Part two of an article series on aligning your editorial and development resources.  Read part one here.

As we mentioned in part one of this series, success models serve to get your editorial team and your web development team on the same page.  We laid out four major archetypes for Websites, and this article focuses on sites that provide how-to, educational content.  

You may want to focus your online strategy around an how-to, educational archetype if your readers respond most strongly to articles that are “action-based” – in other words, they provide a piece of knowledge that allows them to take action without further research. Many of your readers are eager to learn, and may respond positively to a discussion forum, allowing them to ask their questions or share their expertise in public. They may even be interested in creating content specifically for your website. 

Your brand has a strong reputation, and some of your content may have even been promoted by other websites. Although breaking news items do garner some interest from your readers, it’s the action items that people consistently come back to.

What sorts of sites would offer educational content?

Nearly all media sites can offer some sort of educational content. Many sites offer tutorials that package evergreen content in a way that brings the user back to the site on a regular basis.

Examples of a good educational success model

Newspaper / Local: The Palm Beach Post provides its readers with STORM, a blog that blends news coverage of hurricanes with educational reference content.  Readers can learn how to prepare their homes for impending storms, how insurance regulations have changed, what the category classifications mean, or how the local weather man figures out the odds of a storm coming to the neighborhood. 

This could easily be matched up with a local advertising directory featuring ads from plumbers, carpenters, masons, and roofers so that readers can find a local contractor when they need repairs.  In addition, this section could be supported with national advertising from insurance companies.  If sponsorship failed, AdSense would generate strong CPMs in such a competitive keyword category. 

B2B: Two great examples are MagazineLaunch.com and MeetingsNet.com’s Meeting Planner’s Survival Guide. You’ll notice the difference between the two sites, however.  MeetingsNet is trying to do multiple things for its readers and its survival guide gets lost in the overall site design wrapper while MagazineLaunch.com has completely tailored its site’s navigation, tools, and design to entrepreneurs seeking to launch a new magazine.  MagazineLaunch.com’s directory is a perfect match to its content, as is MeetingsNet’s meeting space search.

Consumer: iVillage’s Your Total Health has executed this success model perfectly.  A quick look at the home page, and you can see immediately that the web development and editorial resources are in lock step.  Their outstanding coverage of women’s health issues is augmented and enhanced by a suite of tools such as: symptom solver, health tests, a contraception guide, health calculators, and more.  They have engaged their community with active forums covering medical issues as well as broader wellness and disease prevention topics.  Finally, the advertising often matches the subject matter.  I saw an ad for Concerta, a prescription drug for ADHD.

An Educational site design will feature…

• A site architecture focused on the techniques, disciplines, skills, technologies, and/or strategies used within the industry.
• Strong navigation in addition to a site map, or index of content.  Think of both chapter heads (navigation) and an index (sitemap).
• Category search that defaults to relevance instead of date (prefer to restrict dates to certain time frames: last 30 days, last 90 days, last year, entire archive)

An Educational homepage could feature…

• “Did you know” content.
• Industry term of the day.
• Most popular articles.
• More prominent search with some advanced options.
• Related articles (to lead story).

An Educational article page could feature…

• Heavy cross referencing of both internal and external content (cross-linking and cross-promotion to sister publications should be highlighted in both design and content).
• Use of graphics to illustrate the point of a story.
• Links to glossary of terms used in article. 

What are some examples of content that would work for a site focusing on the educational success model?

• Tips / Factoids (ex: How to Write E-Zine Teaser Copy—Ten Tips – Chief Marketer)
• Poor Practices (ex: 10 Email Newsletter Mistakes – Chief Marketer)
• Step-by-Step Tutorials (ex: Making Connections with ReWire – Electronic Musician)
• Market Reports (ex: Cattle Sales Reports – American Cowman)
• Downloadable Patterns / Clip Art / Fonts (ex: Baby Knitting Patterns)
• Bios / Profiles (ex: Artist Profiles – About.com).
• Online Courses (ex: Farm Press University)
• Tutorials (ex: The Eight Principles of Branding a Merger – Chief Marketer)
• Best Practices (ex: Lessons in How to Write (and Not Write) An e-Mail Newsletter – Chief Marketer)
• Timelines (ex: Pregnancy Month-by-Month – About.com)
• How-tos (ex: How to Film a Fall – Digital Content Producer)
• FAQs
• Glossaries (ex: Online Marketing Glossary – Multichannel Merchant)
• Case Studies:  (ex. Marketing Sherpa)