Once upon a time, long, long ago (not as long ago as when dinosaurs ruled, but at least fifty years ago) the Content Monster was small, lived in a dog house in our backyard, and fed from a very limited menu.
How limited, you may ask? Oh, so limited – he could only feed on content from AM radio, magazines, libraries, and the three network TV channels. Occasionally he could also feed on the PBS channel, but only when the moon was in the second house, Jupiter aligned with Mars, and the rabbit-ear TV antenna picked up its weak analog signal.
And he never ate on Sundays (at least at my house). You see, there was no binge-watching, no on-demand TV, no 800 cable stations – you watched what was aired, when it was aired. The Content Monster really wanted to feed on the original Thirteen Ghosts from 1960, but at my house, Sundays were reserved for golf. The Content Monster hated golf, and claimed Arnold Palmer gave him indigestion, so he went hungry.
Then, technology happened – possibly due to a wizard, or maybe a witch.
And the Content Monster grew to gargantuan proportions, acquired a huge ever-hungry belly, and began grazing 24/7 on the Internet. There were so many à la carte menu items to choose from: Google, Amazon, YouTube, digital books, streaming television, music downloads, podcasts, websites, blogs, emails, e-newsletters, and more. And those televised options – a gazillion channels from all over the world! The Content Monster was unleashed!
The Content Monster moved to the cloud and GrantStation in April 2017, when we launched our new website. No longer were we limited to twelve or fewer tiny low-resolution images on the homepage – the new site was designed to include a four-image slideshow, unlimited content boxes, and myriad side bars, all in high resolution. And keeping the Content Monster happy became a full-time job.
Luckily, GrantStation has a Queen of Content, Jill Cochran – who regularly finds the unicorn of Content Monster satisfaction, in the form of original articles, webinars, and blogs posts, seasoned with fresh, attractive coordinating images. It’s a good thing that Jill has several gnomes to help her, because the Content Monster requires ever more frequent feeding.
I asked Jill for her top tips on quality content generation, and she graciously shared them with all of us:
Invest in quality, high-resolution images
We quickly found that many free images were free for a reason; they lacked the crisp edges, rich colors, and high resolution required for our new website. GrantStation has subscribed to Shutterstock. They have some reasonable plans, and we try to use multi-image vectors to get the most bang for our buck (we have a ten image a month plan.) We quickly learned that we saved the monthly fee in staff time that wasn’t spent 20 pages down a Google query, fruitlessly searching for the perfect royalty-free image.
Original content counts - herd those creative cats
Jill has become a professional content wrangler. We require original GS Insights posts in TrendTrack each week, and an in-depth Tracks to Success magazine-style article each month (with slideshow images to match).
While some websites repurpose other folk’s content, we believe that you come to GrantStation for a fresh perspective on trends and information specific to the world of philanthropy. And maintaining a consistent vision and unified voice week after week, while offering new content, isn’t easy. (Kudos to Upworthy for doing a great job of it.)
While we are blessed to have many talented authors among GrantStation’s staff, they all have “real jobs” – so ensuring that their posts are written, edited, and imaged in a timely fashion takes a ton of “cat herding.”
In addition, the Tracks to Success articles are written by full-time authors/reporters, and working with external creative contributors requires equal levels of organization.
Jill’s best advice? Plan early, add in an extra week’s lead-time, and always have a spare post hidden in your back pocket. Oh yes – and do not hesitate to politely and sweetly nag your contributors.
Disclaimer: GrantStation does use social media to share content of value published by others in the world of NPOs.
Color-coordinate, keep your style consistent, use page reviewers
Do you remember the clothing concept of related separates? A brand would create a seasonal line of coordinated apparel, that all flowed color-wise and stylistically. At GrantStation, we try to do that with our homepage. Within the constraints of the homepage theme colors, we endeavor to have each week’s slideshow flow from a visual perspective, and each week’s content boxes “fit” the overall style.
While the slideshow color flow occasionally gives us trouble, especially if we need to work around an external client’s inflexible image, it is the content boxes that can be most challenging. The content box images are smaller, and often are the logos of various grantmakers. We rely on the website theme’s framework to pull them all together, since the funder logos are not negotiable.
We also spend a great deal of time in review, ensuring that the i’s are dotted, and the t’s are crossed. Our VP of Research reviews the “hard copy” of the homepage content before it is published, and a second set of eyes checks the entire page after it is published. For us, that means that the two content coordinators, the original authors and editors, the website tech, and two final reviewers all go over each week’s content, both text and image. And when our last reviewer finds an error on the published page? It doesn’t happen often, but if you hear a loud “arrrrgh” coming from the GrantStation section of the cloud, I can pretty much guarantee that Ashlyn Simmons found something.
We judge our success on the Cynthia Adams scale (not to be confused with the Richter scale – Cindy is much too kind to cause earthquake shake-ups). An email or online chat from Cindy, praising the week’s homepage, is a winner; no comment means it is just fine. What we do not want is an email explaining all the things that are wrong with the homepage. (Cindy’s background in newspapers has given her a real eye for design, and her critiques are spot-on.)
The point is, visually, close isn’t good enough – content and image management aren’t scored like a game of horseshoes. Content needs to flow in color and style, and be technically perfect.
So, the Content Monster has taken up permanent residence at GrantStation, and over the past nine months we have learned to satisfy him (mostly). It turns out that he can also be appeased by cupcakes and macaroons, just like GrantStation staff! And we all are living happily ever after.
