by Sally Bagshaw on March 23, 2012
With Confab just over seven weeks away (how exciting!), the timing has been right to dig into three newly released content strategy books.
New content strategy books to read
First up is Margot Bloomstein’s Content Strategy at Work: Real-world Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Project. I am completely honoured to be mentioned in this book (thanks Margot!) which is about real-life content strategy projects. Quite often when you work in this field, you have ‘does anyone else ever encounter this’ thoughts. This book is full of useful stories – and packed with really practical how-to advice – so you’ll never feel alone again.
Next is Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)
by Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper. The most technical of all these books, it delves into intelligent content – content that can be created once and published across many channels. Ann has been spruiking this concept for longer than anyone else (far before content strategy was so popular), and as the field moves back to structured and responsive content her concepts and framework will continue to be invaluable.
And last, but by no means least is Content Strategy for the Web, 2nd Edition
by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach. The first edition of this book prompted my ‘aha’ moment that what I was doing was called content strategy. This edition is still an introduction to the discipline, but has been updated to include some insight into what’s been happening since content strategy hit the big time – and what might be the future direction.
Have you read any of these books yet? Also importantly, are you coming to Confab?
(P.S. These are affiliate links.)
by Sally Bagshaw on October 6, 2011
I went to the Online Retailer Expo in Sydney last week. I didn’t go to the main conference (but will next year), instead I attended Martin Newman’s Optimisation Masterclass.
It was excellent, and refreshing to mix with a bunch of online retailers looking for the best way to optimise content to help sales.
It got me thinking about the role of content strategy within this industry. In a way, a content strategist working for an online retailer has an advantage over one working for a corporate. Why? Well for many of us, selling content strategy in an organisation can be hard. A lot of the benefits seem intangible. It may be tricky to convince management it’s important.
But for the retail world, good content strategy can be linked to sales. There’s a clear dollar benefit of doing it well. And who doesn’t want more sales?
So what would be some good content strategy deliverables for an online retailer? Here are some thoughts:
- A well thought out taxonomy that’s used across all products.
- Clear processes for creating and maintaining content for product descriptions.
- Structured content which can be used for multiple purposes.
- Strong messaging which is carried across all channels.
- Editorial strategy reflected in visual merchandising as well as other rich content.
- Smart use of metrics and testing to see what’s working and what isn’t.
Do you work in a business that sells products online? I would love to hear how you manage some of these things.
