The Elements of Content Strategy - Erin Kissane [5]
This is all easy to talk about, but the reason most content is not properly maintained is that most content plans rely on getting the already overworked to produce, revise, and publish content without neglecting other responsibilities. This is not inevitable, but unless content and publishing tasks are recognized as time-consuming and complex and then included in job descriptions, performance reviews, and resource planning, it will continue.
Hoping that a content management system will replace this kind of human care and attention is about as effective as pointing a barn full of unmanned agricultural machinery at a field, going on vacation, and hoping it all works out. Tractors are more efficient than horse-drawn plows, but they still need humans to decide where and when and how to use them.
No matter how we come to content strategy, or what kind of content strategy work we do, these shared principles and assumptions underlie our work. Of course, these principles didn’t emerge from a vacuum. Content strategy is a young field, but it has evolved from professions that are anything but new. To understand the full scope of what content strategy can do—and to understand why it isn’t “just editing” or “another word for marketing,” let’s take a look at the professions that have laid the groundwork for our practice.
1. The long URL: http://www.slideshare.net/danieleizans/context-as-a-content-strategy-creating-more-meaningful-web-experiences-through-contextual-filtering [↵]
2. Donald Norman, The Psychology of Everyday Things, (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 188. [↵]
BECAUSE CONTENT has so frequently demonstrated its potential to derail web projects, and because it is uniquely entangled with business strategy, it requires special attention. Throughout each project, a content strategist compares evolving content-related expectations with available resources, and warns the team of shortfalls that may require that the content work be scaled back or the resources stepped up. She navigates the politically fraught territory of distributed publishing, and long after information architecture and visual design work is approved, she keeps an eye on the ways in which organizational strategy changes affect ongoing content work.
In short, she watches the hills for signs of trouble.
To do content strategy, defined as the planning and leadership of content projects and online publishing endeavors, is to run point. The term “run point” derives from a military term for the soldier or soldiers who moved ahead of the rest of the advancing troops: the point man. An equally influential and appropriate use in American English refers to the cowboy who rides at the front of a herd of cattle. The current version of Wikipedia article for “Take Point” notes in characteristically deadpan prose that “It is a hazardous position that requires alertness and ability to deal with unexpected attacks” (http://bkaprt.com/cs/2/).1 Indeed.
In her role as point man, a content strategist works with other front-runners who lead various aspects of the project: information architects, technical leads, creative directors, and project managers. And in addition to leading content work, she plays a key role in what business consultants call “risk management.” Paradoxically, if your content strategist spots a problem late in a project and takes a hit—either by doing extra work or mandating a brief delay—that means the process is working. If someone’s going to hit a snag, you want it to be your content strategist, not the content creators or an SEO specialist or the person in charge of a database migration.
So naturally, if you’re the one doing content strategy, you need to be able to sniff out trouble and react quickly when it does arise. One of the best ways to prepare yourself for upcoming challenges is to push yourself beyond the boundaries of the field you came from. And that means learning about the other fields from which content strategy descends.
A tangled family tree
Marketers tend to characterize content strategy