Content Strategy Insights

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...

Aaron Bradley uses knowledge graphs to create intelligent content experiences at Electronic Arts. Knowledge graphs are a relatively new technology that lets content engineers create more meaningful and versatile content experiences. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/aaron-bradley/

After showing up in the content strategy world and generously sharing her expertise for more than 20 years, Margot Bloomstein has earned the trust of this community. Margot's new book, Trustworthy, shows you how to earn the trust of your customers and users. As reliance on experts fades and is replaced with crowd-sourced trust, the work of content strategists has to evolve to account for these new...

Lisa Welchman recognized early in her career that companies would need help managing the business challenges that come with new technologies. In the ensuing 20 years, she has become the leading expert in the new field of digital governance. Today, Lisa helps large enterprises, NGOs, and other companies develop frameworks, policies, and standards that let them collaborate effectively and operate re...

Kristina Halvorson is to many the face and the voice of the content strategy profession. She came to prominence a dozen years ago with the publication of her book Content Strategy for the Web, and she had been practicing content strategy for a dozen years before that. Since 2011 she has organized Confab, the leading content strategy conference, and founded in 2020 the Button conference, which focu...

Jeff Eaton looks at content modeling two ways, both the traditional boxes-and-arrows way and the title-case Content Modeling way. Thinking about how you'll structure and organize your content will always be important. But the real power of content modeling emerges when it rises to a higher level and accounts for the shared understanding the people across your organization have of your content. Jef...

Beth Dunn is the author of Cultivating Content Design, a book that shows content leaders how to create the kind of successful content design program she has built at HubSpot. The secret to Beth's approach is communication. First, she listens intently to her colleagues and stakeholders. Then she invites them to workshops and other activities where they co-discover content concerns and figure out to...

Patrick Bosek helps businesses author and manage content that is structured so that it can be used for many purposes, not just one-off publications. Structuring documentation this way creates intelligent content that both addresses current customer needs and anticipates future demands. The DITA standard underlies this approach to creating and managing the smart, adaptable content that modern busin...

Patricia Gomez and Mario Ferrer lead the content design team at King Games, the makers of Candy Crush and other popular mobile games. They operate at a scale that might intimidate some people, designing experiences for nearly a quarter of a billion users. Serving that many customers forces them to be thoughtful about the tools they use and about how they work with their colleagues. They and their...

Modern digital experiences meet humans where they are. Talking to a voice assistant. Typing on a keyboard. Reacting to a vibration delivered by your smart watch. Controlling a VR game character with a gesture controller. Wherever you want to be, there is now a device and an interaction modality to take you there. Cheryl Platz is the expert guide who can help you navigate the practice of multimodal...

Marcelo Lewin focuses on content modeling, a long-standing practice that is growing in importance as the need for intelligent content emerges. Content modeling helps you manage your content separately from its presentation in any one medium. This skill is crucial in the new world of omnichannel content delivery, where your content is as likely to show up in a voice app or chatbot as in a mobile ap...

Patrick Stafford has a unique view of the state of content work in the fields of UX design and product management. As the CEO of the UX Writers Collective, his livelihood depends on understanding where the profession is going, which skills are in demand, and how writers and designers can best prepare themselves for UX writing and content design careers. https://ellessmedia.com/csi/patrick-stafford...

In Rachel McConnell's world, if content strategy is the engine, then content operations is the oil that keeps it running smoothly. Rachel leads one of the biggest content operations in the world, a team of 100 content designers and editors at BT, a large communications services company in the UK. Her team is a mix of content professionals from both UX and publishing backgrounds who work across a v...