“You want it when!??” Content Strategy for an Impatient World

Sarah O'Keefe says that we need velocity. We need to deliver more stuff faster. How many have been asked if they need more time? Yeah, right. Even doing things as well or as quickly as we were doing things before is no longer acceptable.

Content strategy in about supporting your organization's business goal with information. We have to tie the need for speed into every aspect of what we are doing. So first, you have to understand your business, how it makes money, and how your content fits into that. Do you know your organization's priorities at the executive level? You need to know, because if you don't , you can't deliver content that supports that.

Next, how do we take our content and align it with business goals.Historically, we have not been very good at this. We have wanted to make nice help, or how many spaces go after a period. That's not value add.

Style guides and terminology is important. You have to get your source content right, because if you don't you're screwed in translation. And even if you're not translating, you're not consistent. Style guides and terminology provides the quality that supports your business goal.

Your voice and tone has to match up to the kind of business you want to be.

Knowing your business, aligning your content with business goals, styles guides and terminology, and voice and tone are all tools and technology free. And you can do them all right now with whatever tools you are using. 

If you're copying and pasting, then you're probably doing it wrong and should be looking at ways to reuse content.

Global content strategy should be redundant, but it's not. Globalization should drive content strategy. It can't occur if your source isn't any good. You have to fix your source.

If your workflow involves using your computes at typewriters, bad things happen.

Content has never been for the faint of heart. Everyone thinks they can do it, but everyone is wrong. 

There's going to be another thing, a new thing, and we don't know what that thing is. There are going to be new requirements that we are going to have to meet, and we do not know what those new things are going to be. Think back to just 2008, when there were no iPads. Your strategy needs to accommodate that unknown new thing.