Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Epic List of Content Strategy Resources


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by Jonathon Colman posted on February 4, 2013
      
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UPDATE: Thanks so much for your positive response! I’ll be updating this post and adding new resources soon based on your great feedback. And I hope to see you this week at the Intelligent Content 2013 conference, where I’m speaking about Enterprise SEO and Content Strategyon Thursday, 2/7 at 2:00pm PT. Stop by and say howdy if you’re there!
Since I left SEO, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Content Strategy. What is it? What books and blogs should people read to learn about it? What conferences should folks attend and who are the experts in the field?
I thought I would assemble my favorite Content Strategy resources into a list that has everything all in one place for folks who, like me, are new to this field. This makes it easier to find for those who are interested, not to mention easier for me to share when I get questions.
But I also created this list as a way of thanking all the amazing, brilliant, and talented content strategists out there who inspired me with their work and insights. In a way, this list of content strategy resources is my love letter to the industry that welcomed me into its halls.

But First: A Definition of Content Strategy

So what do I mean by Content Strategy anyway? Is it the same thing as Content Marketing? Let me set some expectations before we jump into the resources so that you know what to expect.
Diagram describing the critical components that Brain Traffic considers in every content strategy
Diagram describing the critical components that Brain Traffic considers in every content strategy.
Graphic by Brain Traffic
Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic (whom you’ll see included in the lists below)states in A List Apart that “Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”
I think that the word plan plays a keystone role in that definition. Planning is an essential skill for content strategists, who often do quite a bit of research within organizations to examine workflow, standards, governance, process design, publishing systems, and several other factors that go into the second part of Kristina’s definition: “…the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.”
I love her distinction between the words useful and usable. A content experience must be both in order to be truly successful.
Rachel Lovinger of Razorfish (also in the lists) adds to this definition in Boxes and Arrows when she states that content strategists use “words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.” Note that here she specifically references both language and data, which indicates that we’re talking about “big-C” Content, not just blocks of lorem ipsum text. It’s also clear that we’re talking about experiences and how content enables experiences that help users succeed at their goals (and businesses to succeed at their objectives).
In the same article, Rachel adds that “content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design,” which further helps us dispel the myth that all content strategists care about is text. We care about content as experience, which is why we focus on content inventories and audits, workflow mapping, publishing systems and processes, delivery channels, and so on. Remember: useful and usable.
Of course, there are a lot of further definitions and nuances explained in the resources below, but the above summations are essentially what we mean when we talk about the big picture of Content Strategy as a discipline and community of practice. Because of the emergent understanding that content is more than just text, you’ll find that there are natural connections to related disciplines such as Information Architecture, User Experience, Interaction Design, Content Management, and yes, even Content Marketing.
So are Content Marketing and Content Strategy the same? No, but they are clearly related, so a better question to ask might be: are these two practices compatible with each other? Definitely! Can and should content marketers work with content strategists to help improve user experiences, publishing workflows, and delivery to channels? Yes, please!
Bringing these two disciplines closer together for the benefit of organizations and their users is one of my professional goals, which is yet another reason why I created this resource — I need your help to make that happen.

Content Strategy Books

There are several other books out there that would be helpful for content strategists, such as Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think, Peter Morville & Lou Rosenfeld’sInformation Architecture for the World Wide Web, and Jesse James Garrett’s The Elements of User Experience among many, many others.
This list is not meant to (and cannot) be exhaustive. But I’ve tried to include the authoritative canon for practicing content strategists along with some newer additions (and editions!) that have appeared in the last year or so. They define the discipline, lay out its scope and modes of practice, and offer standard tools and techniques for building success.
That said, Content Strategy is still evolving and is actively being codified and expanded by practitioners all around the world, so I expect that many more books will appear in the future.

Content Strategy Online Magazines and Journals

Note how related industries (particularly user experience design and information architecture) recognize the value of content strategy and strive to include it among their topical areas of focus for practitioners. I think that speaks to a fundamental understanding that our work overlaps with other disciplines and that we have a lot we can learn from each other. No one need practice alone.

Content Strategy Blogs

Yet another incomplete list! I scoured speaking rosters at conferences, followed citations, and looked at the folks organizing Meetup groups to put this together. But as long as this list of content strategy bloggers is, I’m sure there are many more out there.

Content Strategy Articles and Blog Posts

Similar to the other sections above, this list is incomplete and there’s no reasonable way to make it complete. But this list is largely made up of the writing that inspired me to look beyond SEO/Inbound marketing to content strategy.
What I’ve tried to do here is to choose authoritative articles and posts that make up the foundation of how content strategists approach their work, interact with neighboring disciplines, and solve common challenges. And I also tried to add in a somewhat diverse set of voices sharing novel, related ideas from industries that are not too far removed from Content Strategy.

Content Strategy Conferences, Events, and Meetups

Truth be told, I wasn’t expecting to find so many Content Strategy events. So I was happily surprised to see so many meetups all around the world, so many conferences focusing wholly on Content Strategy (or at least in part), and so many venues and organizations that think this topic is important to share and learn. That’s really encouraging and speaks well to the name that content strategists are making for themselves and their work.

Content Strategy Online Discussion Forums and Groups

Have I missed something big here? I’ve had some difficulty finding strong, large, and engaged online communities discussing Content Strategy. Maybe content strategists tend to communicate with each other more directly (e-mails, Twitter/@-mentions, private direct messages, etc.) rather than in larger online group discussions? Maybe there are more gated communities (Facebook groups) that I can’t see into with common Google searches? Or perhaps content strategists prefer real-life encounters, such as the above conferences and meetups, rather than in online forums?
Something else that crossed my mind is that perhaps the industry of content strategy is too young to have gathered around a central, core Web venue. Could that be the case? There are large groups and communities of writers/editors going back to the early days of the Internet (and certianly before the Web). But content strategy as a discipline didn’t really take off until early 2009. So perhaps we’re still too new to have organized ourselves in this manner.
It’s also interesting to me that content strategists seem to cluster around this handful of LinkedIn and Google properties. I’m surprised that content strategy agencies, software developers, and/or events organizers haven’t jumped on this market opportunity. My guess is that one of them will this year or next. A large, engaged, and owned Content Strategy community would be a valuable asset and a powerful group. It could hold quite a bit of authority in the industry and have great impact beyond just education and training.
Among other things, it occurs to me that a large, international group of agency, in-house, and independent practitioners representing hundreds of thousands of the best Web sites in the world might be able to bend content management system (CMS) providers to their will. Improving content management, publishing, and governance tools would have the huge impact of improving the state of content and user experience for just about everyone online.
If I had the means (and time!), then I’d start working on this today. But I bet that someone smart already is, or will soon begin.

Yes, Virginia, There are Even More Content Strategy Resources Out There!

What, That’s Still Not Enough for Ya?

Well, after going through over 200 content strategy resources, you made it all the way to the end. Congratulations!
If you’ve created an influential, valuable content strategy resource that I forgot to mention here, please forgive me. No offense intended! If I accidentally left you and your work out, please just know that the spirit is willing, but the fingers (and clock!) are weak.
Is there anything missing from this epic list of content strategy resources?Please let me know on Twitter @jcolman or by sending me a note. I greatly appreciate your patience and willingness to share. Many thanks!
      
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About Jonathon Colman

 is a content strategist, SEO & inbound marketer, speaker, and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. You can follow him on Twitter @jcolman, Google+, and LinkedIn. Feel free to contact him directly.
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