Johnny proudly presents: Content Strategy Week

We love content strategy. Why? Because content strategy solves problems. Lots of problems. And during this week five leading content strategists from four countries will tackle a different set of challenges, just for you.

So what type of articles can you expect? Let’s check out what each day will bring:

Monday: Problems with Owning and Organizing Content

Today, Meghan Casey of Brain Traffic explains how content strategy fixes immediate problems from breaking designs to showing your corporate “underpants.”

“I get this question a lot: How do content strategists work with IAs/designers/writers? Truthfully, they often don’t. But, they can and they should. Not only should they work together, they should do away with the typical web project process that leaves content until last, resulting in a mad scramble. People don’t muck up web projects. Bad processes do.”

Tuesday: Problems with Creating Consistent Content

On Tuesday, Sally Bagshaw of Snappy Sentences shares how to create good content consistently, even when you have many cooks in your content kitchen.

“You’ve probably heard the saying “too many cooks spoil the broth.”  It implies that having lots of people involved in the production of any one outcome isn’t a good thing. The same can be said for managing large websites. In fact, “too many authors spoil the content” is a much more pertinent issue in today’s digital world. Unfortunately it’s one that’s hard to escape.”

Wednesday: Problems with Understanding Content

On Wednesday, Richard Ingram of ingserv explains how content strategy solves the problem of accessible but incomprehensible content, a critical consideration for universal design.

“The process of publishing content, particularly when it includes content destined for the web, continues to be a mysterious process for corporate stakeholders, and sometimes for those involved in the process of publishing.”

Thursday: Problems with Strategic Planning for Content

On Thursday, Rahel Bailie of Intentional Design addresses the problem of underplanning for content by walking us through the content lifecycle.

Friday: Problems with Evaluating Content

On Friday, Clare O’Brien of CDA helps us understand what the numbers mean with her contextual approach to content evaluation.

“Something that’s fascinated me about online metrics since I started working in online (quite a long time ago in internet terms) is their immediacy. In fact, it’s their instancy… this real-time sense you get from actually watching people move in and out of a website or email or mobile platform—that really mesmerises. The numbers create a kind of certainty about the clicks, impressions, traffic volume… and based on those numbers we believe we can know what worked (or didn’t work). On the basis of these metrics we do more or less of the same.”

Special thanks to Jeroen van Geel for inviting this useful and international look at content strategy.