to write them and the constraints that are on them, so that they'll regularly
create them so that you don't have to keep going back to authors and asking them to do
it, as well as they'll understand the implementation of it. On top of that, it also pulls for a
platform. You don't have to be going in manually for the distribution of your content on every
single platform. So, it's really important that your CMS can do this automatically and
pull what's necessary per platform.
So, to review: If you take away one thing from Chapter Six, part one, it's that truncation
is bad. If you take away two things, know that content packaging is good. If you take
away three things, congratulations. You're a scholar of Cliffs Notes Tuesday. Thanks.
Have a great day. [music].