Enterprise Content Strategy Playbook
Content is one of IU’s most powerful tools
Use the resources and guidelines in this toolkit to keep your content current and connected:
- User-centered guidance: Keep audiences at the heart of every decision
- Consistency and clarity: Use IU’s shared voice, style, and standards across all channels
- Data-driven tools: Use research and analytics to make choices and measure results
- Accessibility and inclusion: Ensure content works for all audiences, across all abilities
- Web content: Guidance to help you develop specialized skills for writing, optimizing, and organizing your website.
- Website content “plays”: Practical strategies with step-by-step tools you can use to plan, build, or improve your website content.
Who should use this playbook?
The playbook is for anyone who creates or manages IU content. That includes communications and marketing professionals, faculty and staff who maintain websites, and anyone else responsible for public communications.
Understanding our audience
Get clear on who our audience is by putting personas to work, mapping user journeys to increase impact, and using message maps to prioritize what to say when.
Coming soon
Journey maps
Visualizing ways our audience engages with IU over time.
Personas
Well-researched, fictional profiles designed to help us imagine the needs and behaviors of our target audience.
Message maps
A structure for our core messages, supporting messages, and proof points.
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Understanding website user experience (UX)
Creating content that’s relevant to key needs and goals of your web audience.
Creating clear, consistent content
Find quick answers in the IU Editorial Style Guide and see our voice and tone in action. Learn to craft scannable, up-to-date web copy and align words and visuals to tell a cohesive IU story.
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Creating brand-aligned content
How brand consistency builds trust and strengthens recognition for all of our audiences.
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IU Editorial Style Guide
Get answers to common style, capitalization, and formatting questions,
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Voice and tone
What’s at the heart at the way we tell IU’s story, including in-context examples.
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Writing for the web
Learn the basics of creating scannable copy, evaluating what belongs on a website, and how often it needs to be refreshed.
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Aligning words and visuals
How photography and written copy work together in the IU brand.
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Writing for AI
How to write so that “answer engines” like ChatGPT and Gemini serve up accurate and timely information about IU.
Anchoring content with data and analytics
Use analytics to understand which content your audience wants and how engaged they are.
Coming soon
Basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Make sure your website is easy for students, faculty, and external audiences to discover.
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Informing your content with analytics
Use data and insights to plan or improve content.
Delivering content that is welcoming to all
Create content our audiences can authentically see themselves in, and everyone can use.
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Inclusive content
Authentic writing and imagery that build trust with our audience.
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Writing with accessibility in mind
Best practices for creating content that doesn't exclude people with disabilities.
Web content toolkit
Tools, guidelines, and content models to help you evaluate and strengthen your website.
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Understanding the role of your website
Understand how your site supports the IU brand by communicating your unit's unique contributions.
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Refining your site’s organization and usability
Evaluating how your site’s content is structured, prioritized, and presented.
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Content models
Standard structures for common page types at IU.
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Informing your content with analytics
Use data and insights to can plan fresh content or improve what’s already there.
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Adapting PDF content to web pages
Web-based content is the best way to provide an engaging and accessible experience for your site users.
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Digital governance
Roles and responsibilities in the IU governance model, its scope, and guidelines about the management of individual websites.
Website content “plays”
Each of these plays is a practical strategy with step-by-step tools you can use to plan, build, or improve your website content. They connect directly to IU’s content framework—purpose, standards, process, and structure—so your work aligns with the same system used across the university.