Struggling with content strategy?

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Interesting thoughts from Rachel Lovinger…

“Not that familiar with “content strategy?” That’s ok. It’s in my job title, and I struggle every time I’m asked what I do for a living. Many people have no idea what it means, but even more people bring their own (wrong) assumptions to the conversation. Usually they think it has something to do with writing copy. That’s not entirely false, but it’s kind of misleading.

The analogy I’ve been using recently is that content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design. I find this analogy to be especially encouraging because six years ago, as the crest of the first wave of the web was about to break, people had no idea what “information architecture” meant either.

The irony of this communication challenge is that the main goal of content strategy is to use words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences. We have to be experts in all aspects of communication in order to do this effectively.

So, why has it been so hard for us to communicate what we do?

Perhaps the problem is that, because content is so pervasive, everyone thinks they know all there is to know about it. If you can read and write, you can make content, right? (Nearly 60 million blogs may prove that.) But the fact is, as interactive experiences become more complex, so does the nature of content. A superficial understanding of content isn’t going to cut it anymore. Content strategists in the digital age need to become data philosophers and explore the metaphysics of content, starting with the question “What is content?”” Source; Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design

Go to the source if you’d like to read the rest of the article. I also recommend Kristina Halvorson’s book “Content Strategy for the Web” and thanks to Steve Rosenbaum, author of “Curation Nation” for recommending it. I suggest you acquire both books if you’re interested in the topic of curation and/or content strategy…