Content Strategy Insights

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/

Relly Annett-Baker recently said in a LinkedIn post, "The words are an expression of the solution, the last 20%, but we also need to do the 80% that comes before to know wtf to write. " UX writers and content designers spend a lot of their time, arguably too much of it, explaining this core aspect of their work to their colleagues and collaborators. While she sometimes bristles at the need to constantly defend and describe her team's work, Relly also realizes that that is, in fact, the most important part of her job. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/relly-annett-baker/

Jason Barnard, SEO expert, discusses crafting content strategies and messaging architectures for better ranking. Topics include exploring Google's Knowledge Graph, understanding voice and tone in writing, leveraging feedback loops in digital marketing, and focusing on user and brand SERP stability.

As content design becomes entrenched as a UX design practice, leaders from the craft are beginning to move into design leadership positions. Melinda Belcher's ascent to her current design management role is an instructive and inspirational story of professional development, creative team leadership, and community building. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/melinda-belcher/

Navigating the complex and multifaceted online media landscape can be a disjointed and disorienting experience. Scott Abel has a method for smoothing out online customers' experiences. His "content unification" approach benefits both the organizations that create content experiences and the customers who are navigating them. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/scott-abel-2/

The basics of building a design system are fairly simple. Ensconcing a system in an organization's culture so that it's actually adopted and used is a more complex undertaking. Dan Mall takes a content-first approach as he helps organizations evolve their design systems from projects to products and ultimately to firmly embedded practices that let teams deliver the efficiency and consistency benefits that such systems offer.  https://ellessmedia.com/csi/dan-mall/

Jarno van Driel is a true pioneer on the semantic web. Even before you could add machine-readable semantic markup to webpages, he was discovering ways to help search engines understand what web pages were about. Much of that success grew out of his early focus on accessibility and usability. When semantic markup was introduced, he was among the first cadre of experts on RDFa, Microdata, schema.org, and other semantic practices, and he is to this day one of the most respected practitioners of this craft. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jarno-van-driel/

To conduct a good research-focused interview, you need to cultivate a professional interviewing mindset. Steve Portigal has been doing this for years, and he has written a book to help other researchers and designers conduct better interviews. Now in its second edition, Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights, covers interviewing techniques, of course, but also research best practices, how to document your work, and how to make sense of your discoveries. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/steve-portigal/

Michael Reid is a consultant who helps organizations with their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. A linquist by training, he is extremely attuned to the role of language in his work, which led to his explorations of the privilege given to English-language speakers in our modern,  hyper-connected world. His discoveries can help content professionals of all kinds identify and address the dynamics and biases that arise from the pivotal role that the English language plays in modern digital business. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/michael-reid/