The Content Wrangler

You bought the content management system, you migrated your content into it, and you might even have implemented DITA. So why is your content management such a mess? Content management projects have a way of sprawling into content un-management, especially if your organization started with a system but did not have a strategy.

There are several areas in which content management can become content “manglement.” The good news is, you’re already thinking in terms of managing your content, and chances are you can get things back on track.

Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, for this free, one-hour webinar along with my special guest, Regina Preciado, a content strategy consultant who helps companies transform how they organize, manage, and leverage content. Regina will take a look at what went wrong—and help you come away with a plan for diagnosing your specific content management issues, and how to start treatment. Regina will talk about where things are most likely to get messy; how to figure out what’s really gone wrong—it’s (probably) not “everything,” and the steps you can take immediately to diagnose—and start treating—your specific content situation.

We all know the importance of a well-defined buyer persona. It tells everyone at a company who we sell to and what makes that person tick. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. But, when a company grows globally, does that ideal customer change?

Last year, HubSpot decided to "Go Fast in France." There was a lot of fanfare, hiring of French staff and several references to a famous cycling circuit. But, there wasn't a whole lot of thought given to exactly who were marketing, selling and servicing.

Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler for a discussion with Christopher Englund and Marco Chieppe of HubSpot about the importance of building market-relevant buyer personas. You’ll discover how following a roadmap—and doing your research ahead of time—can help you develop international buyer personas that work.

We’ve all heard advice about how to improve source content. These tips and tricks usually sound like perfectly reasonable suggestions. Common sense, right?

But, where's the proof that these so-called best practices actually improve customer experience? In 2016, content strategists from Google visited 11 countries to talk to customers in order to find out what these real people actually want and need from their content. As it turns out, lessons learned from Google customer feedback research provided some surprising results.

Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler and my special guests, content strategy manager, Jon Ann Lindsey (Google) and global content strategy expert, Val Swisher (Content Rules), for a lively discussion about the importance of getting feedback before you make decisions about how you’ll translate and localize content. You'll learn several ideas you can use to adjust your source content so that your translations are improved. You’ll see lots of examples from content in the real world and leave with actionable items that you can implement immediately.

You will learn which problems Google found (they weren't just the usual suspects) and to make big improvements in your content that are easy to implement. And you'll discover why overtly "empathetic" language and reassurances don't always serve the needs of customers.

This program is brought to you by LocWorld35 Silicon Valley: The conference for global business. www.locworld.com

The World Wide Web has, in many respects, leveled the playing field—making it possible for businesses of any size to develop an international following. But, building an multinational presence means ensuring your content is global-ready.

Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and my special guest, senior analyst Rebecca Ray of Common Sense Advisory, as we discuss how to develop and use marketing personas, customer journey maps, categorization, and content tiering as the building blocks for a pragmatic global content strategy.

Attendees will learn how to apply domestic market discipline to global rollouts, steps to follow when creating a practical strategy, and the importance of validating domestic marketing profiles to ensure they are appropriate for global use. You'll also learn how customer journey maps, auditing and categorizing of content for local markets, and establishing content tiering criteria based on hard data can help you be successful.

Business today is digital, and that makes content critical. Where can you get tips, advice, and inspiration for the content side of business? Enter the online magazine for content professionals—Content Science Review.

Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and my special guest, content scientist Colleen Jones, for this presentation about Content Science Review. You'll learn what Content Science Review is — and what it's not. You'll discover the breadth of coverage and the benefits of both free and paid registration. If you're a writer looking to expand your influence, you'll learn how you can pitch story ideas to the editors.

As an added bonus, the editors will share their top-three reader-contributed insights of 2017!

You’re thoughtful about the web content you create to attract prospects and to serve existing customers. You take great care to make sure your content is well-written, properly-punctuated, and error-free before you publish it. It’s what you’ve always done. But, it’s no longer enough.

Interactive voice response systems, intelligent personal assistants, chatbots, smart homes, smart devices, and smart appliances introduce new content requirements. Your web content needs to be both human-readable and machine-processable to deliver on the promise of these emerging technologies.

Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and my guest Andrea Volpini, CEO and co-founder of WordLift, for this free, one-hour webinar on how to quickly make your Wordpress web content more capable. You will learn how creating semantically-rich web content in Wordpress can help you develop new ways of interacting with your audience.

You’ll discover how building a knowledge graph can empower your web content—making it readily available to chatbots, smart crawlers, voice interfaces, and personal assistants. You’ll find why making your content machine-friendly can help you optimize your content, so it appears at the top of the search results. And, you’ll learn how making your content intelligent can provide you with actionable business insights and metrics that matter.

You may already know the value of content that is constructed based on its purpose rather than just presentation. But many solutions today lock that value into one product or silo, inhibiting collaboration and reuse across the enterprise.

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a widely-adopted XML standard that delivers on this promise of intelligent content, but there are some inhibitors to adoption. Some see it as too complex. Others work to create content in compliance with an existing content format such as HTML or Markdown. With Lightweight DITA in the works, we can finally bridge the gap between the promise of intelligent content and the challenge of diverse authoring platforms and communities.

Join Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler and his special guests Michael Priestley, one of the original architects of the DITA standard, and Rob Hanna from Precision Content, for a free one-hour online discussion designed to help you decide whether you should consider adopting DITA or Lightweight DITA.

Are you ready for intelligent content?

More and more organizations are taking advantage of the benefits a globally-distributed workforce can provide. Although dispersed teams promise substantial growth opportunities and a reduction in overhead costs, managing them can be problematic. The secret to success is in understanding the differences you’re likely to encounter when managing teams across borders, cultures, and time zones.

Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and my special guest, Barry Saiff, CEO of Saiff Solutions, for a free one-hour webinar on resolving the most common cross-cultural team management challenges.

In this session, using real-life examples, you’ll learn how to address global cultural differences in the way people deal with conflict, relate to authority, ask and answer questions, express respect, and practice equality in the workplace. You’ll hear useful advice—gathered from our own experience managing a global team that spans North America, Asia, and Europe. You’ll leave knowing what you need to do to succeed.

Given the easy access to off-the-shelf tools like TechSmith Camtasia, creating software demonstrations has never been easier or faster.
 
Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and my special guest, Kevin Siegel of IconLogic, for this free webinar. During this high-energy, hands-on session, you will learn how to create and share micro-eLearning demos using Camtasia 9.
 
If you have Camtasia on your computer, you will be able to follow-along with Kevin and create a software demonstration using the Camtasia Recorder. The free trial version, available at https://www.techsmith.com/download/camtasia, will work great for this session.
 
Follow along with Kevin and take your recorded video into the Camtasia Editor and add content such as title pages, callouts, and animations. Lastly, you can share your eLearning masterpiece so it can be accessed by the widest possible audience. And you'll do it all live, and in less than an hour.
 
Note: Participation in this event is encouraged, but not required. If you prefer to simply sit back and watch, it would be best to attend this webinar using a device with a reasonably-sized screen (such as a tablet, laptop, or desktop computer). If you would like to follow-along, you'll just need Camtasia on your computer using either the licensed or trial version. Kevin will be using the PC version of Camtasia. Because the Mac version of Camtasia is different, it is recommended that hands-on attendees use the PC version of Camtasia if possible.
 
Takeaways:
 
1) Best practices for recording short demonstrations using the Camtasia Recorder
2) How to quickly produce micro-eLearning in the Camtasia Editor
3) How to quickly share/publish content for the widest possible audience.
 
Kevin Siegel is the founder and president of IconLogic, Inc. He has written hundreds of step-by-step computer training books on applications such as Articulate Storyline, Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, QuarkXPress, and TechSmith Camtasia.

If you're like most content-producing teams, the chances are good that your best content is locked up in the minds of the busiest people in the organization. How do you get all of this useful content out of their heads and in front of your customers?

Join me, Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, and my special guest, Justin Brock, Digital Marketing Manager at Bomgar Corporation, for this free, one-hour webinar designed to provide you with cost-effective methods of encouraging video production across your organization without overwhelming your experts.

You'll discover how to think strategically about repurposing content your business already produces. And you'll find out how you can get additional mileage out of sales calls, live demos, employee training, and more. You'll learn how to turn internal employee training into sales and marketing content, how to churn out product demo videos without overwhelming subject matter experts, and how to get maximum value out of every video you produce.

Takeaways

—How to turn internal employee training into sales and marketing content.
—How to churn out product demo videos without overwhelming your experts
—How to get more mileage out of each video your company produces.

ABOUT JUSTIN BROCK

Justin Brock is the Digital Marketing Manager at Bomgar Corporation. Over the past 13 years, he's worked to turn one-off content produced by sales and product teams into evergreen content that brings in more customers. As one of the earliest employees at Bomgar, he has insight into marketing strategies that work for multiple stages of company maturity, from start-up to enterprise.