All posts about
Content strategy

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

Content strategy is, in fact, the next big thing

Added on 26 February 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Content strategy is more or less on the same trajectory as social media was three years ago. Why? I think it’s because the reality of social media initiatives—that they’re internal commitments, not advertising campaigns—has derailed more than a few organizations from really implementing effective, measurable programs. Most companies can’t sustain social media engagement because they lack the internal editorial infrastructure to support it.” (Kristina Halvorson)

It’s time for content strategy

Added on 15 January 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Content is anything that informs, instructs, or entertains people. Text, raw data, images, games, music, lectures, videos, flash widgets, a good joke, roadside signs – it’s all content. A content strategy is a plan for creating, sharing, and governing content effectively. Content strategy isn’t just a web thing. In fact, it’s been around for thousands of years. Content creation and sharing began when our earliest ancestors started telling each other stories.” (Melissa Rach – Scroll Magazine)

Testing Content Concepts

Added on 21 December 2009 Peter Bogaards
“As UX professionals, we’re all familiar with the need to test user experience designs. Testing content, however, might be a different story. Most companies haven’t given testing content the attention it deserves—partly because it’s challenging. One challenge is that time and budget usually do not allow us to test every single piece of content. Another challenge is that gathering too much unfocused feedback can freeze our projects in analysis paralysis. To meet these challenges, try testing your content concepts—and start testing them early in your projects.” (Colleen Jones – UXmatters)

The Content Strategist as Digital Curator

Added on 8 December 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Curation has a distinguished history in cultural institutions. In galleries and museums, curators use judgment and a refined sense of style to select and arrange art to create a narrative, evoke a response, and communicate a message. As the digital landscape becomes increasingly complex, and as businesses become ever more comfortable using the web to bring their product and audience closer, the techniques and principles of museum curatorship can inform how we create online experiences — particularly when we approach content.” (Erin Scime – A List Apart)

Why Strategists Need Content Managers

Added on 7 December 2009 Peter Bogaards
“(…) I’m of the opinion that content strategy is most certainly NOT content management. As strategists, we have input on how the content is produced, managed and governed, but our goal is ultimately to aid in the creation of a strategic set of best practicies and personas to be sure that content developers are creating the most appropriate content for machines and humans.” (Daniel Eizans)

The Scoop on Content Strategy: An Interview with Kristina Halvorson

Added on 20 October 2009 Peter Bogaards
“There are lots of different definitions floating around out there. It was important to me to talk about content strategy in a way that people can understand easily. I define content strategy as planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content. Planning is the key. Planning is about asking the right questions to collect data and information, with the goal of delivering a plan that gets you from where you are now to where you want to be.” (Colleen Jones – UXmatters)

No Chief Web Officer Required

Added on 1 October 2009 Peter Bogaards
“It’s a widely-held belief among various Web practitioners (from content strategists and information architects to Web infrastructure tool builders and application developers) that senior executives don’t understand the real power and capability of the Internet. And, that this lack of understanding has left Web Teams executing in a vacuum, with inappropriate funding and inadequate headcount. More importantly, it has left organizations exposed, as new Internet-enabled businesses sneak up and shut down the slower-to-react belle-weathers. The house is on fire and the C-Suite has got a garden hose. To address this strategic deficit, there’s been a lot of discussion about the placement of a senior Web-savvy person in the C-Suite to drive the creation of a sensible Web content and information strategy. I’ve thought about this potential new role in the C-suite a lot and think that it’s not required.” (Lisa Welchman) – courtesy of ruudruissaard

The Importance of Website Content in Online Purchasing Across Different Types of Products

Added on 22 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Several authors have suggested that the importance of website content elements in online purchasing varies across different types of products. Our aim is to empirically test this proposition. Here, we focus on goods versus services and hedonic versus utilitarian products. After reviewing the literature on the role of website content, we hypothesize which elements are more important for which type of product. The results of an empirical study confirm most of the different roles across different types of products. This suggests that retailers would profit from taking the differences in product types into account in designing their online stores.” (Tibert Verhagen and Jaap Boter – VU Amsterdam)

Content Strategy for the Web Professional

Added on 9 September 2009 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.” (Jonathan Kahn – lucid plot)

STC Content Strategy SIG

Added on 9 September 2009 Peter Bogaards
“This site is the home of the Content Strategy SIG (Special Interest Group) of the Society for Technical Communication. (…) Content strategy is an emerging field of practice dealing with the planning aspects of managing content throughout its lifecycle. Strategy includes alignment to business goals, analysis, and modeling, and influences the development, production, presentation, evaluation, measurement, and sunsetting of content, including governance.” (About Content Strategy SIG)

Smart talk about content strategy

Added on 27 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the lovely city of Atlanta to moderate a panel discussion on content strategy. Panel participants were selected from a variety of disciplines in order to facilitate discussion about how content strategy has impact on (and benefits for) a number of roles and functions across an organization. (OK, we were also hoping for a little fighting.) Participants were: Karen McGrane, Bond Art + Science (User Experience), John Muehlbauer, InterContinental Hotels Group (Marketing), Brian Ikeda, Philips Design (Visual Design), and Ryan Esparza, Content Management Consultant (CMS/IT).” (Kristina Halvorson – Brain Traffic)

The Case for Content Strategy – Motown Style

Added on 18 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Over the past year, the content strategy chatter has been building. Jeffrey MacIntyre gave us its raison d’être. Kristina Halvorson wrote the call to arms. Panels at SXSW, presentations at An Event Apart, and regional meetups continue to build the drum roll. But how do you start humming the content strategy tune to your own team and to your prospective clients? Listen up and heed Aretha Franklin. No, really.” (Margot Bloomsteim – A List Apart)

The Debut of Usable, Influential Content

Added on 6 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“What happens when we architect a user experience that makes the content easy to find? The content becomes a focus of the experience, a star of the show. If the content performs well, it will have an influence. Users will be more likely to take the action we want them to take, make the decision we want them to make or have the perception we want them to have. Users will be more likely to consider our brand, our product or our idea.” (Colleen Jones – ASIS&T Bulletin Aug/Sep 2009)

Blinded by Content Bliss

Added on 4 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Consider the source of the content you’re reviewing. What’s his or her background? Consider the individual’s education, career, and publishing history. That’s not to say, of course, that people’s opinions are only valid if they have the right alma mater, but that information may provide context and insight as to whether someone’s qualified to make the particular claims he or she’s making.” (Robert Stribley – Scatter/Gather)

The Content Conundrum: Bridging the gap between design and content

Added on 4 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“As web designers and information architects, we often dismiss deep consideration of content when we design interactive experiences. By content I’m not only referring to the various forms of text (e.g., headers, body copy, error messages) but also imagery, graphics, and videos or audio that make up the full interactive experience. Sure, we have a sense of what content is available, and we’ve likely considered it to some extent when creating flows, wireframes, and prototypes. But the design artifacts that we create represent only part of the overall user experience that we’re designing. The content that sits inside of our design framework is often the final arbiter of success, yet we sometimes diminish it’s importance and separate ourselves from it. The more we separate our design activities from content development, the greater the risk of design failure.” (Christopher Detzi – Boxes and Arrows)