Understanding Content Ecosystems
How do you build a variety well-rounded content for your site? And is it all working toward a common goal? If it seems disparate, maybe it's time to look at your content development, writing, and publishing as an ecosystem where all parts – big and small alike – have their place and are working together to support that ecosystem. But how does it work? Marketing and Communications Lead Shawn Smith shares his thoughts and provides a framework in this week's Secret Sauce. TRANSCRIPT Allison Manley [AM]: Hi, and welcome to the Secret Sauce, brought to you by Palantir.net. This is a short podcast that offers a quick tip on some small thing you can do to help your business run better. I’m Allison Manley, an account manager here at Palantir, and today’s advice comes from Shawn Smith who is going to talk about how content ecosystems can work for you. Shawn Smith [SS]: Hi I'm Shawn Smith, Marketing and Communications Lead here at Palantir.net. Today I'm going to talk to you about the concept of a content ecosystem, and why it might be the right choice for your team and organization with regard to content creation, publishing, and how it dovetails with your overall marketing strategy. This is a big topic, of course, so I'm going to do my best to give you a high level overview of how it could work, without getting too far into the weeds. Think of it as a general framework, with which you can begin to understand how you could use it, and also how to think about the development of your content (including but not limited to content verticals). It also has to deal with your sales and marketing goals, customer personas, and other important considerations, so the assumption going in is that you have some of this articulated. With that in mind, let's start at the beginning: an ecosystem. In biological terms, an ecosystem is a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment, or, in general use, a complex network or interconnected system. The important terms here are community, interaction, network or system, and interconnectedness. And health, but we'll get into that later. I think this concept is particularly useful if you are part of a small marketing team. Here at Palantir, the team is quite small… in other words, it’s just me. I have some help from our account managers, our sales folks, and others. BUT there is a big caveat here regardless of marketing team size, and that is the opportunity for team-sourced content. After all, we have about 25 different people working at different disciplines in the company. Given that content publishing is hugely important for a service-based company like Palantir for sales purposes, we *must* have a variety of different content types to attract and keep engaged our various audience types (and ultimately lead them to choosing us for projects, of course). We create content about the kind work we do, share insights on new technology, details on events at which we're speaking, how our company operates culturally, job openings, our client's projects, and many other types. And while we work in a variety of disciplines, some, like development and supporting technologies, are quite technical in nature. So we'll use something technical as an example for developing content as part of an effective content ecosystem. But before we talk about content, let's start with the 20,000 ft view of this content ecosystem framework to understand how it operates: It's important to think holistically, and build upon some sort of overarching goal your organization has. What is the goal upon which we can build a foundation for our marketing plan and strategy? We value collaboration and transparency both internally and with our clients at Palantir. And with our 20th Anniversary around the corner, we're focusing on allowing our company values to surface throughout the content we generate. That's a great goal to use an anchor. From there, we think of a supporting th