Content Strategy Is A Cross-Discipline Practice

As a term, content strategy is a relatively new one to the production of interactive experiences; in particular, website redesigns and new-builds. Too often in the past, the process of creating a content strategy has been to draw a roadmap for content development. As a result of strong editorial practice or from well-meaning search engine optimization practices, many websites have lots of content, but little of it is effective for the visitor nor well-managed structurally. The phrase, “content is king” has echoed through the years, but this has produced content on the web more notable for it’s quantity than it’s quality or experience.

Content strategy, as it is beginning to be known, is a cross-discipline practice that seeks to strike a balance between user experience and SEO, persona development and site architecture, meta-data and editorial calendars, keyword research and traffic analysis. The concepts and protocols are being defined by key practitioners like Kristina Halvorson and Erin Scime and are expanding the definition of content strategy at a key moment when the web is also diversifying both in terms of platforms and applications, and in terms of standardization and conventions.

In her insightful essay on content strategy for A List Apart in December of 2009, Erin Scime lays out the conceptual overview of the content strategist as a digital curator. For me the term “digital curator” is a bit too academic. While it is true that curators, “use judgment and a refined sense of style to select and arrange art to create a narrative, evoke a response, and communicate a message,” there seems to be room in the new definition to include the role of the environmental designer and the exhibition designer as well. It is not just the contextual thread that runs through the exhibit that interests the visitor in a website, but the ebb and flow of the content, the container of the exhibit itself, and the development of visual cohesion.

Still, Scime lays out a number of elegant, competent arguments for this expanded definition of the content strategist starting with defining and assessing the current content and needs of a project, and ending with editorial strategies and the establishment of organizational guidelines and protocols. As she says, “…content strategy engagement is site-level and long-term…” and she is right. Content strategists need to work with stakeholders and marketing people to understand the trajectory of the project and its place within the larger brand and message. They need to work directly with SEO and SEM departments or vendors to uncover searchable terms and incorporate them into every aspect of the website’s development and digital marketing. Likewise, content strategy will directly effect UX and IxD and the kinds of visual structures and cues they will create for the visitor. And now, content strategists must also navigate social media and be responsive to both external audience and internal needs.

The new content strategist is involved in every conversation surrounding an interactive project; if not in the actual development and production of the interactive experience, then certainly in the mapping of the content and the structuring of it within the larger framework. Content is not just king, but it is the map and the territory.

Tangled Vines: Does Your Web Content Feel Like This To You?

In her wonderful book, Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson’s first contention in the pursuit of better interactive content and better decision-making about online content is to ascertain what content you already have, to adopt a clear strategy about how to evaluate the content, and to get serious about clearing out the “dead wood” in the content you’ve already published. I’ve been saying this for years. Content must come first because your site only serves two purposes – put quite succinctly by Halvorson on page 6:

Generally speaking, your web content is useless unless it does one or both of the following:

• Supports a key business objective.
• Supports a user (or customer) in completing a task.

This is a mandate that not only content strategists and interactive copywriters should follow, but interactive designers as well. Web designers consistently make the fatal error of designing sites that brand or re-brand an interactive presence visually without clearly understanding or incorporating the core needs of the client. As a result, the client is often stuck with interactive designs that are not scalable, hold key elements of the client’s information stream invisible, or require elaborate and/or costly redesign and redevelopment to meet the future needs of the client.