Skip to main content

Author: Bill Swallow

Content operations Content strategy Podcast Podcast transcript

What’s next after LearningDITA? (podcast)

If you’ve taken the courses at LearningDITA.com and you’re interested in starting a DITA project, check out episode 163 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast where Bill Swallow and Sarah O’Keefe talk about the steps you can take to get funding.

“Showing up with cookies never hurts, but what is your executive’s motivation from a business point of view? What are they trying to accomplish in their goals for this next quarter or month or year, and so on? You need to show them, assuming that you can, that moving to structured content, moving to DITA, and changing tools is going to help achieve those business goals.”

— Sarah O’Keefe

Bill Swallow
March 18, 2024
Read More
Content operations Podcast Podcast transcript Structured content

Tips for moving from unstructured to structured content with Dipo Ajose-Coker

In episode 159 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Bill Swallow and special guest Dipo Ajose-Coker share tips for moving from unstructured to structured content.

“I mentioned it before: invest in training. It’s very important that your team knows first of all not just the tool, but also the concepts behind the tool. The concept of structured content creation, leaving ownership behind, and all of those things that we’ve referred to earlier on. You’ve got to invest in that kind of training. It’s not just a one-off, you want to keep it going. Let them attend conferences or webinars, and things like that, because those are all instructive, and those are all things that will give good practice.”

— Dipo Ajose-Coker

Bill Swallow
January 8, 2024
Read More
Content operations Podcast Podcast transcript Structured content

Challenges of moving from unstructured to structured content with Dipo Ajose-Coker

In episode 158 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Bill Swallow and special guest Dipo Ajose-Coker discuss the challenges of moving from unstructured to structured content.

“I think we could make broad categories of challenges as tools, technology, people, and methodologies, and I think we’ll just dive into these because they’re not necessarily independent—some of them flow one into the other. One of the most complex and challenging parts is implementation. Changing over to a new tool also involves changing processes and training the staff. Basically, some documentation teams struggle with that initial learning curve.”

— Dipo Ajose-Coker

Bill Swallow
December 18, 2023
Read More
Content strategy Industry insights Podcast Podcast transcript

Adapt to evolving content careers with guest Jack Molisani (podcast)

In episode 151 of The Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Bill Swallow and podcast guest, Jack Molisani discuss how content careers have changed through the pandemic, layoffs, quiet quitting, and AI, and what you should do to stay ahead of the curve.

“Rather than applying for a job […] you want companies to come to you and say, ‘Hey, will you come work for us?’ The only way they’re going to do that is if you write articles, if you’re speaking at conferences, and if you position yourself as an expert in your field.”

— Jack Molisani

Bill Swallow
September 11, 2023
Read More
Podcast

The challenges of replatforming content (podcast)

In episode 130 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Sarah O’Keefe talk about the challenges of replatforming content from one system to another.

Links are always a problem, especially cross-document links. Reusable content tends to be handled differently in different systems, or almost the same, but not quite, which is almost worse.

—Sarah O’Keefe

Bill Swallow
October 24, 2022
Read More
Podcast Podcast transcript

Prerequisites for efficient content operations (podcast)

In episode 129 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Bill Swallow discuss the prerequisites for efficient content operations and the pitfalls from not following them.

Mayhem, chaos, cost overruns, work, rework, delays. I mean, these things, they’re expensive. And they’re not just expensive, they’re soul sucking for everybody involved in the project. And it doesn’t have to be that way if this thing is planned and executed at the right level.

—Sarah O’Keefe

Bill Swallow
October 10, 2022
Read More
Content operations Localization

Replatforming with localization in mind

A wise woman recently said, “replatforming structured content is annoying and expensive.” This is doubly so when it comes to localization.

Replatforming nearly always involves content change—the new system may store content differently or require a different format or structure. Although the changes may affect your existing localization process, some of these changes may be for the better.

Bill Swallow
October 3, 2022
Read More
Podcast Podcast transcript

Content ops stakeholders: Tech support (podcast)

In episode 118 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Sarah O’Keefe discuss content ops stakeholders in tech support.

“If you are delivering multi-hundred page PDFs to your tech support people, then I can assure you that your tech support people hate you. Opening a 600 page document and then having to search through it while you’re on the phone under all this pressure is not the experience that you want.”

– Sarah O’Keefe

Bill Swallow
May 2, 2022
Read More