Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

This sounds good. I’d like to hear about the differences as I think this is an important role in many situations

Cross-reference to the evolution of technical communication (aka technical writing) into the realms of IA and user experience. Try to cover the topic from both the outside (job trend) and inside (design process/web team trend). Get reports from people actually operating with this sort of title.

When you say Content Strategist, are you thinking more along the lines of the person who inventories and organizes content for a Web site / Intranet, or the person who does that and also develops the total enterprise content management (ECM) policies, guidelines, etc.? (I suppose your article would answer this question! :) )

If the former, what would you think about a follow-on that delves into “Ok, now you’re the content strategist, what else should you consider / know when thrown into the larger ECM equation?” (I’d be interested in covering that angle if you’re not doing much in that arena and are interested.)

If you were thinking the latter, some other topics that might be useful are:
- What corporate / government policies impact me as a content strategist? (e.g., in commercial world, you might have SEC or other compliance type issues to consider if you’re looking at larger ECM; in government arena, you run into NARA and other topics)
- How do these policies impact the overall content solution? (in both commercial and government worlds, there are some more aspects to consider)

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/person/3229-rlovinger

Hi, Theresa. You might also consider reaching out to Rachel Lovinger.

Speaking of Rachel, how would you article differ from hers?

content strategist? didn’t that used to be called an editor? ok, just kidding.

seriously, though: it’s kind of like the old conversation re little ia vs big ia; from 30k up a content strategist is just someone with a plan, but sitting at a desk, a content strategist could be someone wondering why the CMS tool won’t allow headlines longer than 50 characters

i’d love to read more about this: the role is ever evolving, and changes from project to project; it can be very high concept or very hands on or someplace inbetween

Ah, just stumbled across this thread. I’ve been thinking recently about doing a follow-up that’s something along these lines, so I’d be interested in hearing about the status of this article idea – are you working on it Theresa?

The particular focus I was thinking about leans more towards the first few questions you posed: “What does this title mean? Where did it come from? What do I need to know to be one?” plus the perspective of “What are those people looking for Content Strategists really looking for? And when they do end up hiring people, what kind of backgrounds do those people have?” This is, I guess the job trend angle that Elizabeth mentions above.

I wasn’t planning to cover things like how the role helps meet user needs and business goals, because I did cover that to some degree in the first article. These topics may, of course, warrant further analysis, but in that case I think they deserve to be covered in their own article, that can go deeper into the specifics.

A little background on why I think an article like this could be of interest – while it’s true that more and more job listings for Content Strategists are popping up, I also believe that a lot of people don’t quite know what it is that they’re looking for. This is partly because there’s not a clear, shared definition of what content strategy is. But also, there’s no single track or background that makes someone qualified to be a content strategist. I imagine that there are people out there who may be prime candidates for a specialization in content strategy and just don’t know it yet.

So, my goal was to write something that would be helpful to both the people who may be considering going down that path, and also to the people who are looking to hire someone into that sort of role, but aren’t sure how to go about it. I still think an article like this is needed, and if no one else is pursuing it right now, I’d love to claim the topic.