About us

Plus or Minus Seven provide analysis and consultancy based on our own holistic content approach. We work with organisations across the public and private sectors to help them create, understand and share content more effectively and efficiently. We have helped organisations make the transition from print to online, develop a variety of new content offerings and develop more efficient and effective ways of using content to support key business objectives and relationships.

Lead consultant 

Moffitt photo
Stephen Moffitt

Stephen has been involved in content and digital technologies since the early 1990's when

Permeating and dissolving barriers

Submitted by Stephen Moffitt
on Mon, 04/30/2012 - 10:14

In my previous post, I started outlining the case for viewing content strategy and moving toward a content-focussed organisation as a business change process. This time, I want to focus on one result of this move: the permeating and dissolving of organisational barriers, and its implications for the organisation.

In the past, content was produced and distributed by specialist teams within organisations.

Tags: 
holistic content approach
content

The implications of becoming content focused

Submitted by Stephen Moffitt
on Fri, 04/27/2012 - 10:46

Everyone seems to be promoting the content bandwagon. Traditional book publishers are told they need a content strategy. Content strategists have appeared, showing non-traditional publishers the importance of content for what they do. Even marketing has refocused as content marketing, as opposed to traditional message marketing.

As organisations begin to engage with this shift toward being content creators/managers/distributors, it is worth being realistic about the implications of this business transformation.

Tags: 
future of publishing
holistic content approach

Multiplatform vision versus reality

Submitted by Stephen Moffitt
on Wed, 04/11/2012 - 20:55

In a recent article on multiplatform publishing in information companies, eContent's Leila Meyer highlighted one of the findings of the recent Software and Information Industry Association survey which touches on the core of a holistic content approach. The survey found that there was a gap between what C-level members of the organization saw as the key strategic priority for the organization and what the priorities were for those managers below them who were delivery and product focused.

Tags: 
holistic content approach

Publishers, good God! What are they good for?

Submitted by Stephen Moffitt
on Tue, 04/10/2012 - 10:12

A number of different stories in recent weeks, culminating in the 9 April post, Publishing is no longer a job or an industry — it’s a button on GigaOm have raised the question: what value do traditional publishers bring? Mathew Ingram, in the GigaOm post, presents Clay Shirky's argument that publishing is simply the function of pushing a button to post content and, therefore the evil empire of big publishers are no longer of value.

Tags: 
future of publishing
content
context

A couple of articles on customer book discovery

Submitted by Stephen Moffitt
on Mon, 02/20/2012 - 14:59

I came across two articles that talked about how customers discover new books/authors in the digital environment: Book Discovery: How Many ‘Touchpoints’ To Purchase? and Whoever Builds A Good Tool To Help Us Find New Books To Read Will Get Rich. One of things that was interesting in these articles was the fact that, with the decline of libraries and bookstores, publishers and readers need new ways to find each other.

Tags: 
content
discovery
search

Why a holistic content approach?

Submitted by Stephen Moffitt
on Tue, 12/06/2011 - 15:36

In the fine end-of-the-year tradition, I have been thinking about the work that I have been doing over the past year and the various discussions that I have had related to content. What has come out of this reflection is a holistic content approach. The article explains the approach, but I wanted to use this blog to talk about why a holistic content approach.

Two recent experiences prompted the realisation that is at the heart of the holistic content approach.

Tags: 
holistic content approach
strategy
content

Holistic content approach

The increased importance of content to organisations and the increased amount of time, money and effort spent on content has led many organisations to take a fresh look at all aspects of their content. Given its increased importance, content can no longer be thought of within traditional disciplines such as branding, marketing, customer service, investor relations, knowledge management or data management. What is needed is a Holistic Content Approach that looks at content as a tool that helps create relationships between people for a common objective.

What purpose does it serve?

Submitted by Stephen Moffitt
on Tue, 11/08/2011 - 12:13

A recent blog on the Harvard Business Review by Anthony Bradley and Mark McDonald (Social Media Success Is About Purpose) made a good point about the use of social media as part of any business content strategy. Social media are most effective when they are seen as serving a particular purpose; that is, when they are seen as tools as opposed to technologies. There is a lot of buzz around these and it seems that they are the 'must-have' of the day, much like a website was 15 years ago.

Tags: 
technology
strategy

Why content?

Submitted by Stephen Moffitt
on Mon, 10/24/2011 - 10:46

Three separate items I came across recently got me thinking about 'content': what it is and why it is suddenly a hot topic that has generated its own discipline of content strategy.

Questions about content

The first was a discussion in LinkedIn's Content Strategy group entitled "How do you create and distribute knowledge?" The discussion was based on an article by Rick Wilson, Content Strategy, Part 2: Naked Truths and Fundamentals. What struck me about this was the fact that, although it was about content strategy, it was really focused on the transmission of knowledge and how to achieve

Tags: 
content
context
strategy

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