I’ve been following the tweetstream today from #wcconf. And I’ve been dismayed that folks seem to think “content strategy” started with the web. This is exactly the kind of flippant remark that gets “content strategy” lumped in with other new-fangled buzzwords. As David Sleight pointed out, writers and editors have been doing this forever.

I was amused that Kristina Halvorson didn’t put a definition of “content strategy” right up front in her otherwise excellent book. It might have made the first 32 pages easier to put into proper perspective.

But I think this kind of pussyfooting around typical for our “industry” – we shy away from definitions because of the infighting we’ve seen in the UX/IA/IxD communities. Yet here’s the kicker – we don’t need a definition at all, only a simple description. No need to make CS a “hot topic” at all. It’s just something you do when preparing stuff for publication.

On page 32, though Kristina finally lays it out: “Content strategy is the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.”

Simple. Concise. Useful. But honestly, it’s probably pretty much what the editorial board of the Old Testament went through during their deliberations.

Reviewer #11 “Genesis”: “Good storytelling. High emotional qualities. Ought to get our message through. Love that opening line ‘In the beginning…’ Can’t wait to read ‘Exodus’”.

Why does the online crowd so insist on reinventing the wheel? Why do we ignore the lessons of the publishing community, the advertising creatives, the service management crowd?

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant. You wrote a great post!

Cheers,
Eric

P.S. I just discovered that Bob Boiko’s “Content Management Bible” is longer than the real Bible. Food for thought…

Editorial schedules based on frequency over quality dilute the overall value of content over time. And, really, that’s what it’s all about – “value” …to your audience …to your business …to society as a whole.

Whatever you choose to call it – content is what makes the web valuable to all.

To paraphrase Gerry McGovern – a movie that is three hours long isn’t necessarily better than a five-minute short. A novel of thousands of pages may hold no more value to humanity than one stanza of a poem. Greatness is in the telling (connection/emotion), not in the word count.

There’s an entire army of people out there at “traditional” (scare quotes mine) publishing companies, be they newsroom editors, op-ed writers, textbook acquisition mavens, or pulp novelists, who’ve honed the act of creating quality content on a regimented schedule/budget down to a fine art. At the previous two such institutions I worked for all of these people were simply referred to (and officially payrolled) as “Editorial.” It feels like there’s a huge potential talent pool of these folks with existing skills that can be brought to bear on this issue, but aren’t in the mix all that much yet, possibly because the new terms are throwing things off a bit. (I can think of several brilliant editors who could fill a role at shops like Brain Traffic and totally elevate the work to the next level, but it would take me at least an hour to explain to them that this Content Startegy stuff is something that they already do everyday, after which they’d probably chuckle a bit and pat me genially on the head for my Internets World Precociousness. ) In addition to the evangelizing the Web community, should there be more outreach to these folks instead, and in some cases adopting their terms, titles, and knowledge so we can avoid reinventing the wheel? I say that with true respect for the necessary trailblazing that you and others are doing right now in the community.