A less than flashy title. I know. After I read Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson I cannot help but think this was the missing piece to my woes regarding web content. I’ve had countless projects that missed the deadline due to missing content because content waited until the last second. Then there was the attempt to force content to be done before the content moves along. This often caused deadlines to be pushed back repeatedly because it took so long to actually complete. The truth is there was no real content strategy, and to make matters even worse there was a severe disconnect in how long it actually took to analyze, plan, create, revise and publish content. It all makes sense now.
The book doesn’t give you a detailed step by step “how to do this” layout on how to make content strategy work for you, but what it does do is give you a guide without holding your hand on how to develop a winning strategy. I like the structure of the book. To me it much resembles a blog. Every section is short and to the point. There’s a lot of “you” discussion, and the parts are broken up in such a way that when I have only 10 minutes to read I feel like I actually accomplished something. It made me feel like if I spent an additional 10 minutes I would get somewhere which is important to me.
Here are highlights that I really appreciate from the book:
- An extensive explanation of the content lifecycle. It’s no longer about concept, create, revise and approve.
- Discusses the challenges of coordinating several “political” areas within in the organization and suggestions on guiding them for a unified content approach.
- Discusses why more content is not always the best direction. Better quality content gets you better quality results. More content may bring you more traffic overall, but if you aren’t converting on that traffic. Why is it there?
- It’s not afraid to ask, “Why?” This is absolutely one of the most powerful questions regarding any project – content or otherwise.
- Explains what each piece of the revised lifecycle for content means.
- Navigates the challenges behind content workflow and governance.
I could go on and on about the book, but my recommendation is you simply read it. I have read it. I’m already recommending it to others at my job. There were some moments when I read I almost laughed at myself because I was making some of the same mistakes. I knew they were wrong, but I didn’t know better.
The lessons in this book can teach you some of the myths behind content. The biggest myth is that it’s the easiest part of any web project, but in reality it’s often times the hardest part that gets the least amount of respect.
Go read the book. Know that content strategy is very real and insanely important to your business. Have you read the book too? What are your thoughts on it? Do you love or hate it? What have you learned from it?
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