Do you want to create a successful and stable content strategy? Then you need to consider about design thinking.
Despite its name, “design thinking” has little to do with slick fonts or pretty color palettes. The process was popularized by David Kelley, the co-founder of IDEO, an innovation consultancy known for producing a parade of groundbreaking inventions, such as the portable heart defibrillator.
Companies from Airbnb to Pfizer use design thinking to discover and address customer needs through five simple steps:
The approach focuses on the end user—think fewer spreadsheets, more conversations with real live humans.
Do you want to apply design thinking approach for your next content campaign strategy? Here are four simple steps you can try right away.
1. Treat your content like a product
Many companies decide what users want without bothering to investigate their needs and behaviors. In fact, only 27 percent of businesses have a strategy governing their content creation. This “exclusive” approach to planning and creating content is a dangerous mistake. Audiences are sophisticated, and every publisher on the Internet is vying for their attention. By treating your articles, videos, and podcasts with as much importance as the widgets you sell, you can use design thinking to create meaningful content your audience will be excited to return to over and over again.
2. Empathise
Figuring out what your audience truly needs doesn’t begin and end with a few questions on a survey. You have to go into the field to observe and interact with real humans.
While it’s impossible to hang out with your users in their apartments and cubicles, you can observe how they’re behaving online:
- Listen in on social media. What kind of articles are already popular with your audience? Use BuzzSumo, for example, to find out which stories about a certain keyword were shared the most on platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. What questions are your prospective users asking each other about your industry? Q&A sites like Quora are your oracle.
- Have lunch with Brad from sales. It’s common for strategists to overlook their company’s sales and customer service departments. That’s a shame because these are the people who interact with real users all day. Find out what questions customers ask them the most. Your content should provide answers.
- Mine your old content for clues. If you’ve set up engagement metrics on your site, find out what articles or videos your users spend the most time reading and watching. Which ones receive the most comments? Which e-books are downloaded the most?
3. Get to the heart of your story
At the “define” stage of design thinking, your mission is to distill your scattered findings into a meaningful narrative about your customer via a “problem statement” or point of view. After observing and interacting with your audience, think about what you learned. What stood out? What was surprising? Did any patterns emerge? Formulate these needs into a problem statement beginning with the phrase, “How might we…”
4. Brainstorm, build, and test
Once you’ve identified an existing need to fill for your audience, it’s time to move on to step three: ideate. Many companies jump straight to this stage because, well, it’s fun. However, after putting in the effort to study your users, you’ll have a much deeper understanding of who you’re designing for—which gives your brainstorming session a clear direction.