Whistle While You Work

Business goals, gap analysis and taxonomy definitions are useful tools for determining what should be said where. And the different tactical delivery methods: (video, how-to article, mobile, info-graphics, social media) dramatically affect the presentation and context of the content,  helping us determine the how. Combined with budgets, calendars, SEO, style guides and a host of other details, Content Strategy attempts to responsibly create quality content and put it where it is most appropriate, in the most viable format. What song we whistle while we are doing it is inconsequential, as long as it is in tune with rest of the symphony.

Content Strategy Mimids

Most everyone can recognize the song of the Blue jay, Seagull or (fill in your regional bird). Each bird’s song is distinctive and helps them mate, protect, and communicate. But Mimids, the family of birds that includes mockingbirds, are one of the few birds that can mimic the sounds of other animals, including other birds. This is their most powerful tool and the foundation of how they survive.

Content Strategy, a broadly under-defined term, fits rather well into the family of Mimidae (Mimids). Our tools and roles are centered on our ability to mimic, understand and interconnect many different practices. Sometimes due to our ability to whistle different tunes, we are viewed as extra, unnecessary or covered under the punch list of another practice. When this is true it is usually due to poor project management or unsatisfactory vendor assessment/selection.

Great content strategists are like that friend you have who is just as comfortable (and charming) discussing Renaissance art at an Upper West Side gathering as they are graffiti in a Brooklyn rail yard. They are the kind of people who, years after knowing them, you realize they speak Swahili and went to Rice on a basketball scholarship. They are multi-faced, fascinated and fascinating. They are happily many sides of many coins and their ability to sing the appropriate song at the appropriate time, without sticking to a style, or favorite key, is what makes them valuable.

In the Content Strategy (CS) world there are four basic families:

The Mimid Families

Content Strategy Technologists—are perfect for projects that are CMS heavy (assessments, migrations, template setups), or require medium-to-heavy code/data base lifting or understanding in order to bring a project to fruition. The technologists are usually technical project managers or coders who understand that technology that just pushes numbers around is called a calculator. And calculators aren’t all that engaging to read on a Sunday.

Content Strategy Editorialists—are perfect for projects that require managing and organizing content at the nuts and bolts level (content inventory, style guide creation, editorial calendaring and curation.) These folks are writers at heart but stole away from the Underwood years ago and realized that content needs technology. *See bankrupt magazines and newspapers.

Content Strategy UX/IA’ers—are perfect for projects that require managing and organizing content at both the macro and micro level (gap analysis, wire-frames, content identification). Content Strategists with IA/UX leanings are a powerful blend of logic, information architecture understanding and have a particularly valuable focus on the space where content meets and becomes information. Go Team OmniGraffle!

Content Strategy Designers—are perfect for projects that require managing and organizing content when design is a key element of how and why the information is being presented to the user. There are some designers who simply copy the text the copywriter gave them from WordPad to Photoshop and make it pretty. There are others who ask questions like “why are we saying this on this screen.” Wireframes, information architecture and even some front-end coding are tools in their belt. These people usually have great haircuts.

Detailing these four types of Content Strategists is not meant as a selective quadfurcation but more as a glossary of the broad skill-set under the Content Strategy umbrella. And while each of the above may have leanings towards one strength, be it Design, UX/IA, Editorial or Technology, the practice itself hinges on the practitioner’s ability to understand all the notes and know when to sing which song, when to listen and when to hit shuffle.

—Ian

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Content, Content Strategy, Editorial, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.