Comments on: What Is Content Strategy? (Part I)

By: Tweets that mention What Is Content Strategy? (Part I) | Winning Content by Leen Jones -- Topsy.com

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 23:35:18 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by UXfeeds, Peg Mulligan's Blog. Peg Mulligan's Blog said: RT @uxfeeds: What Is Content Strategy? (Part I) | Winning Content by Leen Jones: http://bit.ly/cLz03m [...]

By: Kevin Cesarz

Kevin Cesarz — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:19:13 +0000

Thanks for the great information, Colleen. The examples in Part 2 were really helpful in visualizing the process.

By: Bits of Influence « Winning Experiences by Colleen Jones

Bits of Influence « Winning Experiences by Colleen Jones — Sun, 10 May 2009 21:12:43 +0000

[...] refer to activities that seem detailed or technical and, consequently, tactical? (See this post for my brief exchange with content strategy guru Richard Sheffield on the topic. Fortunately, he [...]

By: Bookmarks about Examples

Bookmarks about Examples — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:45:14 +0000

[...] – bookmarked by 2 members originally found by MjOoPi on 2009-04-02 What Is Content Strategy? (Part I) http://www.leenjones.com/blog/2008/08/what-is-content-strategy-part-i/ – bookmarked by 6 members [...]

By: johnny

johnny — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:45:46 +0000

Thanks for good post

By: Winning Experiences by Colleen Jones » Blog Archive » What’s Content Strategy? These Articles Have the Answer

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:30:15 +0000

[...] might remember I explored content strategy in an early blog post. Thankfully, some smart people are defining it as a discipline. [...]

By: colleen

colleen — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:19:23 +0000

Great points, Richard! You point out some important considerations. I am a huge fan of dotting all the “i”s and crossing all the “t”s when it comes to a project, and your suggestions help ensure that happens. I especially like your take on estimating the time content development requires. I agree most project plans woefully underestimate it.

My perspective differs in that I would consider some of these items methods or tactics as opposed to strategy. However, content is handled so poorly in projects these days that mentioning some of these items in the strategy certainly won’t hurt. And methods and tactics obviously are critical to achieving the strategy. A strategy is meaningless without implementation.

Content authoring is a tricky issue. I completely agree that identifying the authors responsible definitely is the ideal. In a decentralized content authoring model where content creation is ongoing, that can be tough. For instance, Centers for Disease Control has a wide variety of authors in each center–from PR specialists to scientists–and sometimes those authors are “out in the field.” The Home Depot as well as other retailers rely on product distributors or merchandisers for content describing products. In situations where identifying the authors is tough, I think a strong style guide with examples is key to the content effort. And, if possible, supplement the guide with a remote training session. The style guide and training can help bring some consistency and quality standards to content with wildly diverse authors.

Thanks again for the thoughtful comments. I’ll look forward to your thoughts on the next post! Nice blog, as well.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:36:54 +0000

I like the different take on content strategy. In projects I’ve worked on, I see Content Strategy not as a thing, but as a practice that is involved at all stages of a project, from planning through maintenance. Besides the things you mentioned (a great list) Content Strategy also involves hard definitions of What, When, Who, and How. (Less Strategic and more practical)

Exactly what are the content needs? A content matrix needs to be developed listing every single piece of content that is required.

Who is going to develop the content? Every piece of content needs to be assigned to a specific person, not a department. The content strategist is responsible for assigning and tracking content authoring.

How will the content be created? What is the specific editorial process to be followed for the project? Who must approve what? What tools are to be used, how are handoffs made to the technical team etc.

Only once all these things are known can you figure out when content can be delivered. Given the content needs and the available resources, using the defined tools and process, now you can do the math and see when content will be complete. Not doing this kind of content development strategy is the main cause for projects with “late content”. In most cases, the content was not late, the project plan was just wrong because of lack of rigor.

Looking forward to your next post!