So, everyone I speak to these days that are involved in some sort of Web 2.0 initiative tell me how much effort they are placing on content.   I have to laugh, since many of us have been evangelizing the notion of content setting the context for a customer experience for at least a year now.

I just re-read a post by David Armano on Technorati + Authority, which discussed Technorati’s changes in its rating system.   Related to David’s last year were comments on content in general and its quality.   I’ve mentioned to David that  content “design” and the related experience seems to lag functional and interface components of experience design.  In essence, content is the stepchild of design.
So where is content in your marketing and experience design efforts?  Its been my experience that content design is a continual effort, requiring intensive attention. Your goal?  Getting your content to a level where it becomes a value added part of the customer experience?  I talk to customers weekly. What I hear is that there is always too much, not enough third party or UGC and that the content they tend to come across on on supplier sites is jargon rich.

Content is the cornerstone of a superior customer experience because it provides the context in which the experience takes place.  How do do you ensure that that cornerstone won’t crumble?

1. Dedicate a team to focus solely on the content aspects of the experience.
2. Focus on What you say  - its clear to me that most companies have a lot to say, more than they know what to do with. But what I hear from customers (and this is so obvious) is don’t tell us too much, tell us the right things.  Also, give me two perspectives, one that is role based and personalized to what I do and give me a functional view. In my work at SAP we actually saw clear geographic differences here with NA executives looking more for a role based content experience while stakeholders in EMEA were looking more for a functional perspective.  We don’t have data on APJ yet.
3. How you say it - one thing you need to spend time on is your “Content Tonality.”  Many companies have been accused, and rightly so at times, of taking a rather circuitous route to delivering a message.  To address this issue,  focusing on the source - your content producers.  Train your content producers to align their content with the Voice of the Brand.   Content should be plain spoken - we use blogs in our training as examples of the type of writing we are looking for. We are striving for a conversational tone, honest, impactful, positive etc.
4. Who do you say it to - I referenced this above. The content must align to specific personas based on who you are trying to communicate with.  What is most important is being able to personalize the content during the buying experience so that enables customers to develop an affinity for the brand which in turn will convert into revenues for said brand.

Things like radical transparency, entertainment value, co-creation are all critical elements of a next generation customer experience but without contextual based content, its all just window-dressing.