Content strategy commandment: Know thy audience
A misfire by a German grocery chain entering the US market reminds me of a very important content strategy commandment: Know thy audience.
Author: Alan Pringle
Content strategy contingency plans
When winter weather makes commuting to Scriptorium’s NC office difficult, we work from home. We have set up a cloud-based infrastructure to support remote employees (hello, Bill Swallow!), and it works well for the rest of us during weather events and business travel.
The death of PDF (podcast)
In this podcast, Alan Pringle and Sarah O’Keefe discuss the history—and health—of the PDF format. Is it still useful in today’s connected world? Are there business reasons to distribute PDF files—and not to?
Content strategy: you’re doing it wrong
This post is part of Scriptorium’s 20th anniversary celebration.
You know you’re doing content strategy wrong when…
- You focus on tools and not business requirements:
Tools are not a content strategy
This post is part of Scriptorium’s 20th anniversary celebration.
Content creators love their tools. So much, in fact, they sometimes mistake selecting tools for developing a content strategy.
Classic content strategy mistake: re-creating old formatting with new tools
This post is part of Scriptorium’s 20th anniversary celebration.
A common content strategy mistake is duplicating the look-and-feel of existing content when you’re implementing new tools and processes.
Warning signs: localization strategy needed
Without centralized localization processes, you will pay more for translated content, provide inconsistent translations, and possibly expose your company to significant legal liability. Here are warning signs your company needs a better localization strategy:
Four years later, PDF is not dead
This post is part of Scriptorium’s 20th anniversary celebration.
In 2013, I wrote that PDF is not dead. Four years later, it’s still too early to write the obituary.
Content strategy success: from technical to tangible
A content strategy implementation requires you to address multiple technical facets: tool and process integration, specifications for how content is delivered, and so on. These technical details, however, are of little interest to the executives who control funding. They are much more interested in seeing results to justify continued spending.
Before XML, improve DTP
Thinking about migrating unstructured content to XML? Take a hard look at your existing desktop publishing workflow. The maturity of your DTP process will have a big impact on a move to XML.
Following a template-based DTP workflow is not just about implementing best-practice processes. Templates make a potential move to XML less expensive and painful.
