In episode 65 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Bill Swallow talk about the need for a localization strategy.
“There may be things you’re writing in your source content that you don’t want literally translated. In many cases, there are stark cultural differences between one location and another. Writing something at all may be inappropriate for another audience.”
—Bill Swallow
Content value is a hot topic in marketing and technical communication. In the publishing industry, the connection between content and value is clear. A publisher sells a book (or film or other piece of content) and gets book sales, ticket revenue, or streaming subscriptions in return. But what if your content is a part of the product (like user documentation) or used to sell the product (like a marketing white paper)? In these cases, measuring content value is much more challenging.
It is tempting to fall back on measuring cost instead of value. The cost of content development can be a trap, though. Eliminating wasted effort and optimizing content workflows is sensible, but too much focus on cost leads us toward content as a commodity.
In episode 62 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Gretyl Kinsey and Bill Swallow continue their discussion from episode 61 and talk about best practices for planning.
“You need to be mindful about how what you’re doing is going to impact other groups. You can’t just assume they’re going to play ball when you start rolling out a new strategy. Make sure they’re not only on board in theory, but that they are pretty much committed to the success of the project because they should have a stake in it in some form as well.”
— Bill Swallow
In episode 59 of the Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Alan Pringle and Kaitlyn Heath discuss how you can apply the Learning and Training specialization to your content.
I think the conditional processing is a huge benefit as well. You can have a lot more interactivity built in without that human interference.
— Kaitlyn Heath
LearningDITA.com got a makeover! We rolled out an update to the learning management system to give you a better user experience when taking the courses.
In episode 57, Sarah O’Keefe and Bill Swallow look at content strategy across different disciplines and how an enterprise-level content strategy can grow from departmental efforts.
The Scriptorium approach to content strategy is based on management consulting principles. First, we identify business goals that are connected to content problems. We then do a needs analysis and gap analysis, and develop requirements. That work provides the foundation for a recommendation. From that recommendation, we build out the solution.
The key to success is the balance between content and strategy. It’s easy to reduce the cost of the content lifecycle if you don’t care about the quality of the content. If you focus only on the quality of the end result and not on the content creation process, you can end up with beautifully crafted content that’s only usable in a single format, that’s impossible to translate, or that takes entirely too long to create.
When you invest in content strategy, you are committing to a major digital transformation effort. The challenges are significant, but so is the opportunity.
In episode 54 of the Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson interviews Sarah O’Keefe and Alan Pringle about what’s changed and what hasn’t changed in content over the years.
In episode 53 of the Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Bill Swallow discuss rebranding as a business case for smart content. How can you make sweeping branding changes as quickly and as painlessly as possible?
Elizabeth Patterson: Welcome to the Content Strategy Experts podcast. Brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997 Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way.
E. Patterson: In episode 51, we talk with vendors at the CMS DITA North America Conference about how they have seen DITA evolve during their time in the industry. This is part two of a two-part podcast.
