The Content Strategy Podcast

Karen Cross is head of content design at Atlassian, an Australian-based company known for their suite of software development and collaboration tools like Trello and Jira. Karen’s work to build a centralized content design team at Atlassian has unified their various product teams and finally brought writers and designers working together. The ultimate goal? More efficiency and better experiences f...

This week, content strategy pioneer Rachel Lovinger covers a wide range of topics with Kristina, including her content modeling work at Publicis Sapient and the core challenges faced by today’s publishers. They also dive into the intersection between content design and systems design, as well as how the role of the content strategist has evolved over time.

This week’s guests are a dynamic trio of content strategists who recently concluded an extensive associations research project that resulted in their defining the 17 elements of content strategy and the three stages of content maturity. In this episode, they will also share ideas for identifying pain points, establishing governance policies, and getting buy-in from the top to help guide a content...

Tracy Playle is well known in the content strategy industry for her expertise in content specific to the higher education community. In this episode, she and Kristina chat about both the challenges and positive trends Tracy is seeing in higher ed, and how she has been helping universities design user-first experiences by truly understanding their audiences—both students and stakeholders.

Angela Gorden, UX writer at Dropbox, shares how working with cross-disciplinary teams day-to-day makes for better writing and better overall experiences. She offers ideas on how to ensure writing is a part of any project right from the start, and how best to give and receive feedback.

Kristina welcomes Sarah DeAtley, a content and customer experience analytics expert who has worked with major corporations including Dell, Expedia, and most recently, Microsoft. Sarah shares what she’s seen from the trenches of content analytics, including how she determines what works and what doesn’t, and how she uses data to answer the age-old question: “How much content do we really need?”

Gene Shannon is a content strategy lead at Shopify. In this episode, he joins Kristina to talk about what content strategy and UX look like at a large organization like Shopify. He shares how his teams have been able to advocate for themselves and clarify their roles within the organization, all while establishing a culture that truly values content and UX.

Kristina welcomes Laura Trujillo and Ashlee Harris to talk about their work making the City of Austin's website content easier and more accessible for residents. They share their tried-and-true techniques for conducting user research, getting buy-in from stakeholders (hint: “funshops”), and creating empathy for their users.

In this episode, Kristina speaks with Lisa Maria Martin, an independent consultant in information architecture and content strategy, and the managing editor at A Book Apart. Lisa Maria shares her insights on how to work collaboratively in a content vacuum, and about imposing order on content chaos through structure and audits.

Author, speaker, and noted information architect Abby Covert joins Kristina to talk about the IA community and finding your own community of discipline. They also touch on the relationship (and overlap) between content strategy and IA, and what IA looks like at a large company like Etsy where Abby works.

In this episode, Kristina speaks with Jeff Eaton, senior digital strategist at Lullabot and former Drupal programmer. Jeff shares his insight on conducting large-scale content inventories and his approach to working with stakeholders, each a crucial step in discovering one's content reality.

Ahava Leibtag of Aha Media Group joins Kristina to talk about one of her specialities: taking a plain language approach to creating content. She also shares ideas for streamlining content governance workflows and chimes in on the great FAQ debate.

Kristina speaks with Erika Templeton, the associate director of content strategy at Code and Theory. Erika shares her thoughts on complex content challenges and the future of content strategy (hint: it's voice).

Content strategist Clinton Forry speaks with Kristina about his experience working with clients as the vice president of content strategy at Weber Shandwick, a major PR and advertising firm. They also look back on the early days of content strategy and reflect on where the practice is today.

Kristina speaks with Karen Kesler and Jonathan Foster, both from Microsoft, about their experience creating content for an enterprise technology company and leading large content teams, particularly the teams responsible for Windows and Cortana.

Content design expert Sarah Richards speaks with Kristina about how we can use data and evidence to give users exactly what they need in a way they expect. Sarah also reflects on her experience overhauling GOV.UK as an example of content design in action.

Kristina talks with Scott Kubie, Lead Content Strategist at Brain Traffic, about his journey toward a career in content strategy, as well as how he's currently using content ecosystem mapping to help his clients create connections in their content universe.

Customer experience expert Gerry McGovern speaks with Kristina about how organizations need to shift focus away from production-based, internally-focused thinking and toward putting their customers' needs and top tasks first.

Kristina talks with research and information design expert Erika Hall about the art of conversational design and the challenges—and opportunities—of how we use language to interact with users in online contexts.