Creating a content ecosystem map

Do you really understand the landscape in which your content exists? Can you confidently list all the systems used? What about the people or processes? Do you know what’s working well and what is causing problems? 

The size and complexity of this can be overwhelming, particularly in large scale organisations like universities. There may be a plethora of bespoke software and systems supporting students and staff. There’s likely to be lots of processes to approve and sign off content. 

It can be chaotic. 

Creating a content ecosystem map is the first step in making sense of it all. I’m not going to lie, they are inherently messy and complicated, but they start to create clarity around what’s needed in the future.  And perhaps more importantly, they start conversations across your organisation and reduce that silo mentality.

What is a content ecosystem map?

The concept of the content ecosystem map was first developed by Scott Kubie in 2017.  He provides a detailed series of blog posts on the topic, first published through Brain Traffic. 

A content ecosystem map connects:

• Systems used for publishing content (your CMS, publishing platforms like GatherContent, Google documents, Microsoft Word, emails)

• People who publish content (marketing professionals, subject matter experts, academics, content designers, press and media teams)

• Processes for publishing content (a subject expert writes content, marketing professionals edit content, admissions team signs off content)

• Content outputs (website, email, prospectus)

• Standards and policies (style guide, social media policy, accessibility standards)

But how do you conduct one?

Getting started

You might have a specific area of content in mind for review. Perhaps it’s the production of course information for the website and prospectus. Perhaps it’s the work of all marketing professionals at the university. You might decide to understand your email communications.

It doesn’t matter where you start, you’ll find yourself following all sorts of paths as you begin talking about your content. It’s important to have these conversations. 

For instance, you might have never realised that Peter in IT needs to copy and paste the content you send from Word into a spreadsheet. Now you know, you could provide it in the right format going forward to save time. There will be all sorts of ways to improve processes. Content ecosystems are a great way to unearth them. 

Invite the right people

Ecosystems need a good mix of people to collaborate on them. Depending on the focus you will likely want people such as:

• Digital content designers

• Editors

• Copywriters

• Academics

• Researchers

• CMS editors

• Video editors

• Social media teams

• Marketing teams

• Faculty representatives

Anyone involved in the creation or sign off of content should be part of the conversation.

Creating your map

You can create your map either offline or online. 

If you are doing it offline, you will need:

• Big pieces of paper (consider taping together flipchart sheets)

• Post-it notes

• Pens

We also use stickers in our workshops to indicate:

• What’s working well

• Roadblocks

• Opportunities

• Where more data is needed

If you are doing this online, something like Miro can replicate the post-it notes and flipchart. 

Workshop activity

Start by listing on post-it notes the:

• Content you produce

• Systems you use

• People responsible

• Standards and policies

You can group these together on your flipchart paper.

The second part of the workshop is to draw connections between the post-its you have identified and to work out what the relationship is. For example:

• Digital content designer (person) adds (process) text to the CMS (system) to publish on the website (content)

• Marketing team (person) receives content (process) in Word (system) attached to an email (system) from an academic (person) to print (process) in the prospectus (content)

The relationships are often convoluted and complex. 

Finding solutions

Finally, we would recommend using the stickers to make a judgement on how well (or not) the current setup is working for you. Just add them to post-its or connections. You could create shapes in Miro for this purpose.

Assessing the content connections invariably leads to conversations around potential solutions. Make sure you capture these. 

What if you didn’t use Word for sharing documents and instead used Google docs or a system like GatherContent for sharing content collection?  Could you make savings by allowing subject experts and academics to submit content directly to your CMS? 

You’re not making these decisions right now, but they will help you to plan for the future. 

Digitising your map

If you have been working offline, you might want to record your ecosystem map to share more widely.  You could:

• Take a photo

• Add the map into software such as Diagrams or Miro

• Turn it into a list of statements around relationships between content

Next steps

Once you can visualise your current setup you can start to redesign it into the ecosystem you want to have. 

You can: 

• Remove blockers in content production

• Reduce complex processes

• Remove sign off loops

• Consolidate systems

• Streamline working practices.

It can help you have conversations about what work to prioritise next - where are the biggest pain points?

Ecosystems are complicated, so, why not get us to help you? We can facilitate ecosystem mapping workshops and help you define a blueprint for how your content production could be managed more effectively. Our in-house designer can also bring clarity to your maps too. 

Get in touch with us to find out more.