Content Strategy News & Articles

Luckily, the conversations about content strategy are always varied and interesting. I’ve noticed that lately many of them are about governance and its importance to content success. However, most of these conversations are missing two major elements:

1. They loosely, or even worse (!) vaguely define governance
2. No clear, practical rules for success are given (and no, recommending an editorial workflow and style guide does not count).

I thought I would take a stab at it.

Some web teams lack an ability to prioritize and focus. As a result, they create big, sprawling, out-of-date websites.

Google (news, site) is fiercely protective of its search business. While Facebook, with its social media supremacy, perpetually looms over the horizon as a potential arch-nemesis, Google is continuing to add features that make search more social. The big G has just rolled out social search to more languages and locales.

Today, Paper.li, the online content curation and publishing platform, released new curation and management capabilities designed to allow users incorporate Twitter and Facebook streams into a familiar newspaper layout.

How do you know you’re hitting your marks in a Web project?

Content strategists love to tell stories. ConFab 2011 may bill itself as a content strategy conference, but it’s more like a two-day storytelling festival. Stories are content strategists' strongest tool and weakest asset.

Most content strategists love content, because we love words. But most companies ignore content because the link between words and revenue isn’t always obvious. At Confab 2011, the Content Conference was organized strategically so that attendees were first rallied and supported, then schooled in the business application of content strategy and how we can appeal to a company’s financial side when pitching the merits of better, more efficient content.

I think I finally understand what Woodstock must have been like. Being at ConFab 2011, The Content Strategy Conference, hosted by BrainTraffic, is like a big warm content strategy hug. No matter how unstructured the state of corporate content is, it’s nice to know that there’s a safe place to share ideas, gain support from the content community and have the freedom to investigate new strategies, ideas and approaches.

If your favorite part of engagement is when the client asks, “What will we see along the way to know we are getting there?” or my absolute favorite, “Can you describe your process?” then this column is for you.

In last month's article (The Semantics of Content Management: What We Mean and How We Say It), I discussed how we often trip over our collective tongues with our use of language and terminology when discussing content management and related technologies within our enterprises. This month, I thought I would address one of those terms that could possibly cause some confusion: content analytics.

Tackling Enterprise Information Management (EIM) this week we looked at the importance of collaboration and reliable data for better business intelligence, how adaptive case management serves the public good and how to create your SharePoint governance plan.

At the ever provocative J. Boye conference in Philadelphia we encountered bold thinkers and even bolder implementers of grand ideas. Innovator Jon Udell talked about how Tags are Information Services, Bob Boiko explored the role of Conversations in your information strategy and a few others expounded on how to create an effective digital marketing strategy.

Other news this week we saw SDL acquire Calamares, then CityGrid Media bought BuzzLabs and plenty of rumors that Facebook would grab Skype.

Most Popular

• SharePoint, Get It Right the First Time: 7 Strategic & Tactical Steps
• The Keys to Understanding Web Customer Engagement
• ECM + WCM = Your Portal Strategy
• Amazon Promises Full Inquiry into EC2/AWS Outage; Affected Services Comment
• IBM Says Merge your Email into the Activity Stream

Editor's Picks

• Jon Udell Keynote: Tags Are Information Services + 7 Ways to Think Web
  
• When Planning Your Mobile Strategy, Think Deep
• Boiko: Today Information Management is in the Conversation Age
• Get More Value Out of Your Web CMS with a Content Strategy
• SDL Acquires Calamares, Spices Up its Digital Assets

Around the Web

• Cloud Computing and ECM, 5 Things you need to know
• Is distributed content management working for you?
• The Who and What of Mobile BI
• It’s Really About Communication
• The Six Mindsets of Adaptive Leadership

Featured Events (all events | post an event)

• May 11, 2011 -- (Webinar) Best Practices for Engaging Customers via Integrated Marketing Channels - N. America
• May 17, 2011 -- Webinar: Is your website keeping up with the Sales 2.0 revolution?
• May 17, 2011 -- Webinar: Introduction to Rapid Concept Deployment with Jahia 6.5 Open Source Web CMS
• May 18, 2011 -- Forrester Research: How to Reinvent Digital User Experience for 2011
• May 19, 2011 -- HartmanEVENT 2011 in Utrecht, NL

Featured Jobs (all jobs | post a job)

• Enterprise CMS Java Developer at Nuxeo
• Sales Director at One Hippo (Web CMS)
• Inside Sales at Telerik
• Website Properties Manager at SugarCRM
• Business Development Manager at Optify

We finished with conference day 1 of J.Boye 2011. Today I’ve focused on the web content management and online strategy tracks, attended Bob Boiko’s opening keynote and unfortunately managed to disrupt the HTML5 session conducted by Philippe Le Hegert of the W3C with a blood-curdling scream.

Every website, intranet, CMS-selection or social media campaign should be supported by a content strategy. Doing a web project without a content strategy is nothing more than pushing the 'I feel lucky!' button.

For all of us engaged in Web projects on a daily basis, we are often surprised by how much can change from project to project. Flexibility is key when you are a digital strategist, Web professional or online communications expert. The goal of this series is to provide information from leading experts in the field on how to create best practices for Web projects. In the next three columns, we will focus on the art and science of the deliverable.

Big redesigns are a very dangerous strategy. Continuous improvement of your customers' top tasks is much better.