This is going to be a bit of an odd post I think, not something I have seen generally but when I did come across a thread discussing it (how do you design articles, how long does it take etc.) I found it pretty interesting so I thought I'd post here.
I don't think it really fits as a site article as it's not really news or content, more information. It also doesn't really fit having image content and a large wall of tesmxt is more suited off the main site. Might suit an extension to the about us page perhaps as an extended pieces on overall philosphy.
It gives insight into what I'm planning and doing with the site and why certain articles have been posted and content in one area has been prioritised over another.
Developing an article and content roadmap
1. Article planning, prioritisation and pipelines
Time: Minimal ongoing, 10s of hours initially
So how do I go about deciding what to write / feature? Given I am an community member first and foremost this is particularly organic and pretty simple, I write about what I have researched / followed myself and found interesting. Naturally this has focused a lot on the news and rumours around the EC codex.
I tend to then be interested in Tactics and Hobby about equally, with lore a bit after that (and often poretty specific). But how do I know what profile is representative of the wider community? I don't! But I have drawn on some resources.
Reddit
The main one was the reddit EC community. Hi to anyone from there (and at the time of writing with the soft launch / community feedback phase, this is pretty much everyone).
The same topics keep coming up again and again. Remember, part of the reason for the long-form on the forums and site is to address this as it's less vulnerable to the fast social media cycle drop off that see this occur. If you have one cornerstone article on a single topic that can then answer this question rather than it constantly popping up in the feed.
Now, even though something is asked regularly, it doesn't mean it generates interest. Infact it's usually the opposite and has very little engagement. Useful to answer, and definitely or organic searches from new users, but not all that interesting to the wider community often. The second item then is what topics have the higher interaction. Codex news (especially when solid) blows everything out of the water.
Hobby is next in terms of likes, but detailed stats and tactics often get more written engagement.
Specific questions and recurring themes helped plan out the categories, articles underneath and the order / prioritisation of when those will be written and published. Largely this aligns with my own gut / interest as a fellow community member so that's a positive.
Wider sources - other communities, google
Now when I say google, this isn't detailed keyword research. To be honest the focus here is so niche then keywords almost look after themselves. This essentially amounted to a tiered map mostly run on the back of google autocomplete queries. I'll get into SEO later and targeted keywords just as good practice, but it's not a heavy focus. It did colour the working and hook on some planned arrticles though as match up to what people are looking for. (though this was largely already in place from reddit thread titles).
Wider communities though. This covers both sites and forums. Essentially I trawled through the huge existing body of warhammer content and pulled out how it is organised elsewhere and where the volume of articles and interaction lay. Note again, no SEO level proper 'competitor' analysis here, just surface level.
The goal was to make sure the organisation of the content and, again, prioritisation / ordering in the pipeline matches what the community wants. Essentially that work has already been done on other established communities. As a member of those, again, my rough sketch pretty much matches up with this with a few tweaks.
2. Article research
Time: 0-20 hours (most common 2-4 hours)
OK, the structure is now in place, the prioritising and weighting established by category, sub category and on key articles. now to fill in the blacks and get to research.
Not much to say here on the process, it varioes by post. Reactionary posts to a new announcement can essentially just boil down to some reading and analysis anf have minimal time cost.
I'm consuming other content myself all the time and saving links to various article folders as revelent / to read in depth later. I'll specifially go and and search on any article as well, even if it's light on the need of external backing, just to cover bases.
Other planned articles, particularly lore, will takes hours up hours for a single article. Others are somewhere in the middle where I'll need to confirm my knowledge / recollection on lexicanmum or from my physical books., (e.g. something from a prior edition, when did that mini actually release etc.)
Main point to note here is the priority x time combination can, and has, altered the pipeline. There may be an article with a lot of interest and engagement, both to old and new comunnity members, as well as being highly topical but it's going to take a lot of time and so has been bumped down the order.
An example of this is what miniatures and units we can expect from the codex. It's simple to just list opinion on the few certain and likely minis and move on. To generate some new information and actually useful content though researching what we can learn from prior Editions and EC, all the EC lore, prior GW faction released, info from the CSM codex etc. etc. all takes time. Not much point posting an article for something that could easily be a short forum / reddit post, there's need to be meat on it. In the end between the research, making images and writing / editing this article was over 45 hours, though it was x6 the length of a regular article.
3. Writing and editing
Time: 3-4 hours
Once I'm at the stage of actually writing an article it takes 3-4 hours to put together assuming it's a standard 1500-2000 words.
This generally includes the following:
Initial
3. Posting
Time: 1-2 hours
Just hit post, right? Not quite, a few steps first.
Time: 1-2 hours (formal) otherwise unlimited!
This is sort of a step. Remembering I'm a community member myself I'll want to engage with it, I am wring something I would have wanted to see anyway even if I didn't write it!
There is an element of that almost academic / 'best practice' driving 'user engagement' after the fact, but to be honest it;s just me wanting to chat to fellow EC fans!
If I really wanted to be formal about this it would be:
6. Feedback and review
Time: 1-2 hours / month (formal) plus organic tacit feedback
Important to note but my approach, as said before, is to curate and deliver what the community wants. That includes the directy community here active on the forums, but also the wider community. Already I have noticed the tactics focus is lower with a lack of rules, compared to the wider and established 40k communities, hence the pivot more towards hobby and lore.
When the Index, and then codex, hits it will be the opposite with tactics, battle reports, lists and competitive results likely to be the main topic issue for EC.
When the new miniatures launch the hobby aspect showcasing them will be as large as the table top performance. expect to see a lot of rules queries as well.
I don't think it really fits as a site article as it's not really news or content, more information. It also doesn't really fit having image content and a large wall of tesmxt is more suited off the main site. Might suit an extension to the about us page perhaps as an extended pieces on overall philosphy.
It gives insight into what I'm planning and doing with the site and why certain articles have been posted and content in one area has been prioritised over another.
Developing an article and content roadmap
1. Article planning, prioritisation and pipelines
Time: Minimal ongoing, 10s of hours initially
So how do I go about deciding what to write / feature? Given I am an community member first and foremost this is particularly organic and pretty simple, I write about what I have researched / followed myself and found interesting. Naturally this has focused a lot on the news and rumours around the EC codex.
I tend to then be interested in Tactics and Hobby about equally, with lore a bit after that (and often poretty specific). But how do I know what profile is representative of the wider community? I don't! But I have drawn on some resources.
The main one was the reddit EC community. Hi to anyone from there (and at the time of writing with the soft launch / community feedback phase, this is pretty much everyone).
The same topics keep coming up again and again. Remember, part of the reason for the long-form on the forums and site is to address this as it's less vulnerable to the fast social media cycle drop off that see this occur. If you have one cornerstone article on a single topic that can then answer this question rather than it constantly popping up in the feed.
Now, even though something is asked regularly, it doesn't mean it generates interest. Infact it's usually the opposite and has very little engagement. Useful to answer, and definitely or organic searches from new users, but not all that interesting to the wider community often. The second item then is what topics have the higher interaction. Codex news (especially when solid) blows everything out of the water.
Hobby is next in terms of likes, but detailed stats and tactics often get more written engagement.
Specific questions and recurring themes helped plan out the categories, articles underneath and the order / prioritisation of when those will be written and published. Largely this aligns with my own gut / interest as a fellow community member so that's a positive.
Wider sources - other communities, google
Now when I say google, this isn't detailed keyword research. To be honest the focus here is so niche then keywords almost look after themselves. This essentially amounted to a tiered map mostly run on the back of google autocomplete queries. I'll get into SEO later and targeted keywords just as good practice, but it's not a heavy focus. It did colour the working and hook on some planned arrticles though as match up to what people are looking for. (though this was largely already in place from reddit thread titles).
Wider communities though. This covers both sites and forums. Essentially I trawled through the huge existing body of warhammer content and pulled out how it is organised elsewhere and where the volume of articles and interaction lay. Note again, no SEO level proper 'competitor' analysis here, just surface level.
The goal was to make sure the organisation of the content and, again, prioritisation / ordering in the pipeline matches what the community wants. Essentially that work has already been done on other established communities. As a member of those, again, my rough sketch pretty much matches up with this with a few tweaks.
2. Article research
Time: 0-20 hours (most common 2-4 hours)
OK, the structure is now in place, the prioritising and weighting established by category, sub category and on key articles. now to fill in the blacks and get to research.
Not much to say here on the process, it varioes by post. Reactionary posts to a new announcement can essentially just boil down to some reading and analysis anf have minimal time cost.
I'm consuming other content myself all the time and saving links to various article folders as revelent / to read in depth later. I'll specifially go and and search on any article as well, even if it's light on the need of external backing, just to cover bases.
Other planned articles, particularly lore, will takes hours up hours for a single article. Others are somewhere in the middle where I'll need to confirm my knowledge / recollection on lexicanmum or from my physical books., (e.g. something from a prior edition, when did that mini actually release etc.)
Main point to note here is the priority x time combination can, and has, altered the pipeline. There may be an article with a lot of interest and engagement, both to old and new comunnity members, as well as being highly topical but it's going to take a lot of time and so has been bumped down the order.
An example of this is what miniatures and units we can expect from the codex. It's simple to just list opinion on the few certain and likely minis and move on. To generate some new information and actually useful content though researching what we can learn from prior Editions and EC, all the EC lore, prior GW faction released, info from the CSM codex etc. etc. all takes time. Not much point posting an article for something that could easily be a short forum / reddit post, there's need to be meat on it. In the end between the research, making images and writing / editing this article was over 45 hours, though it was x6 the length of a regular article.
3. Writing and editing
Time: 3-4 hours
Once I'm at the stage of actually writing an article it takes 3-4 hours to put together assuming it's a standard 1500-2000 words.
This generally includes the following:
Initial
- Breaking the article into logical ordered sections
- Writing the prose under it
- Noting where links to internal and external resources should be
- Finding and optimising image content
- Formatting in wordpress
- Spelling and grammar checking (I'll leave this post largely unedited as a first draft so you can see how poor this is at times!)
- Breaking down my writing style to online content format, generally
- More, shorter, paragraphs
- reducing 'wooly' worse heavy writing
- simplifying the language (particular with English as a second language readers in mind)
- Full read on separate device (tricks your brain into reading it more objectively, self editing is rough because you mind fills in blanks for you based on intent!)
- Correcting issues, formatting.
- Full pass read through after each version, usually 3-4 passes are needed to get it in shape.
3. Posting
Time: 1-2 hours
Just hit post, right? Not quite, a few steps first.
- SEO checks (using rankmath plugin) to improve this, within reason. I don't really go heavy here, as noted, a quick pass to make it acceptable only.
Typically this involves:- Missing image alt text
- Keyword density / coverage
- Heading and titles structure
- reminder to fix / shorted the url slug (I'd always forget this step otherwise)
- Adding in the various internal and external links
- Setting up the forum discussing thread and linking
- Social media posting (hasn't done this yet, but all setup to do so, automated via plugin, this step will be checking it posted correctly just).
- Checking on actual devices (Screen, narrow screen, tablet, mobile) rather than relying on the wordpress view.
- Posting! at last.
- Final posted article read through and final editing corrections
- Index request to search engines (likely won;t regularly do this step, not really needed).
Time: 1-2 hours (formal) otherwise unlimited!
This is sort of a step. Remembering I'm a community member myself I'll want to engage with it, I am wring something I would have wanted to see anyway even if I didn't write it!
There is an element of that almost academic / 'best practice' driving 'user engagement' after the fact, but to be honest it;s just me wanting to chat to fellow EC fans!
If I really wanted to be formal about this it would be:
- Engaging on any interactions on social media platforms, following others, checking referrals and backlinks etc,
- Actively posting on other channels
6. Feedback and review
Time: 1-2 hours / month (formal) plus organic tacit feedback
Important to note but my approach, as said before, is to curate and deliver what the community wants. That includes the directy community here active on the forums, but also the wider community. Already I have noticed the tactics focus is lower with a lack of rules, compared to the wider and established 40k communities, hence the pivot more towards hobby and lore.
When the Index, and then codex, hits it will be the opposite with tactics, battle reports, lists and competitive results likely to be the main topic issue for EC.
When the new miniatures launch the hobby aspect showcasing them will be as large as the table top performance. expect to see a lot of rules queries as well.
