Content Strategy Insights

As the field of content strategy matures and advances, one thing remains the same: the ubiquity and importance of building websites. Few practitioners are more versed in this craft than Corey Vilhauer and Deane Barker.  Then they worked together at Blend Interactive, Corey and Deane wrote The Web Project Guide, a comprehensive book that can help anyone manage the process of creating and building a...

Like many content designers, Aladrian Goods discovered the field of UX design after working in writing, communications, and other roles. Aladrian found content design a few years ago and quickly rose into a leadership role at Intuit.  In this conversation, we talk about the story of her ascent into leadership, the design practice at Intuit, and how her focus on values, culture, and communication b...

Jess Sand organizes the Content + UX Slack, a vibrant community of 15,000 content professionals.  While it may be best known for the salary-transparency requirement in its very active jobs channel, members of the community also appreciate the wide-ranging conversations there and the support of their fellow content practitioners.  https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jess-sand/

Meghan Casey literally wrote the book on content strategy practice. Her book, "The Content Strategy Toolkit: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right," has helped innumerable content strategists do better content work. Meghan is updating the book now to bring it into line with modern practices and to account for the many changes in the field since the book was first published....

Greg Dunlap is on a mission to help people create better content for the web. As Director of Strategy for Lullabot - a well-known consultancy that is best known for its work with the Drupal content management system - Greg helps clients develop good websites. As the author of a forthcoming book on web content authoring, Greg is taking his next step toward helping people create better content for t...

Artificial intelligence is driving a wave of change in content strategy practice.  AI is here now and will soon touch virtually every aspect of content work, from ideation and creation to management and analytics.  Jeff Coyle can help you understand and navigate how these new AI-driven practices will affect your content career.  https://ellessmedia.com/csi/jeff-coyle/

In the late 1990s, as digital practices like web design and development emerged, experiences were being created and users were getting attention, but the practices that guided that work had not yet been articulated. That's when Jesse James Garrett wrote his book, The Elements of User Experience . After sharing his ideas in numerous client pitches and sketching them on whiteboards for his co-worker...

As content strategists and designers we do our best to create experiences that inform and empower our users. Unfortunately, we sometimes fall short of perfect, human-centered, user-focused design practice. Two of our most common failings occur when we bombard our users with excessive cognitive load and impose on them unnecessary emotional labor. David Dylan Thomas and Dayana Kibilds are having an...

Knowledge graph technology can help content programs in many ways: to aid content discoverability, to discover valuable insights in existing content, and to build transparent personalization programs that build brand loyalty and foster customer trust.  Ashleigh Faith has worked with content and knowledge graphs for more than 15 years and has a knack for explaining the benefits of the technology, m...

The use of artificial intelligence in content design and content operations is emerging and evolving quickly. As is the case with many new technologies, it might at first look like robots are coming to steal jobs from humans. But, according to May Habib, AI is more likely to create more, and more interesting, work for people. May and her team at Writer are developing an AI platform that's designed...

Modern communication on the web is best when it's semantic and meaningful, networked and conversational. Creating web conversations starts with collaborative internal communication and then invites the marketplace to join in. Teodora Petkova is a semantic web explorer with a PhD in digital marketing and communication. She loves to share her fascination with the evolution of web content and her exp...

Natalie Dunbar can help you build your content strategy practice, whether you're running a one-person content show, building a content department, or incorporating a content team into a design operation. Drawing on experiences from her long and eclectic content strategy career and adding the insights of several other industry veterans, Natalie's new book is a must-read for anyone building or manag...

Kate Thomas is leading the transformation of marketing content at PayPal from hand-crafted web pages to structured content stored in a headless CMS. Like many organizational-transformation projects, this one has highlighted both the benefits of structuring content and the challenges of getting content authors to work in new ways. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/kate-thomas/

Seth Earley helps enterprises use ontologies to power the intelligent content experiences that create personalized content interactions and that run chatbots, voice assistants, and other new technologies.  An ontology is a business practice that helps you understand the knowledge in your business and connect and share it in new and powerful ways. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/seth-earley/

Katrin Suetterlin is a content architect, a content designer, and an expert on designing for neurodivergent populations. You hear jokes about ADHD, dyslexia, and similar neurological conditions all the time, but as designers we need to take neurodivergence seriously.  Research shows that at least 20% of the population exhibits one or more types of neurodiversity. If you're a human-centered design...

Dan Brown has focused his design work on information architecture for the past 25 years.  Along the way, he has written three books, designed a design game, and created one of the the most-used tools in the profession, the Information Architecture Lenses card deck. Dan is very thoughtful about the practice of IA and has a lot to say about how the field has evolved. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/dan-...

Design systems are quickly being adopted across companies of all sizes and types, from big enterprises to burgeoning startups.  As in all digital practices, content is a crucial element in these systems. Nicole Michaelis has worked with content in design systems for several years and has learned a lot about how to create and manage the content that goes into, and comes out of, design systems. http...

Donna Spencer has practiced information architecture at the highest levels for more than two decades. She has taught innumerable workshops and courses, and she wrote an entire book on the subject. Still, to this day, when she teaches IA, she feels inadequate. This speaks in no way to her professional knowledge or her skills as a teacher. Donna knows this field as well as anyone and speaks eloquent...

Content programs need to be guided by a sound model and built on a strong foundation. They need to put people first but to also account for the technical systems that handle the details of turning abstract concepts into tangible and useful content artifacts. Deane Barker has been modeling and building content management systems for more than 25 years. In this conversation, he shares some of the in...

In just a few short years, design systems have been adopted by most digital organizations. These systems free designers from many mundane design-production details, letting them focus on the creative aspects of their work. To this point, content has been an afterthought in many of these systems. Chris Strahl sees that changing in the next few years and predicts that content concerns will assume an...

Many content professionals were first introduced to the practice of content modeling by Rachel Lovinger's 2012 A List Apart article on the subject. Content modeling gives teams of authors, managers, designers, and programmers a shared understanding of a content ecosystem. Before they write a single sentence or line of code, teams align on a common language that keeps their work in sync. Content mo...

Are Halland's "Core Model" has guided the work of content strategists, information architects, web marketers, and other digital professionals for more than 15 years. The model grew out of the need to align stakeholders around a practice that could balance user needs, business concerns, and content creation for websites. It has evolved into a versatile tool that can improve the content experience i...

Finding the right job in the content strategy field has always been a challenge, and it's getting harder as computers take over more of the applicant screening process. Changes in the industry - especially the convergence of technical and marketing communication duties - also mean that you you have to be proactive about managing your career, even if you aren't job hunting. Jack Molisani knows how...

John Collins is a content engineer at Atlassian, where they are well along in their transition from old-fashioned bespoke content models to modern connected content. Creating and managing content for intelligent content ecosystems requires a fresh approach and a new set of skills. This new content engineering discipline helps enterprises address some of the biggest challenges of the digital era: p...

Preston So is an expert in both omnichannel strategy and voice design, as well as a number of other digital business and design practices. As communications channels proliferate and the variety of digital devices grows, we need strategies to give our customers and users a consistent experience, no matter where they are or how they are consuming our content. Preston weaves together elements of omni...