In episode 58 of the Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Sarah O’Keefe discuss how to unify content after a merger.
In terms of pushback or in terms of change management, what we have to do is ask, “What does this other team do really well that potentially is going to be asked to change tools? How do you do this well?” And position the change as an opportunity.
— Sarah O’Keefe
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.
When you want to put new content development processes in place, proving the return on investment (ROI) of your strategy is one of the most effective ways to get buy-in from managers or executives.
You can calculate ROI by showing how much money you’re currently spending creating content, and comparing it to how much money you will save over time with a more efficient workflow. But what if there are roadblocks preventing you from gathering the metrics you need to get those numbers?
In episode 55 of the Content Strategy Experts Podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Sarah O’Keefe discuss Scriptorium’s approach to content strategy.
Scriptorium’s 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.
Coauthored by Sarah O’Keefe, Alan Pringle, and Bill Swallow. Purpose: The goal of this article is to position content strategy as a specialized subdiscipline of management consulting. Standard management consulting practices, such as gap analysis and needs analysis, are the foundation of content strategy practices. Method: This article draws from the theory on management consulting and shows how management consulting principles work in the context of content strategy projects. Results: Practitioners in the burgeoning field of content strategy will develop a better sense of how their work aligns with overall management consulting practices. Conclusion: Management consulting already has best practices and methodologies. Content strategy builds upon that foundation to establish a professional discipline.
Abstract
Metadata, taxonomy, DITA, structured authoring, case studies, and more—those were just some of the topics explored at the CMS/DITA NA conference last week. Thank you to the entire CIDM team for organizing a great conference.
Bill Swallow: 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.
In episode 49 of the Content Strategy Experts podcast, Bill Swallow of Scriptorium and Stephani Clark of Jorsek discuss the value of structured authoring and building a business case for it.
