Most of the people you meet these days have already formed an impression of you. Before you ever get to shake hands and greet them with a smile, they know more about you than you'll have time to tell them during your initial meeting. Because they Googled you as soon...
Michael Gowan posts
What Is Content Strategy?
I've written before about what a content strategist does, but the field of content strategy continues to evolve—and splinter. Take a look at these definitions that Ahava Leibtag put together (nice job, Ahava!): Those give you some idea of the breadth of the roles and...
Data-Driven Content Strategy: Everybody’s Doing It, You Should Too
Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology at Duke, recently tweeted: "If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine." I think that sums up why data should be a part of your content strategy. I wrote a post for TriUXPA on how to use...
Content Strategy in User Experience Design: The Prophets in the Process
I wrote a post for Triangle UXPA's blog about how content strategy is essential in user experience design. Check it out: Content Strategy in User Experience Design: The Prophets in the Process
Get Your Hands Dirty: Create a Content Inventory
The content inventory is the unsung hero of content strategy – it’s an invaluable tool for content planning, but few people want to hike that deep into forest. It can get scary out there. I'll admit it: creating a content inventory is monotonous work. But the value of...
Content Requirements: The First Deliverable
If you want a successful content project, start with step one. Before the content launches, before the writing begins -- before anything, really -- start with content requirements. Content requirements can be simple. Sometimes called a content brief, the document's...
Krug’s Trunk Test and Content: Where Am I?
In Don't Make Me Think, an excellent book on usability basics, Steve Krug talks about a trunk test. The gist: if you were stuffed in the trunk of a car, moved to a location, and then let out of the trunk, could you figure out where you are? The idea in relation to Web...
The Value of Boring: Templated Content
I am attracted to the new, the exciting, the different. I assume you are, too. As a writer, writing the same old thing 50 different ways is not new or exciting. In fact, that’s writing at its most boring. But, in a lot of instances, readers find it more valuable than...
The Evil Phrase: Click Here
All writers have a grammar pet peeve list -- phrases and writing errors that really get under our skin. It's/its. Their/there. But I think there's a whole other list of web writing pet peeves, and one sits at the very top: click here. Click here, when used as link...