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Is Your Web Site at Risk of Osteoporosis?

Where does content strategy belong in the hierarchy of Web site creation?

  • Under IA (information architecture)?
  • Marketing?
  • Design?
  • User experience?
  • Editorial?

Imagine — 20 expert content strategists from London to San Fransisco locked together in a small room in Memphis for eight hours to battle out this and other Web content issues. It was the very first Content Strategy Consortium (IA Summit 2009), and the conversation was hot. On fire hot.

For me, as my head whipped back and forth hearing everyone’s experiences and opinion, this particular issue seemed to be a trick question. A moot point.

Who cares which discipline or department is driving the content strategy — as long as it’s an integral part of the project?

Content strategy should be the backbone — no, the whole skeleton — of a site project. How else will the content (the visuals, the words, the video, basically, the gooey stuff the site is made of) satisfy business AND consumer needs?

  • If your project is intended to be objective news source, shouldn’t Editorial drive it?
  • If your project is primarily an advertising vehicle, shouldn’t Marketing drive it?
  • If you have a ton of material to process over time, shouldn’t IA drive it?

In other words, the beast might turn out looking like an alligator, a mouse, or a flying monster bat, but they are all held together with a skeleton. Of course, that’s not to say Design or Marketing or IA should necessarily be creating your content strategy. You need a content strategist for that, for every project. Or you might end up with a Frankenstein.

If you have a Frankenstein site, you know it. It’s a site pieced together over time, and you’re seriously concerned parts may crumble. If you look at the whole (do a quick content strategy analysis), you’ll notice it has three arms and no funny bone at all. A strong content strategy can help your site take the shape — and keep the shape — that it needs to grow up big and strong. Use this content strategy analysis tool to see if your site is at risk of osteoporosis.

With all the content strategy experts in the room at the Content Strategy Consortium, I’m feeling more and more confident companies will have access to the talent they need to make it happen.

A very special thanks to Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic and Karen McGrane of Bond Art + Science for bringing us all together. It was an organized and enlightening event!

View Presentations from the Content Strategy Consortium (IA Summit 2009)

Read More on Content Strategy from the Experts

Posted by Shelly Bowen on Mar 30, 2009. Filed under Content Marketing, Web Content Strategy

 

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  • [...] and insights courtesy of blogging content strategists such as Keri Maijala of Delicious Words and Shelly Bowen. Also, many of the consortium presentation slides are up here and [...]

    Pingback by Whither Web Writing? « new media mentality on Mar 30, 2009

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