In episode 84 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe talks with Val Swisher of Content Rules about why companies fail and how to succeed at delivering personalized experiences at scale.
“It all has to be completely standardized in order to be successful. There have to be small, individual, standardized chunks of content that are devoid of format that can be mixed and matched. Then the output can be personalized to the person who asked for it and sent to them at that moment in time.”
—Val Swisher

Related links: 

* Preorder The Personalization Paradox

Twitter handles:

* @sarahokeefe
* @valswisher

Transcript:
Sarah O’Keefe:                   Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts podcast brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In this episode, we talk with special guest Val Swisher of Content Rules about why companies fail, which seems terrifying, and also how to succeed at delivering personalized experiences at scale. And I imagine you’re going to tell us those two things are related, like do one to avoid the other.
SO:                   So, hi, my name is Sarah O’Keefe and I’m here with my special guest Val Swisher, who is the CEO of Content Rules. Val and I have some common affinities for a variety of causes and some needlework and some other fun stuff like that. And we run similar businesses so we actually talk quite often. Today, we’re going to attempt to distill that into a useful podcast for you. So wish us luck. Val, hi.
Val Swisher:                   Hey Sarah, how are you?
SO:                   I’m good. How are you doing over there?
VS:                   I am doing just fine here.
SO:                   Excellent.
VS:                   It’s a new day.
SO:                   It is a new day. For context, we are recording this on November 9th?
VS:                   9th.
SO:                   9th in 2020 so you can take that away for whatever you want. But Val, tell us a little bit about Content Rules and what you do over there.
VS:                   Well, we do a lot of similar things to Scriptorium, don’t we? Since you and I are in similar businesses. So as you said, I’m the CEO of Content Rules and I started the company in 1994 and we do a variety of things that are all related to content. So we develop content with contract writers and editors and course developers and all those kinds of folks. We do a lot of content strategy work, helping customers move from an, unstructured environment to a structured environment or helping customers with their global content strategy and how to go global, what they need to do to go global. And we also help customers optimize their content using special software that will allow them to program in their style guides and terminology, and make sure that their content is as good as it can be. So those are all of our different service lines.
SO:                   Yeah. And you’re right, there is a good bit of overlap. Although the funny thing I think is that we don’t actually see that much customer overlap, which is probably why we manage to get along, which is helpful.
VS:                   Undoubtedly. It is interesting though.
SO:                   Do, you have a book you’re working on?
VS:                   I do. I do. I am working on my fourth book. This book is titled The Personalization Paradox: Why Companies Fail and How to Succeed at Delivering Personalized Experiences at Scale.
SO:                   Okay,