What makes a good leader—and a successful content strategy
General Stanley McChrystal offers sage leadership advice you can apply to your content strategy.
Here are your marching orders:
Moving past content strategy roadblocks (premium)
Keeping a content strategy implementation moving forward is important, but it isn’t always easy. You may have to deal with an extremely slow-moving project or unexpected delay. You may even have to put a project completely on hold. Here are some common obstacles that get in the way of progress, and some ways you can work to overcome them.
Content strategy and the big picture
What’s the best way to minimize conflict when developing and implementing a new content strategy?
Content strategy: What’s your exit strategy?
You’ve probably heard the announcement countless times: “Please locate the nearest emergency exit.” Chances are you ignore these exits most of the time, but you feel safer knowing they’re there. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant or movie theater or travel on public transportation that didn’t have an emergency exit—so why would you develop a content strategy without one?
In a recent blog post, Alan Pringle brought up the the importance of having an exit strategy, and I wanted to expand on that idea. Without a plan for what to do if your implementation doesn’t go as expected, your company could face tremendous costs—in terms of both time and money—trying to move on to a system that works.
The perils of early adoption
It finally happened. A part of your production pipeline has failed too many times, and everyone is in agreement: you need a hero.
Breaking down content silos: expectation vs. reality
You’re probably hearing it more and more: silos are bad for your business. They discourage collaboration, lead to duplication and inconsistency, and prevent you from delivering a unified content experience to your customers. But what really happens when you try to break them down?
Taking the DITA troubleshooting topic for a spin
This guest post is by Carlos Evia, Ph.D., the director of Professional and Technical Writing at Virginia Tech.
The DITA Troubleshooting topic is one of the “new” features in version 1.3 of the standard. However, troubleshooting has been around the DITA world for some good eight years now.
Localization best practices (premium)
Localization—the process of adapting content to a specific locale—is a critical requirement for global companies. It’s often treated as a necessary evil, but this is shortsighted. The quality of localization efforts affects the company’s bottom line.
More than ever, products and services are sought, purchased, and consumed in multiple language markets. Proper localization practices are critical to drive sales, and they can save you time and money in production.
This article describes best practices for efficient, effective localization.
Content strategy and relocation: the trauma is the same
We moved into a new office at the end of October. The new space is bigger and nicer than the old space, but nonetheless, the moving process was painful. As a child, I moved several times and changed schools every two or three years. I then landed in North Carolina for college and stayed put. It occurs to me that a new content strategy introduces much of the same pain as relocation.
XML product literature
Your industrial products become part of well-oiled machines. Unfortunately, your workflow for developing product literature may not be as well-oiled.
