Steal This Blog! :: 10,000 Words :: multimedia, online journalis. I often get asked how I find out about all the new technology, sites and multimedia projects featured here at 10,000 Words. The answer is not as simple as you may think, so I’m giving away some of the secrets of what makes this blog so unique. While I don’t want you to literally steal this blog (I will find you and hunt you down), I do encourage you to use some of the tools I’ve used to grow this blog into the resource it has become.
The first key to coming up with ideas is thinking about what hasn’t been written before. Many blogs regurgitate the same information and while its cool to see different viewpoints on the same topic, a lot of blogs end up publishing similar content. So how do I find the examples to back up the ideas? I supplement this reading by staying on top of what people are sharing on StumbleUpon and Twitter. Most of all, what makes 10,000 Words unique is that I often write about things that I care about even if I think no one else will.
Content Strategy: the Philosophy of Data. Not that familiar with “content strategy?” That’s ok. It’s in my job title, and I struggle every time I’m asked what I do for a living. Many people have no idea what it means, but even more people bring their own (wrong) assumptions to the conversation. Usually they think it has something to do with writing copy. That’s not entirely false, but it’s kind of misleading. The analogy I’ve been using recently is that content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design. The irony of this communication challenge is that the main goal of content strategy is to use words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.
So, why has it been so hard for us to communicate what we do? Perhaps the problem is that, because content is so pervasive, everyone thinks they know all there is to know about it. Everything is content Everything is content? The question “What constitutes sameness?” Critical mass Time to get practical. The Discipline of Content Strategy. We, the people who make websites, have been talking for fifteen years about user experience, information architecture, content management systems, coding, metadata, visual design, user research, and all the other disciplines that facilitate our users’ abilities to find and consume content. Article Continues Below Weirdly, though, we haven’t been talking about the meat of the matter. We haven’t been talking about the content itself. Yeah, yeah. We know how to write for online readers. We know bullet lists pwn. But who among us is asking the scary, important questions about content, such as “What’s the point?”
As a community, we’re rather quiet on the matter of content. Do you think it’s a coincidence, then, that web content is, for the most part, crap? Dealing with content is messy. And yet, the web is content. And that’s where content strategy comes in. What is Content Strategy? Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content. BUT.