1 – Mobile & e-Commerce Content Strategy Will Be Hot

For the past few years, Content Strategists have been crusading for the need for organizations to develop and implement a content strategy to help plan, create, manage and analyze their content across channels… mostly web. In 2012, other web professionals, such as user experience designers, social media strategists and web developers, will start to seek out content strategy planning for mobile and e-commerce experiences.

2 – Content Strategy Apps Will Abound

Last year, a few notable content strategy apps came to the party early: DivvyHQ and InBoundWriter to name a few. With a wealth of opportunity to automate or simplify content strategy processes like content audits, inventories and editorial calendars, 2012 promises to see a few new apps, like Content Insight, help Content Strategists and organizations with the tactics of content strategy.

3 – “Information Overload” Will Go Mainstream

Already the subject of popular articles in the Harvard Business Review and The Economist, the topic of information overload will gain popularity with the mainstream press. As organizations battle with content bloat and increasingly fractured digital channels, Content Strategy will be the identifiable and championed solution by those in the know.


4 – “Curation” Will Be The New Buzzword

Curation is sweeping the nation. Seen as a viable solution to producing and re-purposing content for distinct target audiences, curation minimizes human resource demands and maximizes ROI by creating a more engaging and relevant user experience. As a buzzword, however, curation runs the risk of becoming synonymous with short-cut, poor quality, editorial-slant driven content and Content Strategists will need to rise to the occasion by continuing to focus on publishing content that is authentic, relevant, and consistent.

5 – Content Strategy Will Become A Business Process

Content strategy is often focused on as a discipline/profession, however as a practice it has the potential to become ubiquitous to the content processes currently under the domain of more time honored business channels like marketing, communications, public relations and customer relationship management. As content strategy moves from the introduction phase to the growth phase, 2012 will see other related disciplines starting to adopt content strategy practices as their own and the focus will no longer be on a small subset of industry veterans, but on the bigger implications and opportunities for content owners across disciplines.

Agree? Disagree? What are your Content Strategy predictions for 2012?

In a world where online content is the strongest influencer of a business’s success, it’s important to make sure that the content we publish is consistently at the top of its game.

Like all other business assets, content has both an extrinsic and intrinsic value:

Extrinsic Value of Content – How much it costs to maintain physical resources (both human and technological) to create, publish and govern content.

Intrinsic Value of Content – How much the content is worth to a company in terms of messaging, positioning, reputation and sales.

When Assets Resemble Liabilities

Of course the prior is the one that many organizations focus on with respect to their bottom line. As a result, they only see content as a liability as opposed to an asset because the outlay of capital required to pay for content is steep. Good content costs money.

Content’s sell at the boardroom table, therefore, is to focus on its intrinsic value. Business is about numbers. If we can’t show quantitative results related to ROI (and we can’t.. at least not directly), the only way to get buy-in for creating, publishing and governing content is to focus on its intrinsic value to the organization.

What Is Intrinsic Value?

Intrinsic value really comes down to worth. For instance, paper money may be worth the denomination indicated, but the paper it’s printed on might only be worth pennies. So a Content Strategist’s job is to figure out how much content is actually worth to an organization.

Determining Intrinsic Value

Typically, intrinsic value has a number associated with it.

Since content doesn’t exist in a bubble, and typically forms part of a greater Marketing/Communications/Customer Service Management effort, these need to be factored into the overall equation to provide the most accurate assessment of a content’s intrinsic value.

While the math here is simple, arriving at the numbers to plug into the equation may be a lot harder. On your part, it might require some educated guess-timating based on budgets and other tracking metrics in place.

Regardless, it doesn’t take a statistician to see that the number you arrive at for the intrinsic value is far greater than what many people give content credit for – especially when you compare it to its liability-disguised extrinsic value.

Cost Benefit Analysis

Most organizations don’t invest in assets until they’ve performed a Cost Benefit Analysis of the acquisition in question. Here’s where many Content Strategists’ arguments fail to win over the CFO. It’s one thing to say “content is a business asset”, it’s another to prove it. A “just because” answer in business is the equivalent to saying that the organization should bring in a circus every month as it could raise the morale of employees and, in turn, potentially increase productivity. Bollocks!

A cost benefit analysis adds up all of the positive factors for making a business decision and puts them up against the sum of all of the negatives (usually the hard cost of doing something). The difference between the two gives organizations an indication of whether something is advisable to do, or not.

Here’s where the intrinsic value of content comes in handy. The arguments by the business are usually hung up around expenses (the negatives). By having already calculated the intrinsic value of content, you now have a sound business case and quantifiable argument for continuing to invest in what you know (and can soon prove) to be the organization’s biggest asset — its content!

My business partner, Jeff Parks, wrote a brilliant blog post last week about the importance of inspiration to the creative process. The crux of his argument? That creativity needs to be sought out and nurtured as an internal journey aroused by external sources.

In many creative disciplines, Content Strategy included, our own persistent introspection however can start to swallow us whole as we seek to define and champion our creative output for public scrutiny.

“Do we listen to the quality of the ideas being shared any more? Ask yourself how often you’ve blindly followed the ideas of anyone within any industry – design or otherwise – because of their success online.” ~ Jeff Parks

The launch of the much-anticipated Contents magazine last week is the perfect example. After much fanfare about the publication (and I’ll admit, having a Content Strategy webzine is a smart idea), the inaugural post left me wondering if we had reached a point in the industry where there are no new ideas. Because after the “rah-rah” championing of a cause has died down (and let’s face it, we’re clearly milking this championing thing), it’s time to get down to the business of doing not just telling.

And herein lies the rub of creative thought …and ideas …and forward-thinking:

Inspiration, both as a way to frame our thoughts and as a way to motivate others – requires care and feeding. Otherwise, it turns creativity from a thing of unique, thought-provoking beauty into something inherently ugly like group-think.

It’s easy to get caught up in group think. We do it all the time in our daily lives. Either consciously or subconsciously, many of the decisions we make every day are a result of group think: from the coffee shop we choose to frequent to the cars we choose, or choose not to drive.

As this video shows (unfortunately embedding is disabled, but it’s worth the watch), even the most creative minds in the design industry are influenced by the external stimuli that surrounds them.

So, I ask you, are we doing our clients a disservice by consistently reading the same blog posts from the same “thought-leaders” espousing the same refrain, and then blindly adding our own mimicry to the mix?

Embrace Soul Objects

Kip Voytek recently gave a talk at Ignite NYC (and on Radio Johnny) about the sugar-high we get from our digital lives. Where consumption doesn’t just refer to the information we devour, but the creative wasting away of our ideas when we forget to seek out inspiration from outside of the confines of our industry. Maybe it is time to unplug and seek inspiration beyond a 140 characters…

Creative geniuses (like Husvar whose re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland is real, jarring and thought-provoking) shun the status quo and seek to find truth in interpretations of their own perception. They embrace the rabbit hole effect by not playing victim to its surrealism, but rather by empowering themselves with it to break free of the status quo.

At the conclusion of the inaugural US content strategy conference, Confab, in May I couldn’t help but think how much this conference was long overdue …and somewhat too late. While we need to talk about digital content (I am having a harder and harder time referring to it simply as web content as mobile slowly overtakes desktops as our method of choice for accessing the Internet) because it forms the basis of online information, it’s sad to see it so late to the party.

Content Strategists are seeking to carve out their own niche within an industry already fractured by practitioners who rightly or wrongly silo themselves into one specific discipline.

Many spend more time arguing over which tools and practices are better rather than getting down to what really matters:

What is the client’s problem and what tools/experiences/perspectives can I provide that will bring about the most effective solution.

I think this may have to do more with my frustration with where the web industry is going as a whole than where it came from. Back in the 1.0 days, anyone who wanted to work online had to “know it all”. While it wasn’t always called: Information Architecture, User Experience, Content Strategy or Content Marketing, these practices made up the whole of the solutions we delivered.

Understandably, as the web “grew up” so too did its practitioners, specializing and refining their talents into specific areas to offer a level of expertise that was impossible under a generalist title of the early days.

As a result, however, a new generation of professionals are coming out of school and into our industry with a specific niche already in mind. Armed with a degree and a desire to become a “Content Strategist” they dive straight into their area of specialization without looking at all of the subtle nuances that make up the finer points of Content Strategy: Marketing, Communications, Language, Writing, Information Architecture, User Experience.

When speaking to a few of these newbie attendees at the conference, they blatantly and ignorantly denounced the need to know User Experience, Content Writing, or even Web Coding. I just don’t know how anybody can properly advise on “strategy” without having first learned the “tactics”.

All this, of course, is not Confab’s fault or even the bourgeoning Content Strategy discipline as a whole. It’s the sign of the maturation of an industry that has grown on the fringes of traditional business. While the web is over 10 years old, some companies still treat it as an afterthought. As a result, our practitioners are still scrambling to achieve legitimacy both within the corporate structure and amongst their peers.

I have heard rumblings within the web sphere of people wanting to go back to the days of the generalist, and after this conference, I somewhat have to agree.

It’s not that I don’t think specializing in one particular discipline is wrong. Certainly any speciality deserves a breadth and depth of knowledge within a particular field to really advise clients on the absolute best practices or solutions available.

However, there are certain industries, like the Web, and disciplines like Content Strategy where the depth of the knowledge required is less important than the breadth.

Because when you think about it, a huge chasm exists between what our clients want:

An attractive website that works.

And what we spend hours debating over:

How do we define Content Strategy?

In the end, it is our clients who ultimately define the end state. If we can deliver an engaging experience using all of the tools and best practices available to us, then why are we delving further and further into the nuances of a particular practice?

I’d like to see a web conference that delivers tracks on Interaction Design, User Experience, Content Strategy, Content Marketing and Social Media. Where we can be empowered to help clients by embracing the rich breadth of our industry, instead of continuing to silo it.

“…ultimately content strategy and design share many common goals and challenges. It’s telling that many of the techniques, approaches we take to reach these goals and overcome the challenges are very much the same. The real test is how well we can collectively execute on a shared responsibility.” ~ Chris Detzi, EightShapes

We berate traditional business for organizational structures that silo disciplines (e.g. the Marketing Department vs. the Communications Department) and are then frustrated when they can’t look at the bigger whole necessary for success on the web today.

It’s true what they say about glass houses… and in the virtual world where transparency is the key, we might want to start taking a long hard look at ourselves and start practicing what we preach.

Digital content is consumable content. Unlike print, where words are read and savoured, the web has created a culture of content grazers. Users prefer to hop, skip and jump over words without so much as digesting the meaning before hitting the back button.

In an increasingly iconographic-driven space inspired by mobile apps and fueled by content grazing, the finely crafted written word doesn’t stand a chance.

Or does it?

With the proliferation of mobile and tablet devices, it has becoming increasingly imperative for organizations to create a content strategy that panders to the very nature of consumable content by creating “Content To Go”.

Essentially the digital equivalent of restaurant take-out, content to go acknowledges that users want the same content and experiences that they would have on a website, but defined by their own content viewing parameters of their mobile device.

“If you are developing mobile content strategies then you need to adapt your user personas to user scenarios because what your users are doing when they access your content means more than anything else in the picture at that moment”.
~ Mobile Content Strategy: Creating User Scenarios

Any content published on a mobile device is competing for your reader’s attention against any number of other distractions in the world around them. However, the inverse also remains true for quality content worth reading where engagement, like with books, is engrossing.

“..books can become merely a means to escape from reality. Reading can be rather like eating food.  Up to a point one eats from physical necessity, but beyond that one is doing it for pleasure, because one likes the taste of food, or possibly just to fill up time.”
~ Meditation In Action

So, while digital content may be consumed on the web, organizations can also benefit from their users’ incessant appetite for information by producing quality content meant to be savoured …on their mobile or tablet device.

How Do You Do Start Integrating Mobile Content Into Your Overall Content Strategy?

While the content-attention paradox of website content suggests 250 words or less on a web page (more like 80-150 words in 2011), the only option for longer content used to be a “print this” button. With a mobile content strategy, organizations can plan for a fifth kind of web content for their website …content that is meant to be read – not consumed – on a mobile or tablet device.

Note: This mobile content strategy is not the same as a mobile site design strategy in that it plans for the creation, publication and maintenance of content specifically created for reading on a mobile or tablet device. Mobile site design and its associated content is more about task-based content than readable content.

Mobile Content Publishing Tools

Not all websites are meant for mobile and not all mobile sites are meant for the web. The same holds true for digital content. In this burgeoning mobile content publishing field, there are a number of front-runner apps that organizations should consider integrating into their websites as a means of proactively including content to go into their overall content strategy.

Instapaper

OnSwipe

1. Function Must Exist Without Form

iPad, Blackberry, Droid, PS3, In-Dash Car Console – Virtually all digital devices now connect to the Internet. Be cognizant that your content may not be viewed as you intended. Is your content scalable? Accessible? Consumable?

2. The Message IS The Medium


Pride yourself on being a forward-thinking, innovative company? Perception is reality. Content created for social, mobile and tablet is not just a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement for the next decade. See Commandment #3.


3. Content Can’t Be Re-Purposed


We know that content written for print doesn’t work online. It works even less in a fragmented digital device market. Content must be planned for, created, and published for the medium. Content with contextual hyperlinks is only 2-dimensional. It’s time to start thinking in 3 and even 4D.

4. Content Is Non-Linear

There is no start, middle and end. All content is “in medias res”. Much like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, your user determines what they will read, how much, and how they will interact with your content. Don’t assume anything.

5. Content Is A Line Item

You can’t budget content (or anything created for digital consumption for that matter) as a one-time expense. Content Strategy is a recurring expense. Don’t just focus on content creation either. You need to monitor, edit, revise, and test your content to ensure you are reaping its full value. Remember: It costs money to make money.


6. Fear Not Foreign Tongues

Thanks to technology, language is becoming less of a barrier to communication. Google Translate and the Google Translate App are just the start. While we’re not there yet – it won’t be long before content translation won’t be the organization’s responsibility but that of the individual. Shift your focus towards creating great, plain language content that is easy to read, understand and share no matter what language you’re publishing in.

7. Content Is Consumable

This isn’t Shakespeare. Digital content is consumed, not cherished. While Shakespeare strove to attain immortality through writing, digital content creators die a certain death each time they publish. And that’s a good thing. Digital content is a fast food economy. Users graze and consume it faster than you can publish. What might be the hottest blog post today is a forgotten link in a matter of days or weeks. Keep up with demand.

8. Content Must Be Shareable

You can’t own content. Once you release it, you want people to share it. That‘s how you build word-of-mouth …and relationships …and value. Make your content relevant and easy to share through all viable channels. Include “Tweet This”, “Email This” and “Share This” buttons on all consumable content published.

9. Don’t Make Content A Commodity

It might be a consumable, but it’s definitely not a commodity. Content is a business asset. Highly valued content yields high value results. Content isn’t just a nice to have investment anymore, it’s a business driver. Invest wisely.

10. Content Should Always Exceed Expectation

Sell the sizzle! Savvy users are demanding digital content delivery in sexy new ways. Don’t underestimate their expectations. While you may not yet be delivering content in innovative ways, others already are. It’s time to start turning content on its head!

When it comes to websites, two opposing forces come into play with website content. On one hand, the corporate message must be conveyed. On the other, the audience and their needs as both consumer and user of technology must be addressed. Finding a balance between the two doesn’t necessarily present a challenge on the part of the content writer, as he or she can adeptly craft the message in plain language using the researched vocabulary of the target audience. Rather, the biggest challenge lies in getting senior managers or directors, who aren’t aware that a chasm of difference exists between marketing/communications writing offline and persuasive writing online, to recognize effective web writing when they see it.

A Common Scenario:

Traditional marketing/communications managers or even CEO’s read web content and automatically dismiss the value in it because it doesn’t read the way they think it “should”:

- Long, complex sentence structures
- Third person voice
- Gobbledygook business terms
- Written from the perspective of the business (“We”)
- Industry or corporate acronyms

The Problem:

The above represents a style and tone that has become synonymous with “professional”, “credible” and “authoritative”. But, it’s a style that doesn’t work on the web.

The Solution:

So, how do content writers within an organization help to change the perceptions of content writing in those who are accustomed to the out-dated traditions of the passive voice?

1. Web Analytics Data
2. Word Clouds

First, analyze your analytics.

Note which pages are being read, and which ones aren’t. 9 times out of 10, the pages that are most important to the organization aren’t even close to being in the top 10 of those being viewed by your target audience. If it’s a document that’s important to the company, but clearly not important to the reader, then you have to ask why it’s even being offered online in the first place.

[Of course, I know how large organizations work and I know that pulling down the "Important Company Document" is never going to happen. So this is when you move to step 2 - revising the content!]

Next, start by creating a word cloud of the page in question.

In content marketing, we use word clouds to illustrate the prominence of keywords within a web page. In this case, use the word cloud as a way of demonstrating organization-centric vocabulary and messaging. Here’s a word cloud I created from a web page on the Government of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans website:

From the words alone, you can tell this is a traditional “top-down” approach to messaging.

Next, rewrite the content in a manner keeping with proper writing for the web techniques:

- Using the researched vocabulary of your target audience
- Plain language
- Short, sound-bite sentences
- Bulleted lists
- Task-oriented
- 150-250 words maximum (if possible)
- Proper use of headers and calls to action

Then, create another word cloud of the revised content:

This word cloud still contains organizational vocabulary, but you can see clearly the message has tipped in favour of a more balanced approach biased towards the target audience – gone are the acronyms and prominence of organizational program names.

Using this method, factual data and qualitative illustrations stress the results of proper web content writing and serve to bolster support for the investment of time and resources from those who still control both budgets and message.

Related Video:

This post is for you …the writer, the entrepreneur, the up-and-coming content strategist, the communications professional. The myriad of people who read my blog and, I discover, really enjoy it. It’s for the individuals, who, each year share with me their own dreams of freelancing …and the fear of pursuing them.

As a hat tip to the end of 2010 and the beginning of a new year with the many possibilities it brings, here then are a list of my favorite things for …business …for writing …for content. May they help you as much as they have me! Cheers!

The Fine Print: The following products/services are NOT paid endorsements but simply reflect personal preference on my part.

Read:

There are very few books on content writing that acknowledge that online content is more than just getting your point across succinctly in plain language. This book fills a significant gap in any “writing for the web” library by exploring and revealing the basics of “persuasive” writing. This is my approach to web writing and I love the hybrid mash-up of psychology and marketing fundamentals that Colleen Jones articulates and applies.

Finally! A book that talks about web content as a compendium …a contextual diffusion of messaging that doesn’t just stop at the corporate website but is interwoven throughout the online space. With a cohesive approach to content strategy that includes Social Media, this isn’t just another Social Media book extolling the virtues of social media in it’s own bubble. It’s about time!

Have you read this yet? If you haven’t, and even if you have, the 10 year anniversary edition is brilliant! I love it! My copy is highlighted, tagged, bookmarked and well-loved. It’s a smart read that asked many philosophical questions about the web ten years ago, that still remain relevant and unanswered today. All businesses must read this! It’s a book that makes you think about the web …about society …about the future. After reading it, you won’t just see outside the box ….you’ll think differently about the box entirely.

Learn:

It all started with an idea. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. That was the premise behind the idea that my business partner, Jeff Parks, and I came up with when we started Follow The UX Leader.

What I love about our workshops is that they’re hands-on, interactive …and fun! And that’s not just from the participant perspective, but from mine too. I love talking about what I do! I love teaching! And I love learning from participants! I’m proud of what Jeff and I have created and I’m excited to continue bringing high-quality, highly-interactive learning opportunities to businesses, governments and individuals in the future.

Every now and then you come across a blog or e-zine that stands out. It’s smart. It’s worth your time. It’s written by credible thought-leaders who bring value to the community of practice. A List Apart is one of those!

Analyze:

The future looks bright for content marketing. It’s not just about keyword research and repetition. It’s about using the researched vocabulary of your target audience. ScribeSEO was created by writers for writers …so it has the functionality and finesse that anyone who’s ever done SEO “the old fashioned” way through WordTracker will appreciate. It’s a beautiful app!

A website is not a brochure and the cost to run it is not a single line item expense for the company. In my opinion, every website that launches should factor in the annual cost of running ClickTale – a web analytics program that actually shows you how people are interacting with your website. “Time on page” can’t tell you if someone has actually read your website, but a ClickTale movie can pretty quickly show you if it has …or if it hasn’t!

I do math reluctantly. So when I learned that keyword ratios are just as easy to visualize as they are to demonstrate in a mathematical equation, I now present all of my clients with a Word cloud of their search engine optimized content. Many are now proudly pinned to lunchroom bulletin boards as a way to recognize that words alone can, in fact, represent a corporate culture.

Write:

I actually think this is the future of writing. Between multiple edits and multiple authors, a single document passed around for review becomes a mess of colorful comment tags that cause more confusion than clarity. Text Flow lets you version control and collaborate your content in a way that mimics content creation today: write, revise, revise, revise etc…

I write in Pages. I love full screen mode for distraction-free writing. While I don’t recommend OmmWriter for client projects, if you’re just looking to tap into your inner creativity and “free-form” for awhile, this free app is the way to go!








Watch:

When Amy Winehouse sang “They tried to make me go to rehab but I said ‘no, no, no’!” she wasn’t referring to a physiotherapy appointment for a sprained ankle. And when Sam Cooke referred to “men working on the chain gang” he wasn’t talking about a jewelry heist either.

That’s the trouble with words. Without context, they remain ambiguous; chameleons with multiple meanings.

And, that’s the problem with search engine optimization (SEO). Simply choosing keywords based on the number of hits they receive doesn’t really justify the use of these words within your content marketing lexicon either.

You see, just like Amy and Sam, words can mislead without context …and in the case of content marketing, can misdirect target audiences entirely.

Consider what kind of traffic might come to your website using the keyword phrase “stainless steel chains”:

- urban hipsters?
- metrosexuals?
- mechanics or construction workers?
- bikers?
- thugs?
- prison officials?
- tow truck drivers?

You see how keyword strength can’t just be based on numbers alone? A website can fail simply by using words that have too broad a meaning to attract and convert the kinds of customers you are actually looking for.

Without defining the purpose of your website and your target audience, search engine optimization really is a numbers game …with a very high failure ratio.

In certain industries, keywords based on popular topics can cause a veritable traffic jam of high bounce rates caused by the right information being presented to the wrong audience.

Consider what kind of traffic might come to your website using the keyword phrase “breast cancer treatments”:

- patients?
- doctors?
- researchers?
- students?

While the number of hits might be high enough to justify its use within your content, the significance of the number alone doesn’t account for the myriad of individuals from different backgrounds who might be searching for this same keyword phrase.

As this “literal” video demonstrates, content without context and meaning (as often used in keyword stuffing) is just plain absurd.

Words are wonderful things. They have multiple meanings, spellings and pronunciation. All of these must be factored into your search engine optimization research in order to truly come up with a content marketing lexicon that doesn’t jeopardize meaning (and conversion) at the expense of hits alone.

It’s tough to quantify Return on Investment (ROI) online. It makes sense that organizations need to justify marketing expenditures on activities or investments that help to meet their business objectives. For many, business decisions come down to the basic Biz101 equation of:

ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

Without it, budget allocation would simply be an irrationally emotive decision based on the whims of its spender.

ROI Is Not Dead!

Since the tech bubble of 2000, many in the Web industry have tried to sell businesses on the esoteric concept that ROI is dead …that the “new” ROI can’t be distilled into a quantifiable equation.

Sadly, ten years later, that argument erroneously remains. For many it is simply easier to justify what it is that we do by telling clients to “pay no attention to [what goes on] behind the curtain”.

But if we were “really great and powerful we’d keep our promises” ….to ourselves and to our clients by actively demonstrating the very real business value web professionals (content strategists, information architects, user experience practitioners etc.) bring to business.

ROI Redux

The ROI equation was born of a time when input and output were quantifiably linked. Standardization of resources in the Industrial Revolution sought to lower investment costs as a direct means of increasing gains.

ROI Redux of the Knowledge-Based Economy

Today, the return on investment in web content strategy, web design and web writing is in the longer term value of online relationship building. Dollars once allocated to three-martini lunch expense accounts and golf club memberships are making a comeback in the form of online content (text, images, video, audio, social) that equally connects and engages with target audiences in meaningful ways.

This ROI Redux is less focused on the immediate 1:1 ratio of dollar input to dollar result and more centered on the longer-term business value of relationship-building.

In essence, the print collateral days of “brochures” and “marketing kit folders” were very much a product of the Industrial Revolution model of marketing. ROI Redux on the web, however, means that a well-thought out website and ongoing web strategy can continue to inspire and create conversations online long after brochure-ware ever could.

Investment in a professional web content strategy and writing does yield business results. It’s now just up to organizations to determine the value and worth of solving for X

ROI = (X – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment