Content ecosystems: Why content doesn’t work in isolation
Content in organizations or companies is often planned and produced in pieces: a post, a page, a campaign. Each piece gets created, approved and published, usually by a team focused on its own goals, tools and timeline. The result is content that works in isolation but not necessarily as a whole. This is what the class “Developing content for complex environments” I did during my master’s deals with, that’s where I first connected these dots. For me it became clear that there are concrete ways to work better with the content a company produces, and that it is worth looking at more closely.
The silo problem
Bailie and Urbina (2013) describe complexity as something with many parts that interact in multiple ways, resulting in something greater than the sum of its parts. In content terms, that means multiple content types, multiple teams and multiple production rhythms that all need to come together into one.
In most organizations, content is produced across departments that operate largely independently, each with different owners, formats and definitions of what good content looks like. The result is that departments often have no idea what is going on elsewhere. But they all represent the same organization to the same user. If these parts and dots don’t connect, the experience becomes fragmented (even when the individual pieces are well made).
First aid for fragmented content
One concrete first step for fragmented content is to do content ecosystem mapping, a way to make the system visible before trying to fix it. Content ecosystem mapping shows how everything in an organization’s content environment connects: which teams own which content, what feeds what, what publishes where. Relationships are labeled with verbs like “owns”, “feeds” or “publishes to”.
Creating such a map starts by listing all parts of the ecosystem. Teams, channels, audiences and tools, then draw connections between them. From there, the relationships get labeled and refined until the map reflects reality. One of the useful side effects of the process is that it shows where people have different ideas about how things work, before those differences cause problems.
In practice, you have to understand the system before you can change it. Content ecosystems will definitely have a place in my thinking from now on, and maybe help some future organizations fix their silos.
Note: If you are interested to read more about how to develop content ecosystems, I can recommend this article from Hillary Marsh.
Sources:
- Bailie, R. A., & Urbina, N. (2013). Content strategy: Connecting the dots between business, brand, and benefits. XML Press.
- Marsh, H. (2016, October 31). Developing your content ecosystem. Medium. https://medium.com/contentstrategy/developing-your-content-ecosystem-2d9f8672693f