I’m a content strategist, editor, and writer. I help people plan for, design, make, publish, and maintain really good content online. I live in NYC and work for Brain Traffic, a fantastico content strategy consultancy in Minneapolis. Before joining Brain Traffic, I was an indie content specialist, the editorial director of Happy Cog Studios, and a freelance writer and editor. One of my desks is at Studiomates, a collective workspace in Brooklyn, and my other is at home, surrounded by a henge of white bookshelves.

My new book, The Elements of Content Strategy, was published in March of 2011 by A Book Apart. You can read an excerpt at A List Apart magazine, or buy it direct from the publisher in a beautiful paperback edition, as a set of DRM-free ebook files, or both.

Stuff I’ve Worked On

• Content strategy, editorial strategy, and writing projects for clients including Capgemini, the Charter for Compassion, Thomson Reuters, W.W. Norton & Co., and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
• A List Apart, where I was as an editor for 10 years, including 5 as editor-in-chief.
• Web Standards Sherpa, an educational site from the Web Standards Project.
• The Web Writing course for The Web Standards Project’s curriculum framework, a modern web design and development program.
• Books, including the second and the third editions of Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman (now with bonus Ethan Marcotte), and John Allsopp’s Developing with Web Standards.

My Writing, Elsewhere

At A List Apart:

• “A Checklist for Content Work” (book excerpt)
• “Content Templates to the Rescue”
• “Writing Content That Works for a Living”
• “Your About Page Is a Robot”
• “Attack of the Zombie Copy”
• “The Way it’s Supposed to Work”
• “A Brief History of Bad Browsers”

On other sites:

• “Content Strategy Is Not User Experience”—Brain Traffic blog
• “App Madness and the Open Web”—Confab Conference blog
• “Webstandards.org: Context & Audience on the Homepage”—Web Standards Sherpa

Credo

I believe that clear, honest, thoughtful communication—online and otherwise—can make our lives better (and good businesses more profitable).

I believe that poor communication wastes time and money, damages relationships, and hinders our ability to think clearly as groups and individuals.

I believe we can do better.

Contact

I’m on Twitter and you can contact me at erin@incisive.nu.