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
In episode 117 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Patrick Bosek of Heretto continue their discussion about Content as a Service.
“Content as a Service is becoming a necessity to really deliver a strong customer experience from an answers and knowledge perspective.”
– Patrick Bosek
In episode 116 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Patrick Bosek of Heretto talk about Content as a Service.
“Do we still have places where building a static site or a static set of help materials makes a lot of sense? Totally. But there’s a natural aspect of dynamic changing content. If that content is going to be a little bit different based on who or where or when you access it, then you can’t build it statically. That’s one of the things you’ll never get from a PDF.”
– Patrick Bosek
In episode 115 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Sarah O’Keefe discuss content ops stakeholders in localization.
“Using baseball examples isn’t going to work well in a country where baseball is not a thing. So you have to think about that. Does your text, does your content, do your examples work and are they appropriate in your target language and culture?”
– Sarah O’Keefe
In episode 114 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Gretyl Kinsey talk about developers and managers of the technical stack as content ops stakeholders.
“Without a gatekeeper, things can go awry very quickly. Other groups can take ownership of a particular piece of the tech stack and then you start to have some issues.”
– Bill Swallow
In episode 113 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Dawn Stevens of Comtech discuss trends that are of interest to techcomm managers.
“We have an aging technical communicator community. We’re not necessarily attracting the younger generation. UX designer sounds more modern and interesting.”
– Dawn Stevens
In episode 112 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Bill Swallow discuss content scalability.
“As you start approaching a greater percentage of bells and whistles in your process, the more work it takes to get each bell or whistle in place.”
– Bill Swallow
In episode 111 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Rahel Bailie of Content, Seriously discuss the rise of content ops.
“If you want a better user experience and more customer loyalty, you need accurate content.”
– Rahel Bailie
In episode 110 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and Sarah O’Keefe continue their discussion about executives as important stakeholders in your content operations.
“You need to understand how decisions in your organization are made and where the real power is.”
– Sarah O’Keefe
In episode 109 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and Sarah O’Keefe return to the occasional series about stakeholders and content operations projects. In this episode, they talk about executives as important stakeholders in your content operations.
“An executive wants to know how a tool is going to solve business problems and support company goals. They don’t care about the widgets and what they do. They want to know about business problems being solved.”
– Alan Pringle
In episode 108 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and Gretyl Kinsey kick off an occasional series about stakeholders and content operations projects. In this episode, they talk about IT groups as an important stakeholder in your content operations.
“The IT department can be such a great ally on a content ops project. IT folks are generally very good at spotting redundancies and inefficiencies. They’re going to be the ones to help whittle that redundancy down.”
– Alan Pringle
In episode 107 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and Gretyl Kinsey are back for another episode in our Content strategy pitfalls series. They talk about what can have happen when you lack a unified content strategy.
“One way to get funding in place is to start the conversation among different groups. Get these groups together and start talking about what their ultimate goals are with their content strategy and their content operations. That way you can have multiple voices coming together and asking for a larger pool of money that can be shared.”
– Bill Swallow
In episode 106 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Bob Johnson of Intuitive talk about accessibility and the Darwin Information Typing Architecture
“If you’re doing it right, accessibility doesn’t look any different than what you’re doing day to day. You’re just adding accessibility considerations when you author your content.”
– Bob Johnson
In episode 105 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and Sarah O’Keefe talk about an exit strategy as part of your content operations planning.
“You need to be thinking about the what-ifs 5 or 10 years down the road while you’re picking the tool. Are we going to have flexibility with this tool? Is it going to be able to help us support things we may not even be thinking about or may not even exist right now?”
– Alan Pringle
In episode 104 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Sarah O’Keefe discuss Scriptorium’s Content Ops Manifesto.
“The bigger your system is and the more content you have, the more expensive friction is, and the more you can and should invest in getting rid of it.”
– Sarah O’Keefe
In episode 103 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and Bill Swallow share some considerations for transitioning into a new component content management system or CCMS.
“You need to look at the requirements you have now. Are they being supported or not supported? Do you see this system helping you move forward with your content goals in three to five years?”
– Alan Pringle
In episode 102 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Sharon Burton of Expel talk about the importance of terminology management.
“If we don’t give customers the information to understand what we’re telling them, they won’t be successful and we have failed.”
– Sharon Burton
In episode 101 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Sarah O’Keefe talk about what life is like with and without a content management system (CMS).
“You have to decide, by looking at your particular organization, whether you need what a CMS will give you. You will get improvements in consistency and automation for formatting and traceability. You can get improvements in translation because you have more consistent content and better workflows.”
– Sarah O’Keefe
In episode 100 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow and special guest Jodi Shimp discuss their experience with digital transformation and implementing a new content strategy at Crown Equipment Corporation.
“The initial and earliest win in the project was the go-ahead to even bring on consultants to help us determine what the scope would be and what the true need would be across all the different groups.”
– Jodi Shimp
In episode 99 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Alan Pringle and special guest Larry Kunz of Extreme Networks talk about the evolution of smart, structured content.
“I’m a huge believer in big picture. We really need to stand back and ask ourselves, ‘What is this really all about? What are we trying to accomplish?’ It’s not about the content. It’s about the customer.”
– Larry Kunz
In episode 98 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Dr. Carlos Evia of Virginia Tech continue their discussion about the pros and cons of markdown.
“If you want to make a website and you need to write the text in a fast way that does not involve adding a lot of the brackets that are in HTML syntax, I think that’s the main use for markdown.”
–Dr. Carlos Evia
In episode 97 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Dr. Carlos Evia of Virginia Tech discuss the pros and cons of markdown.
“I think markdown has a huge user base because most people need to develop content for the web. But there’s a set of people that need to be working in something more structured for a variety of reasons, and those are the ones who use DITA.”
–Dr. Carlos Evia
In episode 96 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Gretyl Kinsey talk about the importance of content governance.
“An important part of governance is knowing that changes can happen. Keep your documentation in a central place where everybody can get to it and understands how it’s updated. If you don’t, some groups may start creating their own and that can result in unofficial documentation that doesn’t necessarily capture what should be captured.”
–Gretyl Kinsey
In episode 95 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Sarah O’Keefe and Kris Eberlein (chair of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee) discuss the upcoming release of 2.0. What can you expect if you are currently in DITA? And what do you need to know if you are considering DITA?
“If you’ve been shoehorning diagnostic information into troubleshooting topics, you’re going to have a good semantic place to put that content with DITA 2.0.”
–Kris Eberlein
