The University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (SMBS) was recently partner in a major web revamp project at the University at Buffalo. As a result of that project, we employ content strategy every day in our communications practices.

Called the Web Content Initiative, this multi-year project had a number of goals. Chief among them was changing how we "do" our websites. Instead of the usual new coat of paint, this project re-examined all assumptions and practices from the very start. We examined a lot of practices, from the micro to the macro, and selected those we thought were strongest and brought the best ideas to our project.

Start with the content inventory/audit

The content inventory/audit told us what we had and gave us the opportunity to review the quality of the material. We had a good start but almost all of the content needed significant work. From the content audit, we knew we had some 'bragging points' about the school: points of pride in the basic sciences and translational medicine arena.

Mental models

At the same time, we began Indi Young's mental model process. I believe mental models are invaluable in learning your audience's concerns, task needs, headspace. With that information, you can group tasks/needs and identify commonalilities in audience segments.

This snippet from our larger mental model document shows how content (below the thick grey line) should support the audience task towers. M1 and M3 refer to Matchseeker levels. Matchseekers are one type of audience segment identifed during the mental model process.

The matchseeker tasks (the boxes in the upper towers) are supported by several content areas but I'm going to focus on the 'research highlights & accomplishments' area for now.

Information architecture

The image at right shows an "on the ground" view of content needs. As you "zoom out" in the mental model chart, you get a picture of how that information should be aligned and organized. At the start of the project, we did considerable research into how other schools and organizations built their sites, again from macro to micro, so we had some basic design patterns to inform our starting point. We also used books like The Design of Sites and design pattern sites to make sure we weren't going to far afield from user expectations.

Content alignment

Once we had the IA, we aligned all the content from our inventory with the proper sections of the IA. In this case, our research points of pride ended up in Research Highlights, under the larger heading of Research.

A content strategy guide

I hesitate to gloss over this step too much as it was absolutely crucial to helping our new-to-web-writing-but-very-experienced writers understand what they needed to accomplish on each and ever page in the new site. I cannot overstate just how helpful the overview IA and content strategy guide delivered by my colleague Eileen Ruberto was. We tried to implement a site without benefit of this guide and, while it was eventually launched, there was significant confusion, rework, and last minute work.

A sidebar: working from just an IA

The first site in the chute in our project was the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Biological Sciences. We had an IA (in a Google Docs spreadsheet) to work from as our guide to page content. The chief problem was that each page has multiple content areas: the main content well and the sidebars. The initial IA called for content in both left and right sidebars; as delivered, the left sidebar content was deprecated.

Within each page, there were what I'd micro-content areas. The Laboratory Rotations page is an excellent example of these micro-content areas. On the left, all but the Related Links portion of the menu is built automatically. The Related Links must be explicitly curated.

On the right, we have content that supports the 'flexibility of our program' and social validation message needs. While our writers knew about and had prepared the individual profiles behind the teaser blocks that appear on the right, they were unaware of the need to wordsmith the headings and finely edit the teaser text. This additional content requirement was not reflected in the initial IA spreadsheet.

But it's the main content well that proved so challenging. Almost every page has an introduction statement, at the top in larger type, that summarizes the content (and messages) of the page. Our writers had prepared the main body content for each page but were surprised when the introduction statement element was revealed.

The content strategy guide

Eileen's implementation of Kristina Halvorson's page tables (page 96) was the lifesaver.  In the example on the right, you can see how each area of the page is described (see it larger). The message focus is readily available to the writer as are instructions about what the content needs are for each section. Because this was still an iterative process, you'll see a bunch of "TBD" areas. For the most part, though, the writers had the tools they needed to complete a page.

If you look at the page as published, you can trace the connection between the messages and how they were delivered. I'll take you through each point:

Key points in positioning (specifically, impressive faculty, state of the art facilities)

The impressive faculty are discussed and pictured in the teasers on this page. State of the art facilities, as it turned out, was more than could be shoehorned into this page and we featured it in areas like Core Facilities and Shared Resources.

At the SMBS, you'll have access to the labs, facilities, and resources you need to be successful

This is implied by the list of points of pride on this page. It's also supported by Current Research News in the Related Links area. Again, the specifics about our labs, facilities, and resources were taken to Core Facilities.

A school with an international reputation for excellence in areas of basic science and clinical translational research

The quality of the points of pride selected for this page speak to the international reputation and translational research. Basic science research is more challenging to reflect and we trumpet that in our News and Events section.

SMBS continues to extend their impact at the local, national, and international level

The points of pride on this page range from historic (pacemaker, Lippes Loop) to more contemporary (COURAGE Trial, Bio-Blower).

You'll see that the example cited in the Content Description area of the page table (development of surfactant) is on this page (Infasurf). The teasers on this page lead to full descriptions of the research highlight. Where appropriate, we link to the faculty member's profile and their department, providing an easy connection for prospectives to learn about a faculty member they might study under or collaborate with.

Full circle

Looking back on the mental model, you can see how the two task towers I identified, "Look for organizations with good reputations" and "Look for organizations that will support my growth", are "supported" by the Research Highlights page. I didn't say much about audiences but if you look at the example page, you can see that the audience is identified. Matchseeker in this case includes everyone from prospective student to prospective faculty. The Research Highlights page is important content for all our prospectives, on different levels.

How do we employ this on a daily basis?

The content strategy guide is one of several tools we use when developing new content for individual pages and to guide development of new sections and departmental sites. Having the key tasks identified at a section and page level is invaluable in staying on message.

Early in the process, before we had the content strategy guide and page tables, I had some heated discussions with a colleague about communicating content, messaging, and task needs to our writers. My colleague insisted that the needs had been communicated to the writers, several times and over the course of several months. Unfortunately, when it came time to create and edit content, that information was not captured anywhere. Capturing and preserving the critical drivers for the site, sections, and pages are what make page tables invaluable. In my opinion, this is not an option.