Speaking at the Content Strategy Forum last month, Kristina Halvorson – President of Brain Traffic and one of the field’s most energetic cheerleaders – estimated that by the end of the year, Content Strategy will equal if not surpass the buzz-factor that social media has enjoyed over the past few years. If the sold-out conference, which included a small army of eBay Content Strategists from around the world, was any indication, the buzz around content strategy is growing exponentially.
Why the sudden interest in a field that’s been practiced (often unnamed) for years? According to Predicate principal, Jeff McIntyre, it’s due to the cyber-mess that close to a generation of “deferred maintenance” has created.
We’ve gotten better at compacting content, Halvorson commented in her keynote, but much like Wall E, we’re simply turning large pieces of junk into smaller bits of junk. The antidote to all this junk? “Planning for the creation, delivery and governance of useful, usable content,” says Halvorson.
When asked whether Content Strategy would be better served by a different name or names, Halvorson replied that, for now, the term has value because it has momentum. It’s a good point. The field has fought hard for recognition and now enjoys a certain cache. People are listening to the Content Strategy story. Why would we let that go – or muddy the waters before the field has a true foothold?
But so many things come into play with Content Strategy, articulating the various sub-disciplines – some of which require very different (and even mutually exclusive) skill sets – might actually clarify what the overall practice entails. Information Architecture – which fought a similar battle for recognition – ultimately broke into distinct areas, including usability, search and findability and user-centered design, among others. Taking its cue from IA, Content Strategy could formalize the distinct roles analysis, creation, publishing and management play throughout the content lifecycle.
So what is in a name? A lot, it turns out. And as Content Strategy evolves, we’ll need to develop a vocabulary that adequately covers what we do – and by whom. Ironically, what Content Strategy needs now is to develop its own content strategy.
Marie MacNee
Associate Creative Director, Content Strategist
Enlighten