Front Cover -- The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web -- Copyright -- Contents -- Dedication -- Foreword -- Introduction: Why Content Matters -- Solving Your Content Problem -- The Inherent Tension in Content -- Content Is Messy. It's Complicated. It's Time-Consuming -- The Mess That Can Be Managed -- Why Following a System Is Key -- Part 1: Content as Conversations -- Rule #1: Start with Your Audience -- Rule #2: Involve Stakeholders Early and Often -- Part 2: Content Floats -- Rule #3: Keep It Iterative -- Rule #4: Create Multidisciplinary Content Teams -- Part 3: Content Strategy: People and Process -- Rule #5: Make Governance Central -- Part 4: Sustaining the Conversation -- Rule #6: Position the Right Talent in the Right Roles -- Rule #7: Invest in Professionals and Trust Them -- You Are Going to Be Great at This -- Part 1: Content Is a Conversation -- Chapter 1: Understanding Branding, Content Strategy, and Content Marketing -- The Problem Grows -- The Challenge of the Web -- Crowdsourcing: Information from Trusted Sources -- Should Businesses Really Care? -- Understanding Content -- The Art of Conversation -- Branding: A Brand Is a Promise -- What Is a Brand? -- Defining Brands -- Who Defines a Brand? -- Managing the Brand -- Brand Definition -- Employee Training About the Brand -- Brand Consistency -- Consistency Across Channels -- Build a Process: Content Strategy and Content Marketing Reinforce Branding -- What Is Content Strategy? -- Systems Create Freedom -- What Is Useful, Usable Content? -- What Is a Repeatable Lifecycle? -- Talk About What the Consumer Wants to Hear -- Focus on the Customer -- Content Strategy Will Save You from Being a Brian -- What Is Content Marketing? -- That Better Way Is Content Marketing -- Conversations Facilitate the Sale -- Moving Forward with New Understanding.

The Five Basic Questions Answered -- Summary -- References -- Rule 1: Start with Your Audience -- Who Is On The Other End Of The Line? -- Who Are These People? -- What Do Our Customers Want? -- Getting to Know Your Customers-The Tools -- # 1: Customer Personas -- # 2: Audience Research -- Customer Research -- Interactive Data -- Ethnographic Studies -- # 3: Access to Your Content -- Now You Have Tools -- Case in Point-Nike -- Summary -- References -- Chapter 2: Making the Case for Content -- Understanding Business Objectives -- Defining Business Objectives -- Meeting the Achievement Threshold -- Understanding Your Sales and Business Cycles -- Different Types of Media -- Analyzing the Current State of Affairs -- Approaching the C-Suite -- Understanding the C-Suite -- What the C-Suite Cares About -- How to Explain Content to the C-Suite -- How to Convince Each Member of the C-Suite About Content -- How to Explain Content Strategy and Customer Engagement (for B2B and B2C) -- Content Cheat Sheet to Convince the C-Suite -- Overriding the Objections -- Summary -- References -- Rule 2: Involve Stakeholders Early and Often -- Who Are Stakeholders? -- Defining Stakeholders -- Content Is a Shared Asset -- Internal Versus External-Stakeholders Versus Your Audience -- Internal Stakeholders -- Build Personas of Your Internal Stakeholders -- Prioritizing Stakeholders -- What You Need from Stakeholders -- Stakeholders as Information Sources -- Understand Stakeholders as Part of the Publishing Lifecycle -- Your Job Is to Gather the Facts -- Uncovering Group Dynamics -- Ownership: Setting Up a Roadmap for Stakeholders -- Questions You Might Ask -- Roadmap Step #1: Where Are We Now? -- Roadmap Step #2-Where Are We Going? -- Roadmap Step #3-How Will We Get There? -- Follow-Through: Keeping the Stakeholders Involved.

Stakeholder Tasks for Content Editing and Development -- Summary -- References -- Case Study: XONEX -- Case Study: XONEX ( Holden, 2012) -- Breathing New Life into an Old Sales Approach -- Doing Research to Get Answers -- Organizing the Content around Business Objectives -- What Worked? -- Continuing the Success -- What's Next -- Reference -- Part 2: Content Floats -- Chapter 3: Constructing the Conversation -- The Internet Is the Room of Requirement -- Magic Content: Making Diamonds Out of Coal -- Understanding Substance and Structure -- Creating a Content Framework -- The Content Framework -- Content Is Where Information Lives and Thrives -- The Three Parts of Content -- Content Formats That Flex -- Recognizable Formats Attract Attention -- Content: Formats, Platforms, and Channels -- Supporting the Sales and Buying Process Cycle -- Understanding the Buying Process -- The Law of Trust -- Business Is about Relationships -- Content Supports the Loop -- Controlling the Content Experience -- Understanding and Creating a Content Mix -- Create the Content Mix -- Types of Content -- Summary -- References -- Rule 3: Keep It Iterative -- Getting to Wear the Digital Crown-Iterate for Greatness -- Content Iteration: The Key to Great -- Digital Is Always a Moving Target as Technologies Change -- Business Objectives Shift -- Process Changes as Staff Changes -- Understanding the Growth Mindset -- Failure Is a Necessary Step to Success -- What Is an Iterative Approach? -- Content as a Product -- Managing Content within the Organization: Setting Up the Roadmap -- Don't Focus on Design Right Away (It Eats Up Too Much Time) -- Captain Content (Ahoy!) -- What Does a Great Iterative Process Look Like? -- The Iteration Roadmap -- Process Evaluation: "Is This Working?" -- Review Past Projects on a Regular Basis -- Evaluation Questions You Should Ask.

Incorporate Lessons Learned -- Summary -- References -- Chapter 4: Publishing Content for Everywhere -- Unlearn What You Have Learned -- Content as a Concept -- Attracting Surfers -- Intersection of People, Process, and Technology -- What Is Multichannel Publishing? -- Making Your Content Accessible on Any Device -- They Say How and When -- Changing Patterns of Content Consumption -- Pages Are Dead -- Strip Content from Display -- So If It's Not About Pages, Then What? -- Where We Fix Your Problem -- Defining Some Terms -- Why Design Isn't Always the Answer -- Adaptive Content to the Rescue -- Reusable Content -- Structured Content -- How to Structure Your Content -- Welcome to the World of Hip Hop -- Content Modeling -- Content Management Systems (CMS) -- It Comes Down to People, Yet Again -- The Challenge of Content Authoring -- Content Authoring and Creativity -- Usable CMS -- A New Type of Content Consumption -- Are You Planning for Content Properly? -- Summary -- References -- Chapter 5: Engagement Strategies -- The Medium (Channel) Is the Message -- Deciding on the Right Channels to Distribute Content -- Defining Channels -- The Rise of Social Media, Digital Channels, and the Multi-Screen World -- Think Engagement-Think Community -- Identifying the Community and Its Channels -- Find Your Audience on the Right Channels -- Engaging the Community -- Entertain and Be Relevant! -- Keep the Conversation Going -- Invite Them to Engage Further -- What to Do If the Community Doesn't Commune? -- How and When to Build a Community -- It Isn't Social Media-It's Audience Engagement -- The Mind-Shift to a Culture of Community -- Figuring Out What to Measure -- Showing the C-Suite that Content Is Worth It -- Just to Reiterate … -- Summary -- References -- Rule 4: Create Multidisciplinary Content Teams -- Content: Information and the Process.

Things Have Changed -- Value in Breaking Down Silos -- What Do We Mean by Multidisciplinary? -- Accessing Talent in the Organization -- Why Multidisciplinary Teams? -- Adapt to Changing Technologies -- Break Down Silos -- Crossing Organizational Barriers -- Better Ideas -- Find the Right People -- Who to Look For -- Managing Audience Engagement Teams -- Manage in Smaller Teams for Cross Collaboration -- Create Guidelines -- Consider the Committee -- Summary -- References -- Case Study: REI -- References -- Part 3: Effective Content Strategy: People, Process, and Technology -- Chapter 6: Understand Your Customers -- About Personas -- The Answers You Need -- What Is a Persona? -- Personas Represent Your People -- Why Use Personas? -- How to Create Personas -- Personas Workshop -- Questions That Will Get You Started -- Backing Personas Up with Data -- What Should Our Personas Look Like? -- Three Categories of Journey Maps -- Seeker Maps -- Decision Journey Maps -- Interactive Scenarios -- The Challenges of Using Personas in Large Organizations -- Align Content Development with the Largest Persona Group -- Summary -- References -- Chapter 7: Frame Your Content -- Why Frame? -- What Is "Framing Your Content"? -- Identity Pillars -- Brand Attributes -- How Do We Define Our Brand? -- Brand Attributes Versus Identity Pillars -- Creating Identity Pillars -- Example #1: Hospital Cure -- Example #2: American Faucet Maker -- Messaging Architecture -- Creating a Messaging Architecture -- Establishing Pillar Priority -- The Interplay of Messaging and Branding -- Voice and Tone -- Defining Your Voice -- Defining Your Tone -- Gogo-Getting Voice and Tone Right -- The Payoff of Framing -- How Do We Express These Guidelines? -- Where Should These Guidelines Live? -- Who Owns the Content Framing? -- How Often Should We Review Our Content Frames? -- Summary -- References.

Chapter 8: The Content Strategists' Toolkit.