Kristina Halvorson wrote a great article for A List Apart about The Discipline of Content Strategy. I have found myself re-visiting the post over and over again since I read it. Kristina ends the article by calling out something that I think we, the makers of websites are collectively guilty of...
Making content somebody else's problem.
How many projects have you seen fall flat because of a lack of content, poor quality content, or simply the wrong content? I have certainly given clients and colleagues the "wheres the content?" face more than once. What Kirstina points to in her article is a need to properly integrate a heavy focus on content into the way we work. For someone who frames his work as being experience focused, the article helped me conceptualize how this content piece of the puzzle fits in with everything we have been growing at The Barbarian Group lately (where I work). Whats clear is that Content Strategy, like User Experience, isn't a single role, department or check box, it touches many different parts of a project and the project team. Kristina defines six key buckets of responsibility that live within Content Strategy. The first two buckets I feel represent distinct roles...
Editorial Strategy - Described in the article as how content is governed. It includes definition of elements like, content purpose, content properties (themes, messages, values, voice, tone), UGC, and editorial calendars. Out of the six buckets in her list, this is one of two that I believe can be carved out as a unique role. The absence of leadership or strategy in this area from an early point in a project has a significant impact on a teams ability to do the right thing. Clarity around tactical elements like a publishing schedule and the more esoteric brand attributes related to content help inform and enable a design team's decision making. In projects that involve a client relationship this role has a strong potential to sit on the client side. An editorial lead's responsibilities are what breathes life (content) into the experience for the duration of the sites existence. Moving forward without this person puts a project at high risk. Offering services in this area and then perfecting the art of passing the torch once the client hires their Editorial lead is something I am very interested in.
Web writing - The practice of creating useful, usable content for the web. These are the unsung heros. The designers of content. Just as responsible for user experience as interaction designers or information architects, this is the second of the two buckets that warrant a distinct role. I don't know as many UX focused web writers as I should. But that doesn't mean they are the unicorns of project teams. Content designer/creator is another difficult role to handle in a client relationship. Content creation is something that needs to be sustained, but leaving it up in the air until a month from release/launch will stings more often than not. I would love to be in a position to offer more content creation services. No matter how well defined your content objects are or how thorough your metadata strategy is, your design efforts are only successful to the extent that they are fulfilled by the content they were created for. In other words, the design of the furniture is as important as the design of the house.
The remaining 5 buckets from Kristina's article represent the interdisciplinary nature of what it means to work with technology, and specifically the web. These are shared competencies that keep us on the same page and impact the broad strokes of our work whether you are a Content Strategist or a UX Designer.
Metadata Strategy - In the true information architecture sense. Its hard to touch the web without thinking about information, how it is structured, and how people access it. From interaction designers to engineers to web writers, metadata and its related concepts are a constant. Its obvious that content strategy has a huge impact on metadata and vice versa.
Search Engine Optimization Strategy - Tailoring your content to the nuances of search engines to achieve higher findability. I prefer findability as a term to represent this area as opposed to SEO. Things like gap analysis, SEO, and social design best practices all impact people's ability to find and spread content.
Content Mangament Strategy - The technical infrastructure that supports content publishing and management as well as the accompanying workflows and roles. I love this part of projects. It brings so many people from different disciplines together. Developers responsible for implementing the system, IxDs and IAs who have articulated the details of the system's design, researchers who gathered knowledge about the people who will be using and overseeing the system, and the editors and writers who will work with it every day.
Content Channel Distribution Strategy - Besides your site, where else (and how) is content being distributed? Email, Mobile, Social Networks, Partner blogs? More than ever our options for distributing content are growing. The audience beyond the site is as important if not more important. Case and point, bands using their myspace page as their official site. Unfortunately the interoperability and portability of our content objects from platform to platform and service to service has not been solved. This means a tremendous amount of work by the people in the trenches to keep content and brand in sync from channel to channel. It also takes the collective brain power of engineers, strategists and designers to figure out how to most effectively and efficiently accomplish this.
Those are Katrina's six buckets. After mulling them over for a week or so the value of carving content strategy out as a priority and distinct track is strikingly invaluable. The challenges of content strategy in-house and on client project's present some really unique challenges to keep an eye on wherever you work. Props to Katrina for writing a succinct article that frames the situation soo well. I certainly won't ever let content strategy slip into the backseat.
