All posts about
Content strategy

Content strategy is the practice of planning for content creation, delivery, and governance. (source: Wikipedia)

Content Strategy Design Patterns

Added on 17 January 2011 Peter Bogaards
“A content strategy plans the full lifecycle of content: how it will be created, delivered, maintained and archived or destroyed. This project focuses on web content: all forms of digital language and media found on websites. As an integral part of User Experience, web content strategy must take account of search engine optimization, user interface design, user needs, business needs, and other aspects of online strategy. (…) To paraphrase IAWiki, “Design Patterns are solutions to common problems. As problems arise in a community and are resolved, common solutions often spontaneously emerge. Eventually the best of these self-identify and become refined until they reach the status of a Design Pattern.” (Contentini)

A Contentmas Epiphany

Added on 22 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Be honest, did you immediately think of a sketch or mockup you have tucked away? Or some clever little piece of code you want to fiddle with? Now ask yourself, why would you start designing the container if you haven’t worked out what you need to put inside? Anyway, forget the content strategy lecture; I haven’t given you your gifts yet. I present The Twelve Days of Contentmas! This is a simple little plan to make sure that your personal site, blog or portfolio is not just looking good at the end of these twelve days, but is also a really useful repository of really useful content.” (Relly Annett-Baker ~ 24Ways)

Testing Content

Added on 14 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Nobody needs to convince you that it’s important to test your website’s design and interaction with the people who will use it, right? But if that’s all you do, you’re missing out on feedback about the most important part of your site: the content. Whether the purpose of your site is to convince people to do something, to buy something, or simply to inform, testing only whether they can find information or complete transactions is a missed opportunity: Is the content appropriate for the audience? Can they read and understand what you’ve written?” (Angela Colter ~ A List Apart)

An Intelligent Content Strategy for the Enterprise

Added on 10 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“One of the challenges facing anyone considering a content strategy, whether on the scale of a single web offering or a global enterprise, is sustainability. It is only with intelligent content that it becomes possible to talk about a sustainable enterprise content strategy. Automation can be used to minimize the time, effort and money needed to apply a good content strategy. However, automation doesn’t just happen. Content must be consciously designed to support it. An intelligent content strategy establishes a coherent plan under which content will be designed, developed and deployed so as to achieve maximum benefit to the customer and the organization while minimizing the cost to the organization.” (Ann Rockley and Joe Gollner ~ ASIS&T Bulletin Dec. 2010 Jan. 2011)

The Elements of Content Strategy

Added on 1 December 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Content strategy is the web’s hottest new thing. But where did it come from? And why does it matter? And what does the content renaissance mean for you? This brief guide explores content strategy’s roots, and quickly and expertly demonstrates not only how it’s done, but how you can do it well. A compelling read for both experienced content strategists and those making the transition from other fields.” (Erin Kissane ~ A Book Apart)

Content Strategy Will Make or Break Your Process

Added on 26 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
Karen McGrane and Jeff Eaton presentation ~ “User experience is key, and applying the basic principals we know about human-centric design can help give information and how it’s processed the place it deserves. By factoring this into pre-planning, task optimization, and above all communication, a beautiful site can have beautiful content without the last-minute chaos state.” (Duo Consulting)

The Art and Science of Influential Web Content: An Interview with Colleen Jones

Added on 26 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The goal is helping people make good decisions and then act on those decisions. The goal is matching a business, product, or idea with users who are interested in and can benefit from it, then act on it. The goal is being a trusted advisor to users, not controllers of users’ minds. (…) Content strategy is more than a set of skills. It’s a mindset and a process. I would advise anyone interested to focus on that first, then worry about the skills. Skills, tools, and tips constantly change and are hard to use properly without understanding the mindset and process first.” (Peachpit)

Designing for Content Management Systems

Added on 22 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Designing and indeed front-end development for a website that will have content edited by non-technical users poses some problems over and above those you will encounter when developing a site where you have full control over the output mark-up. However, most clients these days want to be able to manage their own content, so most designers will find that some, if not all, of their designs end up as templates in some kind of CMS.” (Rachel Andrew ~ Smashing Magazine)

Micro Copy: Content Strategy and Writing the User Interface

Added on 22 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
“When we think about writing, planning or implementing copy for the web, most of us probably picture longer form text: blogs, about pages and information on products and services. As content strategists we audit websites and try to come up with holistic content solutions for our clients. But apart from Help content, we rarely talk about the expanding world of web applications and the implications of user interface copy for our practice.” (Contentini)

Web Content That Persuades and Motivates

Added on 22 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
“In this article, I am going to explore the written Web site content whose purpose is to cause prospective customers to take action—or that results in their not taking action—from the perspective of its achieving a company’s sales and marketing goals. This discussion assumes the company has a service or product to sell. If you’’re not interested in the motivational aspects of sales psychology and what their proper use can do to help a company’s sales efforts, then stop right here, because you will not like this article.” (Chandler Turner ~ UXmatters)

Content strategy for dummies

Added on 14 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Information architects need to understand content. Content strategists need to understand context. In terms of traditional sitemaps, the boxes have no value without the interconnecting arrows. And the arrows have no meaning if there are no boxes to which to point. And that’s why there is so much gray area in the definition – and why the pedants will spend years fighting over definitions in the years to come.” (Eric Reiss ~ FatDUX)

Imagine a Nimble World: Challenging the Publishing Industry

Added on 4 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Presentation at Smart Content: The Content Analytics Conference, October 19, 2010 in New York, by Rachel Lovinger, content strategy lead at Razorfish. ~ As a Content Strategy Lead at Razorfish, Rachel Lovinger is interested in connecting users with the quality content they want and need. She uses her experience in online content production and publishing to help develop processes, best practices and innovative ideas for Fortune 500 companies looking to use digital content in more meaningful ways. She started Razorfish’s Semantic Web Affinity Group, and she’s interested in relevance, findability, signification, and inherently funny words. Rachel was doing Content Strategy long before she realized it was an actual field.” (@rlovinger ~ The Content Analytics Conference)

We’re All Content Strategists Now (the video)

Added on 2 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The “Best Careers 2009” issue of U.S. News and World Report gently mocked the user experience profession for its inability to agree on a name for itself. Indeed, many job titles seem like a mix-and-match game, mashing up words like “information” and “experience” and “architect” and “designer.” And now “content strategy” comes around, looking for a seat at the UX table. Some say the profession fills a gap in our professional practices. Others argue that it’s just a different name for the things that we already do. In this session, we’ll discuss why UX needs content—and how UX practitioners of every flavor can put content strategy to work on their projects.” (Karen McGrane ~ IDEA 2010)

Why Content Strategy Matters (video interview w/ Scott Abel)

Added on 2 November 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The conversation around content strategy has exploded in the last few months. We’ve certainly contributed to that conversation ourselves, as you’ve undoubtedly seen on this blog. Still there remains some ambiguity about what exactly is content strategy and why it’s important? In the following series of videos, MindTouch’s Mark Fidelman spends some time with Scott Abel, aka The Content Wrangler, and investigates the realm of content strategy, the benefits of application, and its relation to technical communicators and social media.” (MindTouch)

Fear, loathing and content strategy

Added on 12 October 2010 Peter Bogaards
“There is a prevailing and ongoing confusion around the relatively new title of content strategist, and the field called content strategy. I find these arguments simultaneously boring and frustrating, and while I hardly think one post from me is going to silence the issue, I wanted to see if I could tease out some of the arguments here.” (Mapped)

How to measure the effectiveness of web content?

Added on 27 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“(…) I can see two issues that make this a pretty difficult task, and it’s the reason why the above three methods should not be used in isolation. In combination, they help tell the whole story. It is difficult to know what users really read on a page and it is difficult to isolate the effect of content changes from the other influencing factors on a page.” (Rian van der Merwe ~ Elezea)