Content Strategy Your Yearbook Brand. LISA BATTLES, Content Director, Livability Publishing

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Angel Taylor
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1 Your Yearbook Brand LISA BATTLES, Content Director, Livability Publishing

2 FARM BUREAU MAGAZINES (Quarterly) STATEWIDE AG GUIDES (Annual) STATEWIDE AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT GUIDES (Annual) RELOCATION MAGAZINES PROMOTING CITIES & REGIONS (Annual)

5 for Livability publishing vs. Yearbooks SIMILARITIES Our Livability brand elevates city brands like a sophisticated print and digital brochure, giving cities outbound show pieces along with the content marketing element of Livability.com. Likewise, your yearbook has the power to carry your school s brand far beyond the walls of the institution. The annual publishing parameter for us and you mean we are both tasked with meaningfully and effectively capturing a place and time. This is especially true for a yearbook staff, as people typically keep them as lifetime mementos. Even without these similarities, delivering a captivating communications product that captures your brand can be simple. The truth is, effective content strategy is nothing more than creating an elegant plan.

6 WHERE TO BEGIN? List everything you already know. Brand Project Theme Core Content Start with key elements of your institution s brand. State your theme. List your core content - every section and topic you must include within each.

7 WHERE TO BEGIN? Brand identity is what a business or institution wants you to believe about it. Brand Brand image is what people actually think about a business or institution. Know the difference between the two and understand your powerful role in aligning them.

8 WHERE TO BEGIN? A theme can be predetermined, such as celebrating an anniversary or other milestone, Theme OR Your theme can be emergent, developing during your research and planning process.

9 WHERE TO BEGIN? List every section you must include. List every topic you must cover - within sections when possible. Core Content List every open section for which you ll have some content flexibility.

10 5 Steps to Content Strategy RESEARCH CATEGORIZE PRIORITIZE DEVELOP EXECUTE Learn everything about your audience, your institution s brand and the most significant events and people expected to define the year. Take the new content ideas you ve found through research and place them into sections on your core content outline. Take a big-picture view of your outline to see which categories are longest and in which areas you may need to do more research. Clean up your outline by cutting and combining ideas and giving specific directives about the stories you want told. Use your content plan to set deadlines, gather and edit content, determine pagination, direct design and maintain your message.

11 RESEARCH Learn as much as you can about your institution s brand, your audience and the key people, news and trends that impact the place and time you are documenting. Resources University communications office (brand identity) Other students (brand image) Community & business leaders Internet Previous editions

12 CATEGORIZE Hope you love lists! This step involves nothing more than good, old-fashioned list making. Take your research notes and place them into your core content list within the general categories they best fit. Don t worry if some sections start getting long. You ll handle that in the next step.

13 PRIORITIZE You may feel like you are back at square one when you look at your long list. Don t. To quickly determine which items are most important, step back and see which categories are the longest. These are where you ll need to put most of your resources. Look for themes within categories Look for overarching themes across categories Do more research to fill any holes

14 DEVELOP Clean up your list into a true strategy. This will be your project s blueprint. Move ideas into the categories where they ll stay. Evolve your research notes into concise descriptions of everything that will be in the book, from feature story topics (with their desired angles) to labeling the sections for student class photos and an index. At the top of the plan, include: School brand statement & project theme Content style & tone directives for writers and photographers

15 EXECUTE Once everyone is on the same page(s), the content plan gives everyone an invaluable point of reference to proceed with the plan for the book, cover all necessary bases and stay on message. You can use it to: set deadlines edit copy, features and photos to ensure all align with your brand and theme give your pagination and design team a framework for set up and design

16 Summary BEYOND THE BOOK Starting a content strategy begins with what you already know about the institution, the project s theme, structure and what you must include. And while it s still summer, you can start now! To set a content strategy, just research, categorize, prioritize, develop and execute. Set a deadline for the content strategy to be final, and stick to it. This keeps the project on task and on message.... But prepare for some flexibility under exceptional circumstances. Use collaborative technology (Google Drive is great) to share your plan and check in frequently to ensure all content meets the plan s standard (and deadlines). You can use this approach to define the scope of and implement just about any project - not just communications projects.

Making A Difference In 90 Days. Making Contact. How will you keep in touch with clients and prospects?

Making A Difference In 90 Days Making Contact How will you keep in touch with clients and prospects? Gathering Contact Information Names, addresses Phone numbers E-mail addresses Social media handles Image: