I love it when a plan comes together. —Hannibal Smith, The A-Team Have you decided it's time to create a content strategy? Ready, set...plan. The first stage of a content strategy should be to plan; otherwise how would you know what you're trying to create a strategy...
Content strategy 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...