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. 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. The 3 Essential Elements of Content Marketing. The Definitive Guide to Awesome Web Content. What is it we SEOs do?
Most of our answers probably boil down to this; we help webpages rank higher at search engines by improving each of the three cornerstones of SEO. The first aspect; technical problems - like indexable content, meta robots tags and URL structures - has been cracked by SEOmoz’s awesome web app. Suddenly we can get a complete dashboard of errors to go and sort - easy. Then of course, then there’s the “trust” issue. Getting authoritative and relevant links; and with Open Site Explorer where advanced link analysis and data is now only a click away. So that leaves content… Content is abstract. What's the point in what you read? We consume content to solve problems, be entertained and to satisfy curiosity.
In an age of tweetdeck, rss, five sentence emails and the internet making us stupid, supposedly, who on earth is hanging around to read meaningful stuff? IMAGE via: Geek and Poke The reason such technology exists is so we can be on the edge of stuff. It’s two way. The 3 Unbreakable Rules of Content Strategy. At this point there are 3 to 4 well-known and accepted definitions of content strategy.
To me it is a two-fold process: an overall plan to plan, create, publish and execute different content types and a way of thinking about your organization as a publishing entity. After practicing content strategy, or some form of it, for more than 10 years, I’ve come to the following 3 unbreakable rules that are true no matter the size of the project, the enthusiasm of the client or the teeth-grinding tedium of the content audit. 1. Follow the Benjamins.
While Jack Welch’s name may be an anathema in some circles, he ran one of the world’s most successful companies, General Electric, for more than 20 years. The same is true for content strategists. We all have clients—both internal and external. 3. In talking to other content strategists, I find that each brings her or his own creativity and experience to each step in the overall process. Complete Beginner?s Guide to Content Strategy. You or someone you know wants to create content.
Awesome! But to what end? Content strategy helps us plan for valuable, viable content. We begin with publishing. To manage the digital workflow required to maintain an ever-increasing amount of content, publishers employ what’s (aptly) known as a content management system (CMS). Now, what if you or someone you know is getting ready to unleash content on the world. At this point, visual design—design of the actual website itself—is irrelevant.
In this article, we’ll take a brief look at Content Strategy—that odd amalgamation of digital publishing, information architecture and editorial process that adds up to something infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. Content Marketing 101: How to Build Your Business With Content.