This real-world study shows our methods for a Content Potluck that engages thought leaders across the enterprise. It shares techniques for building executive support, identifying contributors, and sustaining engagement in a cross departmental content strategy. Results? Rich, diverse community content, programming, and feedback mechanisms to share customer sentiment, and customer/employee engagement and co-creation opportunities. This method lightens the sales and support process and let’s your team focus on what really matters: being authentic, authoritative and collaborative internally and externally.

1. Break down those content silos!
Laurel Nicholes,
Director, Product Content Experience
F5 Networks
Niki Vecsei Harrold
Director, Communities Strategy and Social Media
Transamerica

2. ● Identifying Silos
● Problems to Solve
● Content Potluck, Defined
● Buy-in and Champions
● Content Potluck Operations
● Success Stories
● Best Practices
Agenda
Breaking Through Content Silos

3. ● Silos within silos -
all businesses, all sizes.
● Need for speed trumps
knowledge sharing.
● Affected teams.
Breaking Through Content Silos
Workforce
Silos

4. Content Silos
● Workforce silos
create content silos.
● Redundancies,
misalignments.
● Silos show your dirty
laundry.
Breaking Through Content Silos
Customer
Your Web
Properties

5. Problem to Solve
Of Companies do not
ensure consistent
content across
channels.
Breaking Through Content Silos
51%

6. Problem to Solve
Breaking Through Content Silos
42% 41% 71%
No unified
content strategy
Tool chains
don’t connect
Manual
terminology
management

7. ● Interlock between siloed teams.
● Mine your own content.
● Centralized content management
● No one can hide!
● Social Media Promotion
Content Potluck
Breaking Through Content Silos

8. Results
Support for different
information foraging
styles
Team and strategy is
unified, but content
format is diverse
A rich assortment of
content

9. Executive Buy In
● Save money through duplication
elimination.
● Improved customer satisfaction and
loyalty.
● Improved employee engagement.
Breaking Through Content Silos
Selling the Concept

10. ● Inventory current content
owners
● Identify groups that have rich
insights
● Who is passionate about
customer experience?
● Identify barriers to entry
Find The Right Profile
Breaking Through Content Silos

11. ● Helpful
● Problem-solvers
● Collaborative
● No data hoarders!
Find The Right Talent
Breaking Through Content Silos

12. ● Passionate customer
advocate.
● Drives continual
improvement.
● Learns as much as shares.
● Empathetic for customer
problems.
● Understands economy of
scale.
● Leverages for career
advancement.
Find Your Champions
Breaking Through Content Silos

13. ● Digital & Product Marketing
● Information Development/Tech
Comm
● Product Management
● Training
● Knowledge Base Authors
Where to look
Breaking Through Content Silos
● Professional Services
● Customer Service
● Sales Engineers
● Evangelists
● Engineers
Traditional Content Developers Broaden The Scope

14. Agenda Goals
● Set goals
● Track attendance
● Share and engage
● Assign action items
How the Potluck
Works
Breaking Through Content Silos

15. ● Content projects in flight
● Content types in play
● Publication dates
● Themes from customer
support and visits
● Social media, community
feedback.
Discussion Points
Breaking Through Content Silos

16. ● Get some tacos.
● No slides!
● Build an editorial calendar.
● Identify gaps and solutions.
How the Potluck
Works
Breaking Through Content Silos

17. Editorial Calendar Tips
Breaking Through Content Silos
● Color coded by
content type.
● Ownership
assignments.
● Hard delivery date with
reminders.
● Quickly identifies
content gaps.

18. ● Real world, trusted content
● Diverse points of view
● Networking and career growth
● Rich variety of content types
● Platform to co-create
● Caveat: clearly mark corporate
content.
Gains for the Customer

19. ● Grow community membership.
● Real-time feedback
○ Sentiment analysis
○ Gap and depth analysis
● Avoid duplication
● build consistency
● Content investment ROI
Gains for You
Breaking Through Content Silos

20. Content
● Returning vs. new visitors
● Community traffic patterns
● Thread depth
● Time to resolution
○ Peers or SMEs?
Measure Success
Breaking Through Content Silos
Community
● Unique views
● Time on page
● Video views
● Most liked (Kudoed)
● Content or author
● Traffic referral
source

21. Uptime Bulletin (pdf) to HTML: 111 views to 8,901 views
Marketing video: 50 views vs. SME blog post: 10,005 views
Social Media Sharing: 250% growth in engagement (raising 5.3x per post)
AMA thread on average 4,053 views vs. regular pages ~2256 views (~80% growth)
KB referrals are 3x more likely to register on the community than other sources
Success Stories
Breaking Through Content Silos

22. ● Diverse champions
● Consistent champion, customer
engagement
● Predictable, periodical meetings
● Success and failure
communication
● Reward participants
Best Practices

23. Contact us
http://contentpotluck.com
Do you have stories or
projects to share about
breaking down silos?

24. Thank you for your attention!
Nikoletta Vecsei Harrold
Director, Communities Strategy and Social
Media, Transamerica
@Nikschen
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolettavecsei
Laurel Nicholes
Director, Tech Comms Services,
F5 Networks
@LaurelNicholes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurelnicholes

25. Q & A

26. Appendix
Advanced Ideas

27. MBO’d & Recognition
Badges
User Meetups
Super User programs
AMA sessions
Tweet Chat
Facebook Live
Blogs
Champion
Engagement

28. Use All the Content:
Go where your readers go
● Social Media
● Communities
● Webcasts/ Webinars
● Customer Meetings
● Channel/ Partner marketing
● Intranet/ Internal Wiki