Content Strategy Insights

Gladys Diandoki, a content designer with a strong research mindset, shares insights on audience-focused storytelling, strategic problem-solving, and the importance of structured content. She emphasizes the value of research and testing in content strategy, offering valuable resources for content professionals.

Wojtek Aleksander is a business-focused, inclusive content designer based in Poland. Working in a profession in which English-language educational materials dominate, he addressed the need for Polish-language content guidance by writing "UX Writing: The Power of Language in Digital Products." One big challenge he faces when crafting inclusive content in Polish is working with the language's strongly gendered and inflected grammar.  https://ellessmedia.com/csi/wojtek-aleksander/

Most enterprises and software companies now have design systems, and many have content operations and/or design operations teams. At Cisco, Barbara Blythe works on the content design operations team. She focuses on sharing content guidance across the products she serves, enabling not only content designers but also their UX design and engineering partners to efficiently create consistent product content. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/barbara-blythe/

Nicole Michaelis brings a thoughtful leadership style and deep and varied experience to her content design work. Like all of us, she is pondering how to best use AI in her practice and wrestling with the impacts of layoffs and other change in the content and design professions.  Despite the current challenging business and labor environment, she's hopeful for the future and offers encouragement to both current and future content designers. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/nicole-michaelis-2/

Terry Roach discusses building a 'web of connectedness' through ontological understanding of business and knowledge graph. Topics include comprehensive business representation, measuring progress in business practices, exploring business operating models, and standardizing information concepts in enterprise content architecture.

With more than a billion internet users and half of all global e-commerce transactions, digital business in China is huge. Anna Potapova and Arnaud Frattini work in content roles at Alibaba, the biggest online merchant in China. Lately they have been looking beyond their desks, trying to connect with their peers at other companies and to develop a broader understanding of content practice in the country. They've shared some of their discoveries in an article on content design in China, and they're building a new community to share practice ideas with other content strategists and designers. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/content-in-china/

Sophie Tahran, an experienced content designer, discusses her role in designing content-design organizations at Condé Nast. She explores the growth and evolution of content design teams, the unique role of content design in publishing, and the benefits of centralizing content design organizations. She also explores the necessity of an industry organization for research collaboration and expresses excitement for the future of UX design.

Matt Hayes, a staff content designer at LinkedIn, discusses democratizing content guidance, efficient decision-making, and collaboration within the content design team. They also talk about the role of AI in content design, prioritizing questions and issues, reducing cognitive load, implementing efficient communication, executive guidance, and content design challenges.

The promise of computers augmenting our minds has been a long time coming. We're beginning to see better tools for extending human cognition, but good guidebooks for using them have been sparse. Jorge Arango's new book, Duly Noted, fills this gap elegantly. It shows you how to extend your mind with connected digital notes that capture your thoughts and nourish them in a personal knowledge garden from which you can harvest and share your unique insights. Through February 15, 2024, use the code ContentPod to get a 20% discount when you order the book at the Rosenfeld Media website. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jorge-arango/

Peter Compo says that "the number one thing missing in most strategic plans is a strategy." He's talking about the tendency of executives and managers to draft plans that present lists of goals and include a bullet point for every possible stakeholder in their purview. Peter points out that true strategy involves tough trade-offs and lots of collaboration. His pragmatic approach lets strategic objectives emerge organically, includes a variety of stakeholders, and applies adaptive thinking to address questions that have no obvious answer. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/peter-compo/