Colleen Jones

Colleen Jones is a Jedi Master of content effectiveness. She helps organizations plan, create, and improve operations that produce user-focused content.

Colleen and I talked about:

her return to consulting after 9 months leading the content team at Mailchimp

content effectiveness - how it's a needed new way of measuring content succcess that fits conceptually between content quantity measures and ROI calculations

how the six dimensions of her content effectiveness framework work in different business contexts, like marketing and product experience and support

each of the six dimensions of content effectiveness:

discoverability or findability - how easy it is for customers or users to actually find and consume content

polish - whether customers or users perceive the content format and the style appropriate for the experience, channel, or touchpoint

accuracy - whether the content is correct, current, up-to-date

usefulness - how easy it is to use the content

relevance - how well the content actually addresses the user's concerns

influence - whether the content inspires the user to take action

examples of how going into detail can help users - "the more specific, the more terrific"

how easy it is now to quickly get data about the impact of content

content intelligence - a systematic way of using data about interactions with your content to inform your content strategy

how the game of content intelligence is more like poker (constantly making decisions with partial information) than chess (where all info is out in the open)

how content is a long-play game, like poker

content operations - "the work of actually getting the content done, of actually making content strategy part of how a business does things"

how established content disciplines like journalism and media offer a lot to draw on when creating operations

how establishing content operations in an enterprise can both shift writers and editors into content strategy positions and create new roles, like content engineering and content analyst

Colleen's upcoming appearance at the Content Strategy Seattle meetup

Colleen's Bio

A content expert and Star Wars fan, Colleen Jones is the author of The Content Advantage and founder of Content Science, a content strategy and intelligence firm where she has advised or trained hundreds of the world's leading organizations to become Jedi Masters of digital content. She also is the former head of content at Mailchimp, the small business marketing platform recognized by Inc. as 2017 Company of the Year.

Colleen has earned recognition as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Women in Content Marketing by a TopRank study, a Content Change Agent by Society of Technical Communication's Intercom Magazine, and one of the Top 50 Most Influential Content Strategists by multiple organizations. Colleen is a member of Mensa and an active supporter of women in technology. Colleen speaks at conferences and corporate events around the world, from San Francisco to Sydney.

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/mJhRvRlha78

Podcast Intro Transcript

As a content strategist, you need to show your peers, your boss, your clients how effective your work is. As a content professional, you want to be as smart as you can about how you plan and create content. And as a manager you want to build a content operation that integrates content strategy into your organization. Colleen Jones has some great insight into all of these challenges. We talk in this episode about content effectiveness, content intelligence, and content operations.

Interview Transcript

Larry:

Hi everyone,