If your website content is out of date, off-brand, and out of control, you're missing a huge opportunity to engage, convert, and retain customers online. Redesigning your home page won't help. Investing in a new content management system won't fix it, either. So, where do you start? Without meaningful content, your website isn't worth much to your key audiences. But creating (and caring for) "meaningful" content is far more complicated than we're often willing to acknowledge. Content Strategy for the Web explains how to create and deliver useful, usable content for your online audiences, when and where they need it most. It also shares content best practices so you can get your next website redesign right, on time and on budget. For the first time, you'll: See content strategy (and its business value) explained in plain language Find out why so many web projects implode in the content development phase ... and how to avoid the associated, unnecessary costs and delays Learn how to audit and analyze your content Make smarter, achievable decisions about which content to create and how Find out how to maintain consistent, accurate, compelling content over time Get solid, practical advice on staffing for content-related roles and responsibilities
This comprehensive text provides a how-to guide for content strategy, enabling students and professionals to understand and master the skills needed to develop and manage technical content in a range of professional contexts. The landscape of technical communication has been revolutionized by emerging technologies such as content management systems, open-source information architecture, and application programming interfaces that change the ways professionals create, edit, manage, and deliver content. This textbook helps students and professionals develop relevant skills for this changing marketplace. It takes readers through essential skills including audience analysis; content auditing; assembling content strategy plans; collaborating with other content developers; identifying appropriate channels of communication; and designing, delivering, and maintaining genres appropriate to those channels. It contains knowledge and best practices gleaned from decades of research and practice in content strategy and provides its audience with a thorough introductory text in this essential area. Content Strategy works as a core or supplemental textbook for undergraduate and graduate classes, as well as certification courses, in content strategy, content management, and technical communication. It also provides an accessible introduction for professionals looking to develop their skills and knowledge.
If you've been asked to get funding for a content strategy initiative and need to build a compelling business case, if you've been approached by your staff to implement a content strategy and want to know the business benefits, or if you've been asked to sponsor a content strategy project and don't know what one is, this book is for you. Rahel Anne Bailie and Noz Urbina come from distinctly different backgrounds, but they share a deep understanding of how to help your organization build a content strategy. Content Strategy: Connecting the dots between business, brand, and benefits is the first content strategy book that focuses on project managers, department heads, and other decision makers who need to know about content strategy. It provides practical advice on how to sell, create, implement, and maintain a content strategy, including case studies that show both successful and not so successful efforts. Inside the Book Introduction to Content Strategy Why Content Strategy and Why Now The Value and ROI of Content Content Under the Hood Developing a Content Strategy Glossary, Bibliography, and Index
Kevin P. Nichols' Enterprise Content Strategy: A Project Guide outlines best practices for conducting and executing content strategy projects. His book is a step-by-step guide to building an enterprise content strategy for your organization. Enterprise Content Strategy draws on Kevin Nichols' experience managing one of the largest and most successful global content strategy teams to provide an insider's look at how to build an enterprise content strategy. Full of definitions, questions you need to ask, checklists, and guidelines, this book focuses not on the what or why, but on the how.
Content Strategy in Technical Communication provides a balanced, comprehensive overview of the current state of content strategy within the field of technical communication while showcasing groundbreaking work in the field. Emerging technologies such as content management systems, social media platforms, open source information architectures, and application programming interfaces provide new opportunities for the creation, publication, and delivery of content. Technical communicators are now sometimes responsible for such diverse roles as content management, content auditing, and search engine optimization. At the same time, we are seeing remarkable growth in jobs devoted to these other content-centric skills. This book provides a roadmap including best practices, pedagogies for teaching, and implications for research in these areas. It covers elements of content strategy as diverse as "Editing Content for Global Reuse" and "Teaching Content Strategy to Graduate Students with Real Clients," while giving equal weight to professional best practices and to pedagogy for content strategy. This book is an essential resource for professionals, students, and scholars throughout the field of technical communication.
Content is king. and the new kingmaker. and your message needs to align with your model and metrics and other mumbo jumbo, right? Whether you're slogging through theory or buzzwords, there's no denying content strategy is coming of age. But what's in it for you? And if you're not a content strategist, why should you care? Because even if content strategy isn't your job, content's probably your problem-and probably more than you think. You or your business has a message you want to deliver, right? You can deliver that message through various channels and content types, from Tweets to testimonials and photo galleries galore, and your audience has just as many ways of engaging with it. So many ways, so much content. so where's the problem? That is the problem. And you can measure it in time, creativity, money, lost opportunity, and the sobs you hear equally from creative directors, project managers, and search engine marketing specialists. The solution is content strategy, and this book offers real-world examples and approaches you can adopt, no matter your role on the team. Put content strategy to work for you by gathering this book into your little hands and gobbling up never-before seen case studies from teams at Johns Hopkins Medicine, MINI, Icebreaker, and more. Content Strategy at Work is a book for designers, information architects, copywriters, project managers, and anyone who works with visual or verbal content. It discusses how you can communicate and forge a plan that will enable you, your company, or your client get that message across and foster better user experiences. Presents a content strategy framework and ways to implement in both in-house marketing departments and consultancies Includes case studies, interviews, and lessons learned from retail, apparel, network television, business-to-business, automotive, non-profit, and higher ed brands Details practical sales techniques to sell content strategy and use content strategy processes to sell other services and larger projects
A brilliant design deserves brilliant content. Content that is intuitive, compelling and flexible. With the help of this eBook, you will learn to face the content challenge. Take it as your guide through the critical phases of content planning, production and maintenance, your partner in crime to develop your content strategy. In this eBook we’ll cover practical editing tips just like strategies to improve your information architecture. Ideas on how to run a content-planning workshop help you get everyone in your team pulling in the same direction. Furthermore, our authors share strategies for a content audit that is bound to tame the daunting beast that a mass of content can easily turn into. And to ensure your content is useful on every device, we’ll provide tips for developing a mobile content strategy. Don’t let your content be only a sidekick. Give it the same attention and care you put into designing all the other bits of your product and you’ll see its real power unfolding. TABLE OF CONTENTS - Editing Tips For Business Web Content, written by Brad Shorr - Framing Effective Messages To Motivate Your Users, written by Victor Yocco - Ways To Avoid Overwhelming Users: Lessons Learned From My High-School Teachers, written by Jon Bernbach - How To Run A Content-Planning Workshop, written by James Deer - Help Your Content Go Anywhere With A Mobile Content Strategy, written by Kerry Crawford - Improving Your Information Architecture With Card-Sorting: A Beginner’s Guide, written by Pierre Croft - Content Knowledge Is Power, written by Sara Wachter-Boettcher - Dealing With Redundant, Out-Of-Date And Trivial (ROT) Content, written by Paul Boag
Finally: a real-life, practical industry guide on content strategy and marketing. Practical Content Strategy & Marketing is your go-to guide on a practical content strategy and marketing education, created by author Julia McCoy as a written accompaniment to her new course, the Content Strategy & Marketing Course (www.contentstrategycourse.com). If you run a business, or if you’re trying to break into a top-dollar content marketing career, you need to know the practical concepts involved in content strategy and marketing. The “how,” the “why,” the “where” of content. Content marketing itself involves so many platforms, formats, content types, strategies, tools—and to get the most ROI from your approach to content marketing and strategy, you have to know how to do the most important content marketing practices. Forget FOMO and trying to figure out too many things. This guide will teach you the most important foundations and skills you actually need in order to get far in our booming industry of content marketing. For the first time in the industry, Practical Content Strategy & Marketing lays the “hows” of content marketing and strategy out, in a step-by-step approach, book form. Each section has written exercises built to solidify what you’re reading and learning—you’ll be able to fill these out with a pen. Don’t be afraid to mark up this book! Why is this book different? You’re not going to find corporate, birds-eye, mumbo-jumbo fluff in this content marketing guide. Quite the opposite. The author, Julia McCoy, won her way to the top (awarded as the top 33rd content marketer in 2016) the hard-knocks way. She dropped out of college and built a content agency, Express Writers, on nothing but $75 and the tenacity to go and follow her dream and see it through. Five years later, Julia’s business has served over 5,000 clients and employs over 40 team members, and her content consistently ranks at the top of Google and among the highest-shared for guest publications. Her go-to marketing strategy? A practical, hands-on content marketing approach that has ended up bringing her 99% of the clients her agency currently works with. With Julia as your guide, learn the principles and physical “how-to” behind these six key cores of effective content marketing: Module 1: Core Foundations of an ROI-Based Content Strategy Module 2: Audience Persona Discovery, Sales Funnel Content Mapping, & Style Guidelines Module 3: Understanding Keywords, SEO Opportunities, & Creating Keyword Reports Module 4: How to Build Content Cores (Your Content House) for an Authority Presence Online Module 5: Practical Content Creation (Your Site & Guest Blogging) Module 6: Content Promotion, Setting a Budget, Preparing Your Editorial Calendar, & Maintenance Along the way, you’ll get to build a working content strategy from the ground up, using the Brand Strategy Exercises in each module. Have your pen and thinking cap ready—and a brand you want to build an entire working strategy for! Practical Content Strategy & Marketing is a field guide for the smartest content marketers who know that strategy is the key to thriving in our world of new marketing through content. Bonus: leading business marketing expert Mark Schaefer joins Julia to write the foreword, and guests Sujan Patel, Michele Linn, Steve Rayson and more appear in guest lessons throughout the book.
In this essential guide, Meghan Casey outlines a step-by-step approach for doing content strategy, from planning and creating your content to delivering and managing it. Armed with this book, you can confidently tackle difficult activities like telling your boss or client what’s wrong with their content, getting the budget to do content work, and aligning stakeholders on a common vision. Reading The Content Strategy Toolkit is like having your own personal consulting firm on retainer with a complete array of tools and tips for every challenge you’ll face. In this practical and relevant guide, you’ll learn how to: Identify problems with your content and persuade your bosses it’s worth the time and resources to do it right Make sense of your business environment and understand your audience Get stakeholders aligned on business goals and user needs Set your content strategy and decide how to measure success Create, maintain, and govern on-strategy content You’ll learn to control your content—and not have it control you.
The Language of Content Strategy is the gateway to a language that describes the world of content strategy. With fifty-two contributors, all known for their depth of knowleEA Digital (delivered electronically)e, this set of terms forms the core of an emerging profession and, as a result, helps shape the profession. The terminology spans a range of competencies with the broad area of content strategy. This book, and its companion website, is an invitation to readers to join the conversation. This is an important step: the beginning of a common language. Using this book will not only help you shape your work, but also encourage you to contribute your own terminology and help expand the depth and breadth of the profession
Provides modern enterprises with the tools to create a robust digital platform utilizing proven best practices, practical models, and time-tested techniques Contemporary business organizations can either embrace the digital revolution—or be left behind. Enterprise Content and Search Management for Building Digital Platforms provides modern enterprises with the necessary tools to create a robust digital platform utilizing proven best practices, practical models, and time-tested techniques to compete in the today’s digital world. Features include comprehensive discussions on content strategy, content key performance indicators (KPIs), mobile-first strategy, content assessment models, various practical techniques and methodologies successfully used in real-world digital programs, relevant case studies, and more. Initial chapters cover core concepts of a content management system (CMS), including content strategy; CMS architecture, templates, and workflow; reference architectures, information architecture, taxonomy, and content metadata. Advanced CMS topics are then covered, with chapters on integration, content standards, digital asset management (DAM), document management, and content migration, evaluation, validation, maintenance, analytics, SEO, security, infrastructure, and performance. The basics of enterprise search technologies are explored next, and address enterprise search architecture, advanced search, operations, and governance. Final chapters then focus on enterprise program management and feature coverage of various concepts of digital program management and best practices—along with an illuminating end-to-end digital program case study. Offers a comprehensive guide to the understanding and learning of new methodologies, techniques, and models for the creation of an end-to-end digital system Addresses a wide variety of proven best practices and deployed techniques in content management and enterprise search space which can be readily used for digital programs Covers the latest digital trends such as mobile-first strategy, responsive design, adaptive content design, micro services architecture, semantic search and such and also utilizes sample reference architecture for implementing solutions Features numerous case studies to enhance comprehension, including a complete end-to-end digital program case study Provides readily usable content management checklists and templates for defining content strategy, CMS evaluation, search evaluation and DAM evaluation Comprehensive and cutting-edge, Enterprise Content and Search Management for Building Digital Platforms is an invaluable reference resource for creating an optimal enterprise digital eco-system to meet the challenges of today’s hyper-connected world.
Drive your content marketing campaign toward success Blogs and social platforms are all the rage right now—especially for strategists looking to cultivate influence among target audience members through content marketing. Content Marketing Strategies For Dummies explains how you can use content marketing to gain an edge over your competition, even in the most crowded of marketplaces. This timely text introduces you to the Five C Cycle: Company Focus, Customer Experience, Content Creation, Channel Promotion, and Closed-Loop Analysis. The Five C Cycle drives the creation and documentation of a targeted content marketing strategy, and allows you to approach your content marketing campaign with confidence. By helping you determine your company's focus, uncover your customers' experience with data, develop channel promotions across social platforms, create actionable online content, and use closed-loop analysis to build on previous success, this will become your go-to content marketing guide. Content marketing entails creating and curating content online via blog posts, social media platforms, and more. The goal is to acquire and retain customers by creating content that brings value to their lives, and that encourages them to engage with your brand. This easy-to-understand guide will help you do just that. Analyze customer data to better understand your target audience's journey Leverage social platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to develop channel promotions Create and curate intelligent, engaging content that leads to action Build upon your previous success with closed-loop analysis Whether you work for a large corporation, are part of a small business, are a solo thought leader, or are an educator, Content Marketing Strategies For Dummies tells you how to gain a critical, competitive advantage through targeted content marketing strategies.