As the first step in a complete overhaul of my nonprofit employer’s website, I’ve engaged the services of Brain Traffic to help us develop a content strategy for the site. BT President Kristina Halvorson literally wrote the book on the subject. (Or one of the books on it. Anyway, I got a lot out of it.)

Here’s a presentation Kristina did on the subject at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. One of the most compelling statements contained herein is this:

Online, we don’t just see or read about your brand. We use it.

That should be one of your big takeaways. If your mission as a nonprofit is to get people to do something, then your website should be a tool for doing. No doubt you give visitors the “opportunity” to make a donation or volunteer their time. Good for you. But what else? Does it also offer less self-serving tools that help them advance the cause? Are you enabling your employees and volunteers to do their work more effectively?

If joining your mailing list and giving you money are the only things your website makes easy, you might want to take another look at the tool delivery opportunities available to you.

photo by tiago . ribeiro

While everyone else is excitedly chatting up Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith and Gary Vaynerchuk‘s soon-to-be-released Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, the book I’ve been most looking forward to is Kristina Halvorson‘s Content Strategy for the Web. (Yes, I plan to read the other two as well. Leave me alone.)

Kristina is the founder and president of Brain Traffic, a Minneapolis-based agency specializing in content strategy and writing for the web. She’s widely acknowledged as one of the leading authorities and evangelists for better web content.

One of the interesting paradoxes of the seemingly bottomless well that is the web is that, while you can pour an infinite amount of content into your site, too much information will overwhelm your audience and make your site less useful, not more. Likewise, poorly organized content will simply frustrate users and drive them away to simpler, more intuitive sites that offer what they seek.

Kristina’s book was just released and I haven’t had time to read it yet, but a quick skim tells me she’s a kindred spirit.

Her first admonition: Do less, not more. Yes, there is enormous pressure to constantly add more to a site as new products and services are introduced, tools such as Twitter and blogs generate additional content and, as Kristina puts it, “the Great River of Content flows freely, rapidly flooding our customers with too much information and drowning its keepers (web editors and content managers) in the process.”

But, she adds, web content is pretty much pointless unless it does one of two things:

1. Supports a key business objective.
2. Supports a user (or customer) in completing a task.

We’ve all been to sites that subscribe to the “more is better” approach. It isn’t. More’s just more. If there’s content on your site that doesn’t meet these objectives, chances are you don’t really need it to achieve your communication goals. Worse, it may be getting in the way.

photo by wildxplorer

Time once again for a quick roundup of the 10 most popular links I tweeted last month. Twitter continues to be a fixation for many of us, but there also was lots of interest in storytelling, internal communication and social media in general. In order of popularity:

Advice From the Pros: Telling It Like It Is courtesy of Brain Traffic, noted content strategist Kristina Halvorson‘s firm, preaches the gospel of short, sweet and simple (my kind of sermon).

Content Creation Strategy for Nonprofits is a slide deck from Kivi Leroux Miller on how you can effectively manage all the content you create in support of your marketing and communication efforts.

Peter Shankman, the man behind HARO, asks the eternal question, Is Your Social Media Expert Really an Expert?

Time for a Twitter Reality Check, courtesy of yours truly, takes a look at the reality behind the hype that is Twitter (and I’ll be reviewing some of the feedback I received in my next post).

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever looks at how an unlikely underdog stunned the marketing world at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Wild Apricot did us all a real service in compiling Social Media for Nonprofits: 26 Presentations. Now there’s no excuse for not being ready to explain this stuff to your organization.

Kevin Spacey Explains Twitter to Letterman pretty much sums it up. Watch it. It’s funny stuff.

Use of Social Networking Tools Growing in Nursing, Medical Schools looks at a new study that finds growing popularity of Web 2.0 tools in health curricula.

How to Tell Your Story in 100 Words or Less is my take on the value we all can derive from having an elevator pitch.

Internal Communications and Twitter is me again on how Twitter might be used to support an effective internal communications program.

That’s it for July’s tweets. I’m out there every day in search of useful info on communications, marketing, social media and more, so be sure to follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss the good stuff.

I’ve sung the praises of Kristina Halvorson before and it’s time to do it again. Here’s a great presentation in support of her belief that having a content strategy is key to developing an effective content marketing effort.

I’ve long had antipathy for traditional marketing (read: pressure sales) methods and am excited to see the field looking seriously at the use of rich, useful content to build trustworthy relationships that lead to sales. Joe Pulizzi through his Junta42 blog has really led the charge on this; here’s his take on Kristina’s presentation.

His takeaway in a nutshell:

1. Relevance is key.

2. Information must be useful.

3. You need a content strategist to be successful.

4. Think like a publisher, not a marketer.

5. Content is a valuable business asset. Treat it as such.

I’ll add one additional note to the publishing industry, particularly newspapers and magazines. If this all sounds familiar, it’s because this is what you used to do. It’s past time for publishers to return to a more focused content marketing strategy built around your original brand promise. Otherwise you won’t be around for the next phase in the ongoing evolution of journalism.

photo by Gaetan Lee

Here’s more great advice from Brain Traffic on writing for the Web. It applies equally well to your writing in general. Print it out, stick on the wall next to your computer and follow it at all times.

If I’m ever in a position to hire someone to help me with my content strategy, the folks at Brain Traffic are on my short list.

As a former (long ago) journalist and longtime communications guy, it’s so refreshing to see custom publishing evolve into content marketing. I’ve always resisted being identified as a marketing guy because I don’t enjoy selling people things that they don’t need or don’t answer their questions.

Content marketing is all about engaging people in a dialogue about their needs and desires, and then tailoring products and services to address those needs, wants and desires.

Here’s a brief slide show from Brain Traffic’s Kristina Halvorson that looks at the value of content strategy.