• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 313 0

could not have happened without the extraordinarily generous people who make up the content strategy community and its advocates in other fields. The work of Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach of Brain Traffic has been absolutely foundational, and I also owe a debt to Ian Alexander, Rick Allen, Relly Annett-Baker, Rahel Anne Bailie, Margot Bloomstein, James Callan, Meghan Casey, Liz Danzico, Daniel Eizans, Paul Ford, Clinton Forry, Adam Greenfield, Matt Grocki, Dervala Hanley, Whitney Hess, Richard Ingram, Robert K. Jenkins III, Nicole Jones, Jonathan Kahn, Rachel Lovinger, Jeffrey MacIntyre, Karen McGrane, Elizabeth McGuane, Tim Meaney, Craig Mod, Elizabeth Schlatter, Randall Snare, Carolyn Wood, Rich Ziade, and the people I’ve forgotten, unforgivably, to list.

I owe special thanks to Colleen Jones and Tiffani Jones Brown for their careful reading and wise advice, and to Robert, Athena, and Wil for being born.

And thanks beyond thanks to PJ, for reading one million drafts, talking me down from the highest bookshelf, and making my life so much fun.

Resources

This section lists books and major community websites. It does not include the dozens of blogs, blog posts, and online magazine articles I referred to while writing this book, and that I recommend to readers. Links need care and feeding, so they’re best kept online where they can be maintained. You can find them, arranged by topic, at http://incisive.nu/elements.

Content Strategy: Basics, Tools, Techniques

If you’re thinking of giving content strategy a shot, don’t try to pick which of the following to read and bookmark. Start with Halvorson and Jones, and read on from there.

Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business, (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2011).

Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy for the Web, (California: New Riders, 2009).

Colleen Jones, Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content, (California: New Riders, 2011).

Ann Rockley, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy, (California: New Riders, 2003).

Richard Sheffield, The Web Content Strategist’s Bible, (Georgia: CLUEfox Publishing, 2009).

A List Apart magazine, content strategy section: http://alistapart.com/topics/content/content-strategy/

Content Strategy Knol: http://knol.google.com/k/content-strategy

Google Groups Content Strategy Group: http://groups.google.com/group/contentstrategy/

Essential Cross-Training

If you plan to work on the web, you need to understand the disciplines that work together to make websites. These classics will get you up to speed.

Dan M. Brown, Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning, Second Edition, (California: New Riders, 2010).

Jesse James Garrett, The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond, Second Edition, (California: New Riders, 2010).

Steve Krug, Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Second Edition, (California: New Riders, 2005).

Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites, Second Edition, (Massachusetts: O’Reilly Media, 2006).

Janice (Ginny) Redish, Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works, (San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 2007).

Jeffrey Zeldman with Ethan Marcotte, Designing with Web Standards, Third Edition, (California: New Riders, 2009).

Influences: Editorial

The essence of editorial work lies not in style guides and arguments about grammar, but in the ability to cultivate relationships, manage chaos, and serve readers. It’s not a profession to be learned from books, but these three very different takes will help.

Leonard S. Marcus, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

Arthur Plotnik, The Elements of Editing, (New York: Collier Books, 1982).

William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White, eds., The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition, (New York: Longman, 1999). Also