CHAPTER 10 The Two Faces of Content Strategy: Balancing the Needs of Users and Editors
Creating content (words, video, organization, relationships, sidebars,
tutorials — whatever it may be) takes shape back in the discovery phase,
when we start talking about website messaging, brand standards and ex-
isting content. But now we are ready to get specific and turn our messages
and outcomes into actual words on a page.
Except, who’s going to make that content?
Your website editors. That’s who.
And if you’ve never been lucky enough to work with a 10,000-page con-
tent migration, or if you’ve managed to steer clear of any complete content
makeover project, I’ll let you in on a little secret: execution is messy, stress-
ful and completely overwhelming.eMPaThY foR The Devil
Page after page. Sentence after sentence. Every image needs the right tags,
and every video needs the right embedding, and should the heading go
here or there?
Content creation can be as labored an act as the term itself, mired in
politics and revisions and the smallest of details, over and over again. But
the devil is in the details, as they say. And that’s what we need to focus on
with any website content project: the details. The details help us pull con-
tent across the website through metadata, and they inform microcopy and
small interaction decisions during testing, and they might even help us
notice the unfortunate spelling of our “pubic relations department.”
And while we may not necessarily be in charge of every detail of a project
— after all, we’re in this to empower website editors to create a website that’s
usable long after launch — we are responsible for creating an environment
that promotes careful, usable content, from important home page content to
the smallest microcopy. Here are some ways in which we can help:Put someone in charge
Every project needs a leader who can organize and delegate tasks. This
leader can take two forms: either a natural leader connected to the proj-