All posts about
Content strategy

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

Strategic Content Management

Added on 7 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The rise of content strategy is dealing the content management industry a huge kick up the backside. In the web’s Wild West era, the CMS was run by the IT department—or sometimes a lone webmaster who knew HTML—so CMS choices were based on features, price, and cultural fit, rather than web or content strategy. It was the classic IT drill: selection committees, feature matrices, and business lunches with men wearing neckties.” (Jonathan Kahn ~ A List Apart)

Are you prepared for the Semantic Web?

Added on 20 July 2010 Peter Bogaards
“If you want to stay ahead of the web publishing curve, now is the time to start learning and experimenting with the Semantic Web. It’s been in development since the ’90s, led by Tim Berners-Lee himself. When media historians write books about the information transformation we are in (from print to web), the Semantic Web will be at least as important as the invention of HTML. Having Semantic Web-enabled pages will soon be a big competitive advantage for you and your company.” (Writing for Digital)

Content strategy and customer service: A talk with Ann Rockley

Added on 13 July 2010 Peter Bogaards
“A unified content strategy is a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customer’s needs. Intelligent content/smart documents are the way in which we prepare our content so that it’s structurally rich and semantically aware, and is therefore discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable and adaptable. So the content strategy is the plan of action, and intelligent content is the way we implement it.” (Jill C. Nagle ~ Zengage)

Organizating Content: A 7 Parts Series

Added on 25 May 2010 Peter Bogaards
“I’m starting a new series on organizing content. I’m not sure how many parts there will be in this series. Writing essays in a serial format is an experiment I’m exploring. Basically this approach to writing follows the agile model. I write a bit, get some feedback, write some more, get feedback, and keep going. The feedback along the way shapes the direction I’m heading. Also, with each serial post, I hope to take the issue a little deeper.” (I’d Rather Be Writing)

Intentional Communication: Expanding our Definition of User Experience Design

Added on 26 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Design and content. Content and design. It’s impossible (and stupid) to argue over which one is more important than the other – which should come first, which is more difficult or ‘strategic’. They need each other to provide context, meaning, information, and instruction in any user experience (UX).” (Kristina Halvorson – interactions XVII.3)

A DIY Guide to Content Strategy

Added on 23 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“You’re a web professional: a designer, developer, information architect, or strategist. Your team has the web design disciplines covered: research, strategy, user experience design, standards-based development, and project management. But something’s going wrong with your projects; the user experience just isn’t meeting your expectations. You’re reasonably sure you know why: there’s a problem with the content. You realise that your team could use some help from the discipline of content strategy, but for whatever reason, hiring a dedicated content strategist isn’t a feasible option. So what can you do to add some content strategy to your projects? Learn how web professionals can practise content strategy for ourselves, through advocacy, improved design processes, and community engagement. And when we have the luxury of a dedicated content strategist, learn how we can engage with the discipline in our everyday practice.” (Jonathan Kahn)

Content: Not Always King

Added on 22 March 2010 Peter Bogaards
“The strategy you adopt when tackling a project needs to take this continuum in mind. If your product is about content consumption, content is king and you should do due diligence and start from a content strategy perspective. Users of those products are coming to be informed or entertained and need the content to be front-and-center; the product is in service to displaying the content in as appropriate a manner as possible. The meaning of the content matters; you wouldn’t display a cartoon the same way you’d display an analysis of the stock market. At least, not usually.” (Dan Saffer – Kicker Studio) – Goes back to the old web app (code) versus doc (data) distinction.

Starting Out Organized: Website Content Planning The Right Way

Added on 17 March 2010 Peter Bogaards
“So many articles explain how to design interfaces, design graphics and deal with clients. But one step in the Web development process is often skipped over or forgotten altogether: content planning. Sometimes called information architecture, or IA planning, this step doesn’t find a home easily in many people’s workflow. But rushing on to programming and pushing pixels makes for content that looks shoehorned rather than fully integrated and will only require late-game revisions.” (Kristin Wemmer – Smashing Magazine)

Content Strategy Is About Publishing

Added on 3 March 2010 Peter Bogaards
“When people talk about the imminent death of publishing, they’re usually talking about something narrow, specific, and tied to ways of working that predate the internet: the publication of books, magazines, newspapers, and all kinds of printed legal and business data, along with the economic, logistical, and aesthetic structures that have made that process possible. And that kind of publishing is indeed getting whipped around like a very small cowboy on a very large bull. Why? Because the internet is made of publishing, and its new and often anarchic publishing models are messing with older models in all kinds of ways.” (Erin Kissane – Incisive.nu) – courtesy of khalvorson