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Interview with Clare O'Brien - UK
As mentioned in the Speaker Interview Series for Content Strategy Forum 2010, our first interview is with Clare O’Brien, co-founder of CDA (Content Delivery & Analysis) in the UK. CDA consults on a wide range of content strategy areas, as well provides workshop-centered training and skills development. CDA has been developing the Content Usefulness Toolkit, or CUT Score, which aims to reveal content-audience relationships and the subsequent quality or value from them. In addition to her presentation on the CUT Score at the 2010 Forum, Clare will also be sitting on the closing panel that will specifically focus on the state of content strategy in Europe.
Hi, Clare! Being one of the first and most visible content strategists we approached early on, we consider you our European champion at the Content Strategy Forum 2010 (figuratively speaking, and with no discredit to all the other amazing European content strategists we have since discovered, and have yet to). We would like to kick off this interview series with an interview of you first. Thank you for giving us the opportunity. Let’s get straight to it.
STCF: In your speaker biography, you indicate you were a public relations (PR) practitioner working across print, publishing and IT before getting into content strategy in 2004. Do you think the PR experiences set you up well for transitioning into content strategy, and if so, what would be some of the most notable values carried over into your work today?
CO: Yes I do think so. I learned a great deal about the power of converting corporate messaging into meaningful and relevant statements for a publication or trade body, but, within that ‘the power of 1’ – how my message would be understood by an audience of one: an editor, trade body person, commercial partner. My job was to ensure a transparency of understanding.
There’s a clear correlation between PR and content strategy. During my years in business to business PR I developed ‘conversations’, with the journalists and influencers. The absolute imperative was always to ensure meaning came across in the communications we planned and executed. I was reminded of one of the basic tenets I instilled into my team by one of its seniors when I last saw her. ‘I’ve never forgotten that if it can’t be said on a single side of A4, it’s not worth saying’. I spent years developing a brief writing style.
STCF: By your own description, CDA provides a wide range of content and strategy services. Of those services, what do you find CDA doing most of all for clients these days? In other words, when companies contact CDA, what are they asking for most of the time?
CO: Ah… that’s an extremely interesting question. I feel that we are at a transition point. Clients want content as an output but what they need from us is the framework so they can control, produce and maintain their content – content is a dynamic part of an organisation – much like its employees – and needs to be constantly managed and developed in the same way. Increasingly the concept of content strategy is being understood. As soon as we start auditing a client’s request, they begin to grasp the need to peel back the layers and start from a much more critical position than just ‘we’ve got pages to fill on our website’. We’re starting to see signs of online projects tackled from the right end first: ‘Why do we need this…?’ Which is the right place to start…? It’s a great time to be a content strategist.
STCF: You will be talking at the Content Strategy Forum next spring about your company’s CUT Score toolkit. In layman’s terms, what is the CUT Score toolkit?
CO: In its simplest terms, CUT is an evaluation of whether people find content useful or not (does it work for them). It’s a diagnostic set up to identify and target improvements (budget planning) using a standardised scoring system that instantly flags improving and declining content (benchmarking and goal-setting).
STCF: “Quality”, “value” and “performance” are three criterion we see you mentioning as being measured by the CUT Score. Are there other criterion measured, and how can any of these be measured objectively?
CO: CUT delivers objectivity because sites are being ‘scored’ by users – not developers, contractors or clients. For example, it is the users who decide to use or abandon content, because it works for them or it doesn’t. CUT starts by asking people what content should be there, uses an audit and planning framework to meet those expectations and maintains a check – again with the people who matter, users, to ensure the content is working.
Maintaining objectivity is the biggest challenge that content owners face and why a content strategy is the critical foundation to any online content project. Content that is of value to the organisation (a message, perhaps) but does not support a user’s task (answering a question, maybe) is not ‘quality’ content, ‘valued’ by a user and therefore cannot ‘perform’ for the owner.
STCF: In the abstract for your talk, you say that the Cut Score will help allow “organizations to evaluate online content and support budget management decisions”. Is the CUT Score, then, partly intended for use by companies themselves as an in-house tool, and for which CDA will provide workshops and training?
CO: Yes, we’ll provide training, and ongoing consultancy as an essential sense-check. As content strategists we know organisations need to manage and control as much of their own content as possible – we workshop with clients all the time to develop their content skills. Content is a living, breathing part of an organisation and simply can’t be completely outsourced. We envisage that much of CUT could be managed internally on an ongoing basis, such as the initial insights and the audits and we’ll support set-up and training through learning workshops. The continuous measurement online survey will be a standardised piece and is being run by our research development partner FDS on its servers, with the results fed back through a simple dashboard.
STCF: Generally speaking (CUT Score aside), how effectively can a company assess its own content? Have you seen attempts of this with your clients and later been called in for disaster relief? In a nutshell, shouldn’t assessment be done by an independent third party; real providers of content strategy services?
CO: We’re all on a learning curve and part of growing expertise to manage digital and interactive platforms, is a deepening understanding of the role of content. It will come, but it will take time. So in the meantime, most organisations would be best rewarded by working with external consultants and freelance specialists to ensure that their own content is properly and continuously evaluated. It is, after all, an asset and most businesses and public organisations are generally careful with their valuables. While CUT is designed to help keep organisations on the right track, there’s a real need for content strategy to have an ongoing role within organisations, both at senior internal level and through external consultancies such as CDA. Ideally, we’d like to see CUT being applied as part of an overall governance program.
STCF: You will be one of the participants on the closing conference panel session that focuses specifically on content strategy in Europe. Without undermining your 15 minutes in that session, entirely, where to you think the field of content strategy is right now in Europe (you can speak with regard to the UK, if you like), and what do you think practitioners—and the European web arena in general—need to do to move it along?
CO: Well this is a question posed six months ahead of the Forum and if there’s one certain thing I’ve learned about the online business is nothing much stays still for six months. Right now Content Strategy the practice is beginning to gain traction. It’s clear when meeting with clients and taking on new projects, there’s a growing willingness to invest in the necessary content strategy processes. However, for the majority of organisations, content is still something of a commodity: words by the yard to fill space created by designers and CMS developers.
I guess content strategy is where IA was at the end of the ‘90s, usability six years ago and user experience 3 years ago. What content strategy does is bring all these valuable skills and practices into the same space to work together towards a strategic aim. IA and UX are often used by designers and project managers like marker points, rather than underpinning processes that support discovery and contribute to a project’s rigour.
One of the ways that content strategy will find recognition will be through the development of techniques and methods that through their rigour give direction and drive budget planning. The Content Strategists will ensure appropriate management of resources and be 100% engaged with the business of business. Content does not simply just happen. It has to be planned, created, delivered and maintained and it all takes resource. Sometimes a lot, and it needs to be paid for from its own budget that has been well structured and argued.
Content strategy needs a bigger voice here, which is why the formation of the UK and (now the European) Content Strategy Group in September 09, is an important move. Right now we’re meeting in pubs, swapping stories and beginning to collate what Content Strategy is all about. In April we will be holding events and working with bigger and more established industry bodies that realize the importance of the skill and discipline and want to know more. Bodies like the STC France chapter here in Paris!
And while much has come from the US so far, there will be more Europeans taking on the mantle here using platforms, projects, through papers and books and by developing ways of dealing with the very different challenges that existing in this multi-lingual, multi-market part of the developed world.
I hope to be making far more progressive comments from the panel in 6 months time!
STCF: OK, last question is simple curiosity. Your company is called CDA but your website address is webwordsworking.co.uk. There are a lot of people that would think that’s not very…cohesive, if you will. As a company who does content strategy, do you think this is impacting CDA in any way?
CO: Ah, I see you’ve spotted our Achilles heel (or at least one of them)! When Anne and I first established CDA we struggled with what to call ourselves. We were very much about specialising in writing for the web and after much talk and probably a bottle or two of wine we came up with webwordsworking (www)! We liked the alliterative quality and associated acronym but still felt it may be transient and so wanted a sounder name for the company. That was Content Delivery and Analysis – in the event a far more accurate description of what we do – but CDA-based URLs weren’t available and so we went with webwordsworking.
We have plans afoot that will be much more reflective of our strategy role but I think it’s important to remember that ‘web words working’ remains an ultimate goal for organisations. It’s the breadth of expertise that can now be used to achieve this which has developed and which CDA is increasingly being recognised as providing.
STCF: Thank you very much for your time and responses. We are really looking forward to having you come to Paris and learn more about the CUT Score toolkit.
CO: And thank you for the opportunity to talk about CUT and the wider issues associated with the business management of content. I very much look forward to meeting as many people as possible in Paris in April.