Comments on: Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/ Boxes and Arrows is devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and the design of business. Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:43:59 +0000 hourly 1 By: carsten http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6575 carsten Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6575 I really don’t get the argument, what makes a CS so important. I miss some examples because seldomly you have to create lots and lots of content for a client. They bring the content by themselves and normally it is reduced to the products they offer. So after reading this article I have the idea of a job, created exclusively in an very, very big agency…

]]> By: maxim http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6576 maxim Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6576 Even though the functions of CS are necessary I don’t see how Information Architect wouldn’t be able to fulfill those.
“If the information architect (IA) also happens to have an interest in words…” – IA MUST have interest in words, IA has to create labels etc..

]]> By: dshen http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6577 dshen Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6577 It seems as though today’s internet professionals need to be multidisciplinary. One area that is rarely discussed is the technical aspects of content strategy. Tagging, categorization, etc as it is implemented on the technical side is very important so that information is available to users as well as to internal staff in an easy, accessible way, and not buried in a DB to never be able to be accessed again…or only through months of undoing code because the DB wasn’t built to handle that.

The technical implementation of content is an important part of strategizing the content itself and I’d love to hear more discussion on this topic and perhaps case studies on what has worked and what has not…

]]> By: bprade http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6578 bprade Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6578 This is a great post that I can completely relate to. As a fellow content strategist, I am often questioned by IAs and Project Managers about the value add of such a role. It’s comforting to know that other content strategists have also experience the same challenges. It would be wonderful to channel those energies by more publicly defining the discipline perhaps by forming an industry trade group.

Bianca Prade
http://webcontentstrategy.com/

]]> By: richard http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6579 richard Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6579 Hi Rachel, thank you for your article. I have to admit my first reaction wasn’t positive due to a couple of key points that you have made but there is a but at the end of my response:

a) the analogy which you have provided has probably been met with some surprise too many IA’s as we have to consider content very carefully, as this is absolutely key to the sites that we architect, and often covers all of the content considerations that you mention, which doesn’t seem to be your experience of IA’s which seems odd.

b) I also think your statement that the primary factor of relevant content is relationships isn’t clear and perhaps incorrect as relationships do not make the content Relevant to the User per say. I could have a single article that is very relevant providing the User arrives at content item through accurate and clear selection, through clear content navigation or perhaps Search engine, which is generally made possible through well structured taxonomies, meta data and the actual content. The concept of accurate, timely and well structured content an interesting subject.

However on a much more positive note, and I finally get there, content always requires great effort and can easily be a cause for site delays even after providing site maps, wireframes, editorial tone guidelines, and web writing guidelines and using key word systems to assist and or automate meta tagging and relationship building, as often keeping content aligned with these can be be difficult for content authors and very time consuming so to have a practice group focused on this may help on projects and raise best practice standards on the web.

I hope we can get more articles for discussion on the topic of good content. There are also some nice articles on Bianca’s site.

I think that we should be careful not to flame the role of Content Strategists as IA’s as I’m sure many of us if we think back have met the same kind of resistance in the past when establishing the IA role :)

Best regards,

Richard

]]> By: richard http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6580 richard Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6580 Sorry if my point b) is slightly unclear my fault for trying to write standing up on train, I hope the gist of this point is understood.

As a small extension to point b): Relationships can provide a very effective way of exposing further content which the user may also be interested and in that we see this mechanism used massively on blogs and many of the web2.0 tagged apps. Which can assist massively with making sites sticky. (Sticky still seems odd phrase.. ah well)

best regards,

Richard Marsh
http://www.creative-resonance.com

]]> By: richard http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6581 richard Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6581 Honestly my last point :P

In terms of content there is a high level artifact which I forgot to mention which is a communications strategy. This is typically started at the beginning of a project with stakeholders and content focused experts (not mentioning specific titles such as Content Strategists, Creative Directors, Copywriters, IA’s) and is meant to provide a living definition of editorial with regard what is to be said where, by whom, when.

best regards,

Richard Marsh
http://www.creative-resonance.com

]]> By: arickmann http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6582 arickmann Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6582 It appears as though there is a significant overlap between information architecture and content strategy; although, it would surprise me if that were not the case.

Bianca, your point is very interesting: that you find IAs often question the value of the content strategy role. It seems that both roles should to compliment each other well and lead to a more fullfilling result when they work together. I would have thought that each would be in the best position to appreciate the other.

]]> By: rlovinger http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6583 rlovinger Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6583 Thanks for all the interesting and thought provoking comments.

I definitely agree with Andrew, and I hope this came across in the article, that there’s a strong connection between IA and CS. I think that, regardless of job title, the role of thinking about content strategy can be taken on by many different people on a project, and often it will be IAs who do this. While I have worked with some IAs who don’t seem to be willing or able to really consider the deeper implications of the content on a site, more often my experience is that IAs are very aware of and concerned about content, but the constraints on their time mean that there’s a limit to how deeply they can afford to delve into it. For the development of content rich sites, it can be very helpful to have one person who focuses primarily on content issues (including scope, tone & voice, taxonomy, etc.) and makes content-specific recommendations, as part of the complete user experience picture.

Richard, my comment about content relationships probably needs to be explained a little more clearly. I meant this in a much broader sense than a list of related articles at the end of a piece of content. The fact that the user found an article in the first place is probably because, through some combination of the content, metadata and business rules about relevance, the search application determined that the article is related to the term that the user typed into the search box. Search is becoming so sophisticated that usually we don’t even notice the fine distinctions that a system has made in determining relevance. Additional contextual services embedded on the page (weather info, tickets sales, news feeds, stock quotes, etc) are also based on having some relationship to the content itself. Maybe a person hand selected each service, but increasingly these services are driven by metadata relationships captured with the content.

What I mean is, in a broad sense, content search and discovery (as you say “accurate and clear selection”) is often dependent on the relationships that are expressed within the content, its structure and its metadata.

]]> By: rozzie http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6584 rozzie Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/content-strategy-the-philosophy-of-data/#comment-6584 When I’ve worn the “content strategy” hat, the best and most productive relationships with IAs I’ve had were the ones similar to editor/writer relationships. The “what” and “how” of web content and communications is still largely a creative endeavor (thankfully) and I’d look to IAs to optimize, provide structure to, or validate my ideas about content needs, relationships, and user value and its ability to support business/organization requirements. The least productive were when an IA would hand over a stack of wireframes and say something to the effect of “fill this out with content” (This approach always reminded me of those old Madlibs books).

Increasingly I see the need for content strategy to really be organizational communications strategy– “Enterprise Content Strategy” (ECS) we’ll call it to coin yet another acronym. I see it as old fashioned campaign style management and creative direction with a doses of business analysis, SEO/SEM, technical content management and IA in the mix.

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