Content Design Podcast

Are you inundated with emails requesting content? Do you spend ages going through different data sources? Do you find yourself doing the same tasks again and again?

Danny shares his tips and tricks for speeding up your content delivery so you spend less time on admin and repetitive tasks. From interactive dashboards and live data alerts to automation using tools like Zapier, Danny shares how to make your content life easier.

“You’re a member of the design team. As part of that team, advocate for words.”

Are you the only writer in a team of visual designers? Scott Kubie, author of Writing for Designers, shares some of his techniques for collaborating with designers. As well as ways to make the most of your time, he shares ideas on how to proactively demonstrate the value of content and get stakeholders on board with your content strategy.

Need to create great content fast? Find out how Olivia Sperring-Jones, Content Lead at NHSX, rapidly created content in response to Covid-19.

Olivia demonstrates how you can turn a service around in just a few weeks while still including essentials like show-and-tell reviews and user research. She shares how her team worked so effectively remotely, including how they utilised Zoom and Miro to share user journeys.

Please note, the Emergency Volunteering Scheme mentioned in the episode is yet to go live.

Want to introduce content design to your organisation? Jack Garfinkel chats about how he did just that at Scope. From introducing crits and journey mapping, to writing user needs and user research, Jack shares how he started a major content project. He also shares some great tips and insights into how you can involve subject matter experts and other key people in the content process.

Here are some of the tools Jack mentions:

• Hotjar for heatmaps
• Trello kanban board for prioritising work and tracking progress
• Miro for shared mapping and diagrams
• Airtable for storing data and insights

Enjoyed the episode? Like and subscribe or reach out to us on Twitter @DigiContentPod.

We chat to Kezia Newson, co-founder of The Time Ladies and contributor to Doctor Who Magazine about how she balances her passion projects with her commercial writing. Juggling blogging and vloggling with her content roles for organisations like Penguin, Random House and WaterAid, Kezia has some great insight into how writing about what you love can make your commercial content even better.

Chat to us on Twitter @DigiContentPod about your writing passion projects.

Social media can be a quick, cheap and effective testing ground to discover the different content that resonates with your target audience. People don’t hold back either, so the comments and reactions can be a useful gauge of how your audience feels about a subject and the language they use.

We chat to Head of Social at Auto Trader, Laura McNally, about how social media can be an integral part of the overall user journey. She has some great tips on how to effectively use different social media platforms, including how to get ideas for what will perform well on site too.

Sarah Richards, author of 'Content Design' and creator of the content design discipline takes us through some of the key techniques for creating amazing content. She goes through ways to reflect users’ mental models back at them by using their language and their way of thinking. We chat about journey mapping, value mapping, job stories and other ways to ensure you're creating purposeful content and bringing your organisation with you. We also discuss the importance of accessibility and the need for some solid readability guidelines we can all use.

Message us on Twitter @DigiContentPod if there are any content design topics you'd like us to cover or people you'd be keen for us to talk to.

For all you freelance content designers out there, here's how to create a stand-out online portfolio. We chat to Owen Priestly, content designer at Google, who has some great tips on how to show off your work and amazing content design skills. Even if you're just starting out or already have a portfolio, you'll find lots of great advice on building your online presence.

You’ve heard of lean UX, but have you thought about applying it to content design? Owen Priestly talks about how he transformed his content design practice by adopting lean principles like hypothesis driven design and rapid prototyping. We also chat about the different specialisms in the field and whether it matters if you call yourself a content designer or UX writer.

Designing content for phones means designing for a device that's at hand 24/7. So should we be more holistic in our design thinking and consider users' mental health too? Could we be designing experiences that encourage intention and reflection? Should we be thinking beyond the most clicks to the best clicks for the user? We discuss Kate's recent research into the impacts of device usage and what it means for the future of content design.

Please note these are Kate's own opinions from her research and not those of the BBC.