Situation Analysis

[00:00:00]
>> So we're gonna kick it in with situation analysis. You will notice that we spent the first half of the day talking about the strategy part, the kickoff part, prepping everybody with interviews. Really setting up our greater, broader context and understanding for content and content strategy to kind of identify the complexities of it.

[00:00:20]
We're gonna be digging into tools now for the next couple of hours, which will involve a few more exercises for you guys as well. So if I can ask you to all sort of within this framework, and maybe you've already been thinking about this. But think about a project that you worked on or one that you're currently involved in that is gonna help you kind of have context for some of the work that I'm gonna ask you to do this afternoon, okay?

[00:00:44]
All right, so the situation analysis, this is a core component of creating any kind of strategy where we are gonna take a look at our content ecosystem. We kinda talked about this, all these questions that we need to answer about our content before we can start making decisions or recommendations around that content.

[00:01:01]
So, a situation analysis, when we talk about it in content strategy, is the gathering, synthesis, and reporting of information that impacts any kind of content choice. So, remember that framework we went over, editorial experience, structure, and process. We want to dig into questions about all of those things.

[00:01:21]
So let's focus on situation, what's going on right now with content? So this is some of the information that hopefully you'll be able to get in that initial documentation dump or through your stakeholder interviews. We wanna know what kind of mission, vision, and related goals and strategies are in operation before we get started.

[00:01:42]
Obviously, you'll do your stakeholder interviews and user research that you have access to or that you can conduct yourself, even if it's just kind of guerrilla research. Taking a look if it makes sense at competitor websites or competing products. Conducting a content audit, early on, if that is something that is useful.

[00:02:00]
A technology audit that would have an impact on content creation, delivery, and governance. Any kind of site analytics that will inform what content people are interested in and why, if you can get at that. Search engine optimization activities and industry trends, if those are relevant with regard to content.

[00:02:19]
So again, if we think about how we've maybe approached content the past, which is okay, we've got to replace this lorem ipsum. Taking a step back and seeing all this stuff that can and should be informing content recommendations is a big shift in mindset. So you can take this slide and hand it to somebody on your project team and just say, we've got some more things to talk about before we get to the writing of the words or the creating of the interactive company history timeline.

[00:02:46]
I'm just gonna use that as a dumb example, but you have to believe me when I tell you I use it as a dumb example and have for 15 years, okay, all right. So these are the four things that we're gonna focus on this afternoon because I find that these are kind of the four areas where we usually get the most information that's relevant to our recommendations moving forward, okay?

[00:03:08]
We kinda dug into stakeholder interviews, at least techniques, early. So we're gonna talk about user research here.