Comments on Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data

Scott Abel — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:08:25 GMT

Wow, this thread is an excellent one filled with all sorts of useful information—just like the article about which the comments were based. I think it’s important to understand that a content strategy is, to borrow from Ann Rockley et al, “a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers’ needs.” (Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy” – New Riders) I think it’s important to acknowledge that a formal, repeatable method is a good idea for many projects, but does not mean that every content challenge warrants the same level of attention. Sometimes, you may play various roles on a project (content strategist, IA, stylesheet developer) and be asked to “divine” the best approach based on your gut feeling and limited information. I find this one of the most interesting parts of the information architecture field – the diversity of skills and experiences among its practitioners.

Josh C — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:04:53 GMT

This is a new perspective for me. My current title is ‘Copywriter’, however, our team just completed design an implementation of an internal knowledge base. We worked in tandem with a wonderful IA and technology team to define user requirements. Where the IA was focused on marrying the design with the technology, we brought insight as to what users are looking for in the content and how to design the CMS and presentation layers for fast answers.

We relied a great deal on information mapping theories, principles of adult learning, design and our unique organizational experience. The end result is a unique product fit for only our users but with a presentation that could be adjusted to other parts of the organization.

Our team was the final word on designing the taxonomy, meta data, thesaurus, search configuration, tone/style of content, cms template configuration and many other facets. However, all of these decisions were formed in collaboration with the technology and design team members.

I think the key is to recognize the dynamic nature of teams. Each member brought a different project background and talents. Sometimes these talents overlapped but the results is a better project for our client (employer). Content is still king and those that produce most of the content have unique insight into the needs of the user group. Each role is dependent on the other for success. Being part of project that can design and dictate content requirements from the outset is refreshing. IA, IT and other acronymns don’t always bring the freshest view of what’s possible. As an ignorant content producer we think more about what if’s because we don’t have to implement the technology to make it work.

Prateek Sarkar — Wed, 09 May 2007 20:13:53 GMT

Excellent article. Another key aspect to Content Strategy is the notion of developing a persuasive narrative via content. What is the problem that must be solved? How do we define success in solving that problem? The Content Strategist must optimize all elements of content around these questions. The best sites are those that have robust framework (good IA), and compelling story (good CS).

Michael Betts — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:40:40 GMT

Kudos, Rachel, for tackling an often sticky question. If this business were simply about “boxes and arrows,” we’d be faced with some pretty boring websites. I boil the role down to these three essentials: 1> helping the IA gain a deeper understanding of what’s actually going to be filling the buckets (because lord knows it’s not always what they had in mind), 2> translating the experience of wireframes and comps into something a content creator/copywriter can build a narrative around, especially a non-linear one, 3> working with the technical team to create a manageable system for creating, migrating, and maintaining massive amounts of content data.

I also must second Robert’s comment that the IA/CS relationship can vary widely and each project generally benefits from some upfront discussion of who’s doing what and how you’re going to work together.

ed.j. bowers — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:26:56 GMT

I find this piece very interesting and possibly helpful; if only from an emotional perspective. I didn’t know there were Content Strategists but I have been struggling to define a content strategy on my new job. We are a mid-sized firm offering Organizational and Personal Health resources and services. And we have just merged with one of our primary competitors.

My challenge now is to sort out 7 or 8 years of legacy content from 2 organizations that now must think as one, so thank you for adding another couple of concepts to my portfolio.

Robert Williams — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:06:45 GMT

When I’ve worn the “content strategy” hat, the best and most productive relationships with IAs I’ve had were the ones similar to editor/writer relationships. The “what” and “how” of web content and communications is still largely a creative endeavor (thankfully) and I’d look to IAs to optimize, provide structure to, or validate my ideas about content needs, relationships, and user value and its ability to support business/organization requirements. The least productive were when an IA would hand over a stack of wireframes and say something to the effect of “fill this out with content” (This approach always reminded me of those old Madlibs books).

Increasingly I see the need for content strategy to really be organizational communications strategy—“Enterprise Content Strategy” (ECS) we’ll call it to coin yet another acronym. I see it as old fashioned campaign style management and creative direction with a doses of business analysis, SEO/SEM, technical content management and IA in the mix.

Rachel Lovinger — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:40:34 GMT

Thanks for all the interesting and thought provoking comments.

I definitely agree with Andrew, and I hope this came across in the article, that there’s a strong connection between IA and CS. I think that, regardless of job title, the role of thinking about content strategy can be taken on by many different people on a project, and often it will be IAs who do this. While I have worked with some IAs who don’t seem to be willing or able to really consider the deeper implications of the content on a site, more often my experience is that IAs are very aware of and concerned about content, but the constraints on their time mean that there’s a limit to how deeply they can afford to delve into it. For the development of content rich sites, it can be very helpful to have one person who focuses primarily on content issues (including scope, tone & voice, taxonomy, etc.) and makes content-specific recommendations, as part of the complete user experience picture.

Richard, my comment about content relationships probably needs to be explained a little more clearly. I meant this in a much broader sense than a list of related articles at the end of a piece of content. The fact that the user found an article in the first place is probably because, through some combination of the content, metadata and business rules about relevance, the search application determined that the article is related to the term that the user typed into the search box. Search is becoming so sophisticated that usually we don’t even notice the fine distinctions that a system has made in determining relevance. Additional contextual services embedded on the page (weather info, tickets sales, news feeds, stock quotes, etc) are also based on having some relationship to the content itself. Maybe a person hand selected each service, but increasingly these services are driven by metadata relationships captured with the content.

What I mean is, in a broad sense, content search and discovery (as you say “accurate and clear selection”) is often dependent on the relationships that are expressed within the content, its structure and its metadata.

Andrew Rickmann — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:25:54 GMT

It appears as though there is a significant overlap between information architecture and content strategy; although, it would surprise me if that were not the case.

Bianca, your point is very interesting: that you find IAs often question the value of the content strategy role. It seems that both roles should to compliment each other well and lead to a more fullfilling result when they work together. I would have thought that each would be in the best position to appreciate the other.

Richard Marsh — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:57:34 GMT

Honestly my last point :P

In terms of content there is a high level artifact which I forgot to mention which is a communications strategy. This is typically started at the beginning of a project with stakeholders and content focused experts (not mentioning specific titles such as Content Strategists, Creative Directors, Copywriters, IA’s) and is meant to provide a living definition of editorial with regard what is to be said where, by whom, when.

best regards,

Richard Marsh
http://www.creative-resonance.com

Richard Marsh — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 07:31:42 GMT

Sorry if my point b) is slightly unclear my fault for trying to write standing up on train, I hope the gist of this point is understood.

As a small extension to point b): Relationships can provide a very effective way of exposing further content which the user may also be interested and in that we see this mechanism used massively on blogs and many of the web2.0 tagged apps. Which can assist massively with making sites sticky. (Sticky still seems odd phrase.. ah well)

best regards,

Richard Marsh
http://www.creative-resonance.com

Richard Marsh — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 21:25:08 GMT

Hi Rachel, thank you for your article. I have to admit my first reaction wasn’t positive due to a couple of key points that you have made but there is a but at the end of my response:

a) the analogy which you have provided has probably been met with some surprise too many IA’s as we have to consider content very carefully, as this is absolutely key to the sites that we architect, and often covers all of the content considerations that you mention, which doesn’t seem to be your experience of IA’s which seems odd.

b) I also think your statement that the primary factor of relevant content is relationships isn’t clear and perhaps incorrect as relationships do not make the content Relevant to the User per say. I could have a single article that is very relevant providing the User arrives at content item through accurate and clear selection, through clear content navigation or perhaps Search engine, which is generally made possible through well structured taxonomies, meta data and the actual content. The concept of accurate, timely and well structured content an interesting subject.

However on a much more positive note, and I finally get there, content always requires great effort and can easily be a cause for site delays even after providing site maps, wireframes, editorial tone guidelines, and web writing guidelines and using key word systems to assist and or automate meta tagging and relationship building, as often keeping content aligned with these can be be difficult for content authors and very time consuming so to have a practice group focused on this may help on projects and raise best practice standards on the web.

I hope we can get more articles for discussion on the topic of good content. There are also some nice articles on Bianca’s site.

I think that we should be careful not to flame the role of Content Strategists as IA’s as I’m sure many of us if we think back have met the same kind of resistance in the past when establishing the IA role :)

Best regards,

Richard

Bianca Prade — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:15:06 GMT

This is a great post that I can completely relate to. As a fellow content strategist, I am often questioned by IAs and Project Managers about the value add of such a role. It’s comforting to know that other content strategists have also experience the same challenges. It would be wonderful to channel those energies by more publicly defining the discipline perhaps by forming an industry trade group.

Bianca Prade
http://webcontentstrategy.com/

David Shen — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:41:13 GMT

It seems as though today’s internet professionals need to be multidisciplinary. One area that is rarely discussed is the technical aspects of content strategy. Tagging, categorization, etc as it is implemented on the technical side is very important so that information is available to users as well as to internal staff in an easy, accessible way, and not buried in a DB to never be able to be accessed again…or only through months of undoing code because the DB wasn’t built to handle that.

The technical implementation of content is an important part of strategizing the content itself and I’d love to hear more discussion on this topic and perhaps case studies on what has worked and what has not…

Maxim Lysakovsky — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 15:05:13 GMT

Even though the functions of CS are necessary I don’t see how Information Architect wouldn’t be able to fulfill those.
“If the information architect (IA) also happens to have an interest in words…” – IA MUST have interest in words, IA has to create labels etc..

Jung Carsten — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:40:33 GMT

I really don’t get the argument, what makes a CS so important. I miss some examples because seldomly you have to create lots and lots of content for a client. They bring the content by themselves and normally it is reduced to the products they offer. So after reading this article I have the idea of a job, created exclusively in an very, very big agency…