The Elephant on the Page - Content Strategy
Tonight, tenfour is honored to be hosting the UX Book Club (PDX) latest book discussion: Kristina Halvorson's 'Content Strategy.'
Content Strategy, the next buzzword that's catching fire online, has historically been an editorial/usability/strategy practice that lived within the realms of UX. The concept has resonated and become more widely applicable as more companies evolve into micropublishers with their web properties sans a chief editor. The sweeping responsibilities of a Content Strategist can span the ongoing maintenance, analysis, location, presentation, as well as the management and commissioning of new content.
A majority of marketing efforts focus on driving traffic to the site. Far less resource investment and attention is spent on ensuring the destination is full of relevant, current, and most importantly - useful information. The individual ownership of web content is often gray at best. This 'elephant in the room' is rarely addressed, can be contentious, and doesn't officially live under one person's charter. Until now.
The book is a great starter guide and brings process to a wily and evolving practice. I particularly enjoy Halvorson's passionate ownership stance evident in this 2008 write-up for A List Apart:
…until we commit to treating content as a critical asset worthy of strategic planning and meaningful investment, we’ll continue to churn out worthless content in reaction to unmeasured requests. We’ll keep trying to fit words, audio, graphics, and video into page templates that weren’t truly designed with our business’s real-world content requirements in mind. Our customers still won’t find what they’re looking for. And we’ll keep failing to publish useful, usable content that people actually care about.
Stop pretending content is somebody else’s problem. Take up the torch for content strategy. Learn it. Practice it. Promote it. It’s time to make content matter.
It's not too late to join in, download a free chapter, RSVP on Upcoming, and come on by tenfour.
