Directors of content strategy: why corps need to create this post to save us from digital garbage

In the time I’ve worked on corporate sites, now nearly ten years, I’ve learned a lot about the variety of tasks and skills involved: content creation, SEO and PPC, social media,  analytics, corporate (website) politics, metadata strategy, taxonomies, globalization, CMS, and this…

Corporate websites (incl. non-commercial organisation sites) haven’t really progressed beyond the ill defined goals they started with more than a decade ago, and in some cases almost double that: “It’s new. We need it. Do it. Content? Whatever’s available in the brochures will do.”

Globalising websites to meet varied regulatory environments

For sectors where communication between company and public is regulated, like health care, financial products, some consumer goods, the job of corporate website globalization is tricky. Add product availability variations from market to market and the job gets even trickier.

Global corporate websites

Just thinking about corporate website internationalization gives me a headache.

Why?

I’ll explain with an example.

Take, for instance, ExxonMobil’s entities’ homepages. I’ve looked (briefly, admittedly) at the integration of country sites and companies into the global brands’ visual identities (for the homepages only).

It’s easy, ain’t it?

Making content crystal clear, globally

Newly out in paperback in the UK is David Crystal’s 2006 book, How Language Works.

Crystal, a respected linguist and a prolific writer, argues that: “Language change is inevitable, continuous, universal and multidirectional. Languages do not get better or worse when they change. They just – change.”

Some examples relevant to corporate content: