Database modeling isn’t something you typically associate with a content strategist—particularly not the kind who is obsessed with things like brand, message, and editorial style.
But maybe it should be.
As I started writing a book and delving into “the future of content,” I began thinking a lot about what’s wrong with how content gets structured now (or, more often, doesn’t get structured), and why content modeling hasn’t caught on beyond some relatively niche, typically tech-comms realms.
Then it struck me. Many people who otherwise obsess over content don’t want to model it because it comes off all clinical and dreary. It seems technical and too dry and not at all what we’re about. Content is complex and beautiful and weighty and important, and reducing it to a diagram of chunks seems so…soulless.
It needn’t be. Read more
The nice folks at A List Apart published a piece from me last week called Future-Ready Content, which I wrote amid the fervor over future-friendly thinking and responsive web design last year—a fervor I both joined in and felt terrified of. Because no matter how exciting this flexible, unfixed future seemed, for months I couldn’t shake this little voice inside my head—the voice that said our content wasn’t ready.
But it can be, if we put in some work.
So today, I wanted to expand on the discussion around responsive design specifically, demonstrating why we need a foundation of content types, micro structures, and business rules if we want to keep priority, relationships, and meaning intact. Read more
Content audits are essential—the very backbone of content strategy, right? But I’ve got a secret: most of the time, I don’t even do them.
Don’t get me wrong. I love me some quality Excel time. I don’t mind spending a few days weeks neck-deep in the quest to document every single thing about a site’s content. As a consultant, I’d just prefer that you do it yourself.
Yes, you got that right: I like my clients to do their own content audits. Seem like a poor way to make a living as a content strategist for hire? Blasphemous? Or just plain lazy?
Trust me, there’s a method to this madness. Read more
Content strategists are known for caring deeply about words. So it’s no surprise that when opinions on language start flying across the internet, we’re quick to take sides. It’s been happening a lot lately – most recently, for me, when a certain well-loved rabble-rouser tweeted loud about the terminology many of us use regularly:
In case you’re wondering when your soul left your body, it’s when you said “consume content.”
Baby, relax.
Imperfection is all right.
There’s nothing satisfying about saying we “consume content,” true. But the same is true for engage with, absorb, use, ravage, caress, suckle on, or whatever else others have suggested a thousand times before. Each option is unsatisfactory, limiting, or gross in its own special way.
Lightning in London: On Speaking, Very Quickly, at CS Forum
September 19, 2011
Sara Wachter-Boettcher
Close to two weeks ago now (dude, I’ve been busy), I joined 200+ other content strategists and related web nerds for the 2011 Content Strategy Forum. Held in London, this was the event’s sophomore effort, and my second time attending as well.
Even more exciting than an excuse to use my passport, I also got a chance to speak – albeit “just” for a five-minute, 20-slide, auto-advancing whirlwind about the future of content strategy. Called “A New Breed of Content Strategist,” it’s about the ways we can, and must, grow as practitioners if we want content to be ready for the future web.
Unlike Confab – which seemed, at least to me, to pull more of a marketing-side or agency crowd – CS Forum had a strong contingent of speakers and attendees deeply rooted in technical communications as well, perhaps due to its affiliation with the STC last year. Thankfully, this was the right mix of people for my talk.
If you haven’t yet, I’d love for you to give it a quick view:
Summer may be waning in your parts, but it’s supposed to hit 112F here in desert suburbia today. So while you’re pulling out fall booties and scarves, I’ve still got summer lovin’ on the brain – specifically, the steamy notes information architects and content strategists have been writing one another all season.
Turn up the Grease soundtrack, guys. It’s about to get romantic.
In July, Ahava Leibtag gave us 5 Tips on Working with an Information Architect – arguing, chiefly, that we need to stop expecting IAs to know what to do with us, and start giving them insight into what we need and why we need it. Oh, and to get to know them as, well, human beings (pretty sure that one applies beyond the CS-IA workflow).
Just a few weeks later, Chris Detzi published similar sentiments from the other side of the fence in his post about working with a content strategist to conquer a rapid redesign project. His take? The key was to stop worrying about which book says which task belongs to whom, and start focusing on the needs of the project. Divide logically, conquer, and back one another up.
Add in strong posts about sitemapping and wireframing by Theresa Putkey, who’s written before about the intersection between IA and CS, and also Tosca Fasso’s Scatter/Gather post about the relationship between designers and content strategists, and it’s been a veritable lovefest the past couple months. They’re all great pieces about an important topic that’s dear to my heart. I can’t fault any of them.
And yet, I keep hoping for something more. So where’s this IA-CS relationship going, anyway?
Structured Content, Shifting Context: Responsive Design, Content Strategy & the Future
August 4, 2011
Sara Wachter-Boettcher
This summer I read Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design – the latest from A Book Apart – with fervor. I’d been hearing bits and pieces about this newfangled approach for a while, but I was anxious to understand it better…and, of course, to figure out if and how content should play a role.
While most of the book was outside my direct skill set (I’ll take my ridiculous tiny sticker now, Erin Kissane), I can assure you of two things:
- This shit is fascinating.
- It will also require a tremendous shift for people who care about content (read: you).
So let’s get to work, shall we?
So I lied. I am going to this year’s Content Strategy Forum in London in September, despite having just said otherwise last month.
Why?
Confab, more than anything, made me realize that this discipline is at a critical juncture. It’s either going to gel or descend into chaos. But I’m pretty sure it’ll be the former rather than the latter, and I want to be there to see it happen.
Plus, there’s this exhibit at the British Museum I really want to see.
So I bit the bullet and made some very precarious travel plans so I can get to CS Forum, attend a wedding in Brooklyn, attend another conference in Indianapolis, and then finally head home and collapse.
I’m not a subject matter expert. But I play one on the internet.
Every day, we agency-side content strategists tell clients how to talk about their products and organize their information. We make decisions large and small about how they should use content to reach organizational goals. Yet, most of the time, we don’t know jack about their industries.
Corey Vilhauer recently tackled this topic, asking how much agencies ought to learn about their clients’ businesses:
As content strategists, we are expected to help our clients communicate the concepts, benefits and advantages of their company or industry. But we are not who our clients are. We do not possess the same amount of knowledge about their business.
There’s a knowledge gap that we need to bridge. Or do we?
Plenty of smart folks weighed in about what to know and how to learn it, but we all agree: you can’t know it all. And that’s OK. (If you haven’t yet, go read his post. No, now. I’ve got time.)
This year alone I’m neck-deep in projects for a university, an economic development agency, the corporate sustainability arm of a major retailer, a state tourism department, and a major auto brand. Yet I’m just a bachelor’s-degree-holding girl with passing interests in sustainability and economics, a love-hate relationship with the state I’m charged with promoting, and an old car I hardly drive.
If I saved my skills for the stuff I’m an expert in, I’d specialize exclusively in content strategy for funny cat websites and craft breweries.*
But truth is, domain knowledge isn’t the hard part. Organizational knowledge is.
Content first!
Exclamation point and all, it’s a rallying cry that’s been bandied about the internet for a few years now – first by those early pioneers of content work, but lately echoed more and more by smart design-and-dev world folks like Jeremy Keith and Luke Wroblewski.
Total win, right? Seriously, high five, you guys. They finally care about the content! Exclamation points all ‘round! But then, last week, I happened upon a post from James Callan questioning the usefulness of this oft-uttered phrase:
“Content vs. web-design-elements-that-aren’t-content is not a chicken and the egg argument. It’s not about evolution. It’s about genetics. Which came first, your mother’s genes or your father’s genes? Silly question. You need them both in order to be you.”
I can’t help but agree. I, too, have heard lots of newly minted content folks recently take up the phrase to claim that all content should be there, finished, before a single design decision is made.
That’s not just silly; it’s unrealistic – and unhelpful.
The rallying cry has served its purpose, but this is content strategy’s belle époque. As the discipline gains ground, the way we talk about it needs to advance as well – moving from broad calls to arms to specific, more nuanced sets of ideals and corresponding practices.
