Blog strategy

What is this blog for?

• Communicating our value proposition - optimization writ large
  • making Canada.ca better, improving digital services for citizens
• Blog as expression of what are we about:
  • evidence based design/decision-making
  • relentlessly continuously improving - adopting lean and agile approaches, learning as we go
  • ruthlessly prioritizing citizen needs - top tasks driving & feeding overall Canada.ca design
  • content first (rather than fancy features or functionalites)
  • coherent UX for Canadians
• Why bother doing this? The rationale is that .... (see comms and engagement strat)

Objectives

• Align with overall strategy of working in the open & showing our accountability
• Demonstrate leadership in terms of #GCdigital, product design, usability, research and testing
• Catalyze workforce transformation by example
• It’s a lifestyle, baby (also recruiting)

Who are we doing this for?

• Primary audience: people making web things in GC - from noobs to unicorns, from design to content to code
• Secondary audiences:
  • people who manage GC services/programs and need to consider digital more deeply
  • people who make web things in other govts, in the private sector etc.

Considerations / ground rules

• Bilingual
• Accessible
• Simple / Clear - plain language
• Eating our own dog food - abide by style guide and spec
• Two way? (maybe after we’re up and rolling, until then handle this angle off-blog via social media)

Tactics

Content strat

• write about UX design, research & testing (& analysis), optimization / content improvement (not migration or platforms or production)
• articles should:
  • Demonstrate what we’ve done / show the evidence
  • Show how we work / why we work in a collaborative manner
  • Provide actionable insights
• MVP approach - start small & simple, then build up from there
• Share everything we write via other social networks - #GCdigital

Structure

• default structure - blog (articles in reverse chrono)
• tags & categories
  • categories for series of articles:
  1. usability issues - documenting issues and solutions
  2. optimization projects - things we saw, lessons learned
  • tags for article topics/subjects

Writing techniques

• Short articles – as succinct as possible, think in terms of “one pagers”
• team effort: each post only go live when at least two people have taken a crack at it
• Focus on facts: articles that tell stories about what we did, what we learned - not pure theory or unsubstantiated opinion
• Cite evidence & experience always, esp. our own data, lessons learned
• Advice not rules - write in terms of examples of how we did X to solve problem/issue/challenge Y, rather than "you must do..."
• Use pair writing, timeboxing and trading off to keep moving
• Follow our writing do's and don't's

Sharing blog posts

• DO share articles via your own social media accounts if you wish
• DON'T feel forced to promote the blog via social media

Measuring success

• "being open" KPI TBD
• "leading by example" KPI TBD
• "catalyzing transformation" KPI TBD

Parking lot / next steps

• beyond the team - guest posts from other institutions