Thanks to everyone who came out for the inaugural session of Paramore University yesterday.
David Baker from Recourses, Inc. started the morning with a challenge to agencies and their clients on what passes for “branding” and the usually lame “storytelling” that is replacing it as the current excuse for agencies to inflate their budgets.
Karen McGrane followed with Content Strategy, the Missing Piece of the Puzzle. Drawing on her 10 years as head of UX for Razorfish and 6+ years with Bond art + science, Karen has a clear handle on the main issue all companies face with their websites - bad content.
We’ve had this experience with many of our clients too. The design phase is fun. Developing tools with the latest technology is exciting. But content is cumbersome and hard. Most of the time companies do the equivalent of building a mansion and moving in all their trailer trash furniture.
The truth is that your web design, features and functionality should be focused on one thing: moving the message. The message is in the content.
Karen laid out a number of resources that can help you get your heads around this problem and here’s a short list:
Google Group on Content Strategy
Confab
A Book Apart
Knol on Content Strategy
So that’s what we talked about today. We did video it so if you missed it you’ll have a second chance. It’ll take us a few days but we’ll let you know when the video is posted.
Paramore University
And the next session of Paramore University is scheduled for April 17, 2012. We’ll focus on user experience and bring in someone fantastic who has made waves nationally in web design. I’m not sure who that is yet, but we’ll let you know. And RSVP early next time will ya? We literally had people sitting in the windows. Paramore University presents best-of-breed thinking that helps you do better digital marketing. Hang out with us about twice a year and you can be PU certified. Yes you can.
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