This is what I’ve been reading lately: Content Strategy For The Web by Kristina Halvorson.
It’s a great book. I wrote a quick review of it on Amazon, though it’s the kind of book that I’m not even close to taking full advantage of yet. I love those.
Content Strategy is about creating and implementing a plan that uses all of your digital goods (your content) to support the best online experience you can. And it’s really hit its stride lately.
It’s no fad. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. CS is a new ontology, a smart way to prepare our most important digital assets.
What I also like about CS is that content (especially text) is finally getting its due. What used to be the mongrel of the web development world now has the pedigree status it deserves. As a writer, I’m happy to see it, if only because so much content, especially written content, sucks.
Okay, so I’m biased. Doesn’t matter.
For a little more overview, there’s a skimpy wikipedia entry and a bulging google knol on CS for some overview. The knol authors all have blogs worth reading. Also on the overview side of things, there’s this post on A List Apart, also by Kristina Halvorson. Here’s your definition of CS in 1000 words or less. Can you tell I’m a fan?
So, what’s been most helpful so far?
Well, aside from creating a way to talk about content not being neglected, it’s got to be the process that comes along with taking good care of content. In the past, I had always kept my process for creation pretty close to what I had learned way back in the creative writing days. I research. I outline. I draft. I revise.
I’m now creating a much, much wider scope for the process than I’m used to. I’s not just writing. More like a strategy for content, if you will. I’m still working on a smaller scale than, for example, Richard Sheffield’s mindmap for CS. Most of what I’m doing in in the Creative and Process arms of that structure, and I’m in the process of building a mindmap of my own for my particular workflow.
So if you meet with a wordy-type like myself in 2010, and they start talking Content Strategy in capital letters, you’ll know what the landscape looks like.
Oh, and if you’re really interested in CS, you should definitely make plans for this.
Tags: Ben Curnett, blogs, books, content strategy