Talk:Strikeforce:Content Strategy

Purpose

Procedure is everything. You cannot expect everyone to know everything, and there are different default go-to tools for each individual. What you can do is supply a single document that acts as a roadmap, to guide them in the use of your information system.

Our content strategy is a set of rules to follow when creating new content. We need to describe how to categorize it, where to post it, what channels work for what types of content, and how the content should be formatted for each channel. Ideally, it should be in some kind of easy-to-navigate linked map, which is where hypertext comes in handy.

This strategy should be as simple as possible, while covering the greatest breadth possible. To that end, we should give the site a very simple structure: No more than 7 main categories, and not more than 3 links away from the main page. There should be only a few ways to do things: Add an expiring event, add a managed project, create informational content specific to a particular medium, and combine pages of similar content into categories.

For example, from the Main Page:

• Visit the list of all Projects
  • Browse the category Cook all the Things
    • View a single recipe
      • Possibly find a small informational page relevant to something within the recipe

Current Structure and Content

Main Site

Our main presence is skullspace.ca.

Links:

• Calendar
• Wiki
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Code
• Store
  • Page not found
• FAQ
  • Wiki Category: Required Reading
• Contact Us
  • Silly mailto link

• No link to the blog
• The store needs to be checked up on
• The Twitter panel needs to be fixed

Immediate suggestions: More grouping. Facebook, Twitter, and Github (any external link) should be separated from the main navigation and possibly replaced by icons. There should be simple icons beside Calendar, Blog, Wiki, FAQ, and Contact Us. FAQ should be renamed, or an FAQ page should be created on the wiki. (Context: "What is SkullSpace? Why would I want to join? What is available? What kinds of things has SkullSpace--or have SkullSpace members--done?") If this page remains on the wiki, there needs to be an easy link to get back to the home site.

A good idea would be to load page content directly from wiki pages and into the bodies of skullspace.ca pages.

Additionally, we need a content strategy. We have several channels:

• Skullspace.ca
  • Wiki
  • Calendar
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Mailing Lists
  • Many of them
• Meetings
• Billboards at the Space
• Postings at external websites

We can create some content categories and think of ways to tailor updates to those various formats. Who has access? We need to list our media channels for members to send info to.

How will content spread through different channels? How will an event be announced on Facebook, as opposed to Meetup, as opposed to Twitter? We could probably just wing it and translate things down to 140 characters on the fly, but it would be better to have a procedural approach; possibly a template.

We should discuss designing and posting a letterhead and/or branding guidelines to the wiki. When we're throwing an event and we want to print up some quick posters, we need quick access to the graphical assets. This is how we encourage content to disperse through many different media.

How about SkullSpace Event templates for various word processor software?

Wiki

Main links:

• Wiki Main Page
• Blog
• Chat
• Community Events
  • (Put this in 2nd place?)
• Facebook
• Photos
• Twitter
• Videos
• Recent Changes
• Random Page
• Help

Chat: No content.

Community Events: Broken calendar

Recent Changes: Move to toolbox?

Random Page: Useless?

Help: Load with good content.

From the main page:

• Main_Page -> SkullSpace

(Can this be changed so that SkullSpace *is* the main page?)

• Category: Required Reading

Should there be a logo in the upper left corner?

Cleaning up

Fill out the Help page with a short page detailing simple formatting and the use of things like templates and sections.

Make sure the main page is a proper table of contents for the entire wiki.

Go through orphaned pages and figure out what needs to be deleted and what needs to be included in other pages or archived. http://wiki.skullspace.ca/Special:LonelyPages

Take an audit of all pages. Make sure they're categorized properly. I can think of a few types:

• Old archived things, which must be clearly archived and dated (and should be sortable)
• Lists of items that belong under one main umbrella
• On-going projects
• Updates, which perhaps don't belong on the Wiki (or should be immediately archived)
• Individual meeting minutes should all be categorized on a single Minutes page, and sorted by date.

What is our content? The entire hierarchy of content should be mapped and some of it transformed into different formats for other channels.