Content Strategy Insights

When the concept of "content" comes up it can be hard to get everyone aligned on exactly what you're talking about. At IKEA, Timi Stoop-Alcala focuses on the "what" of content via the practice of knowledge domain modeling both to deal with the complexity of content and to highlight its importance. Her knowledge-focused, human-centered approach has also elevated the role of content in the organizat...

Like many content designers in the fall of 2022, Andrew Stein was concerned about the possible negative impact of generative AI on content and design practice. And his concern was heightened by the large number of content designers on his team. Since then, Andrew has discovered many ways to apply AI in his content design work, both in conventional digital-product design and in content work on AI p...

Generative AI creates new opportunities to create and manage content at scale. And scale is definitely required when crafting content experiences for one of the world's largest ecommerce companies. Anna Potapova is incorporating gen-AI across the span of her work at AliExpress: content creation and management, localization, personalization, and other areas where her strategic-content mind guides h...

Organizations of all types and sizes struggle with presenting their content so that it both makes sense to readers and aligns with the organization's intentions. Hilary Marsh introduced the concept of the "digital council" to address this issue. Councils can take many forms, depending on the nature of the organization, but the intent always is to glue back together content that has been disconnect...

SEO has always been difficult, but generative AI takes things to an entirely new level. Duane Forrester has been immersed in the search world for more than 20 years, including stints as the Product Manager for the Bing Webmaster Program and Vice President of Industry Insights at Yext, where he developed company AI strategy. He also helped launch the schema.org structured-data standard. Duane offer...

Content is a precious business asset and should be treated as such in enterprise accounting records. Cruce Saunders has been making the case for content as a financial asset for many years, arguing that much of it should be accounted for like the durable machinery that powers a factory, not like an ephemeral one-time business expense. He still sees a lot of work ahead, but Cruce is more hopeful la...

New AI products like Microsoft's Copilot can be powerful productivity enhancers, but if designers aren't careful they can inadvertently introduce into the product the bias and other hazards that can come with large language models. As a content designer working on Microsoft's Copilot for Sales product, Leah Krauss helps her colleagues understand and follow the responsible-AI principles that the co...

Twenty years ago at IBM, the company's commitment to user-focused content led to the decision to develop a standard way of structuring content so that it could be used in multiple channels. Michael Priestley was uniquely positioned to lead the effort to create the corporate standard that became DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/michael-priestley/

As the founder of the long-standing LavaCon conference and the principal at a technical content staffing agency, Jack Molisani gets a deeply informed view of the world of technical communication. While he sees the opportunities that generative AI presents, he raises several concerns for technical content strategy practitioners, among them the inaccuracy of generative AI content and the inability o...

Serving personalized content about thousands of products to millions of people requires a sophisticated content operation. At Albert Heijn, the big grocery store chain in the Netherlands, Rafaëla Ellensburg established a content engineering practice that lets the company deliver personalize-able omnichannel content at scale. In the process, she also created a content engineering practice guild, po...

Over the past 25 years, Lisa Welchman has established and codified the field of digital governance. With an enterprise consulting career that spans the emergence of the web, the arrival of social media, and the rise of mobile computing, she is uniquely positioned to help digital practitioners, managers, and executives understand and manage the governance issues that arise with the arrival of gener...

Pavel Samsonov is a UX designer with a deep appreciation of content. His content-first approach to design is driven by his observation that navigating digital experiences is about accessing content, not clicking buttons. Pavel has also cultivated a deep awareness of the semantic environments that he and his colleagues navigate and he uses that awareness to align and motivate stakeholders. https://...

Scalable content personalization systems create huge value for businesses. Like most valuable endeavors, they're really hard to do well. Jeffrey MacIntyre orchestrates the activities - terminology and taxonomy work, metadata strategy, information architecture, and more - that help businesses build content operations that deliver the customer-focused experiences that consumers expect. https://elles...

LLM-based conversational tools are revolutionizing all parts of the content ecosystem, including blogs by independent professionals. Rob Hoeijmakers is an independent web strategist based in Amsterdam. He's using AI tools like Whisper and Perplexity to streamline and improve his research and writing workflows. This lets him spend more time on his websites' information architecture and improves the...

Content design jobs have become scarcer as the digital world adjusts to the post-pandemic tech economy. Shannon Leahy does her best to make sure that her content colleagues discover the jobs that are available, scouring the internet for job listings and sharing them in her social media feeds. But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to her contributions to the field. She's also a long-...

The arrival of generative AI gives content designers a whole new toolkit. As with any new set of gear, there's some learning that comes with the new capabilities that the tools afford.  At Expedia, Chelsea Larsson is leading her team of content designers into the AI design future with fresh takes on the planning, design, and evaluation skills that designers have always relied on. https://contentan...

The rise of omnichannel content strategy and the emergence of new technical capabilities like cloud computing, API-delivered microservices, and headless software platforms have created entire new content ecosystems. John Williams explores these new ecosystems and modern content and experience architectures on his "Going Headless with John" YouTube channel and in his work as CTO at Amplience, a hea...

Like most tech professionals, content designers are extremely interested in how AI might affect their work and employment prospects in the future. Patrick Stafford and his colleagues at the UX Content Collective recently conducted research to explore the impact of AI on the future of the profession, as well as the attitudes and opinions of content designers about new AI tools and practices. https:...

Deborah Carver sees direct connections between her academic study of literature and composition and her work as a content strategist, content marketer, and SEO. She also sees similarities between AI engineers and content professionals, both of whom  endeavor to create meaning with language. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/deborah-carver/

Figuring out how to best adopt new technology is difficult at any time for any organization. AI tech rachets up this challenge to new heights. Wouter Sligter helps companies understand the capabilities and limitations of LLMs and related technologies to create trustworthy experience-delivery platforms. Transparency is a key element in implementing solutions that evoke and support the authentic hum...

Tuija Riekkinen brings a unique perspective to scaling both content and design operations, as well as other digital initiatives. She has applied her holistic and pragmatic enterprise product management skills at organizations like IKEA, where she has worked on both their design system and content management system. Tuija is a persuasive advocate of keeping design and content concerns separate to e...

Lasse Rindom both consults with enterprises on AI projects and talks on his podcast with business and technology experts about their thoughts and discoveries. In both his consulting practice and his podcast conversations, Lasse has discovered both tremendous opportunities and potentially pitfalls when adopting enterprise-scale AI solutions.  https://contentandai.com/lasse-rindom/

Michael Haggerty-Villa's work with content and designs systems spans the history of these practices. From his work at eBay on one of the earliest design systems up until today, he has been at the forefront of both content strategy leadership and design system innovation.  This conversation focuses on design systems, but it was inevitable that Michael's content strategy wisdom would shine through,...

As we navigate our paperless offices and admire our sleek compact computing devices, it can be hard to imagine the impact that our digital experiences are having on our communities and the planet. Gerry McGovern studies the environmental impact of the digital industry. He has uncovered an alarming story of unsustainable growth, toxic side effects, and human misery. https://contentandai.com/gerry-m...

Gladys Diandoki brings a strong research mindset and a consistent focus on strategy to her content work. Her approach results in both solid design results and an increased appreciation for content design among her colleagues and clients. It's not only her clients who benefit from her work. Gladys is also an active leader in the field, speaking regularly at conferences, writing, and hosting gatheri...