CHAPTER 10 The Two Faces of Content Strategy: Balancing the Needs of Users and Editors
gy, then refocused again on a user-centered, multiscreen, everything-is-
everywhere strategy.
Our attention on users — on the audiences and customers we rely on
to make our products and content a success — took a long time to coalesce.
But here we are! The golden age of Web design! Where content is taken
seriously! Where users get a seat at the table! Where everything is rainbows
and chocolate cake and there isn’t an oatmeal raisin cookie to be seen!
Except.
Except for those who may not have had the same desire to take apart
the Web and get behind it. Except for the people who take the things we
make and fold them into their everyday job. Except for the editors who
struggle with the weight of a new CMS, or the trivialities of workflow
change, or the political turmoil that comes with a new website.
Along the way, these people all made the same move I did — from
audience to editor — and they all take part in the creation of Web content.
But we’ve been so focused on making usable websites for our customers
that we somehow forgot that we also need to walk editors and bosses and
co-workers through the process, too.
There are two faces to content strategy: the people we’re targeting (our
users), and the people who are doing the targeting (our editors). We’re re-
sponsible for making great websites. But we’re also responsible for making
websites that are usable from the editor’s standpoint. We are the people
who make the Web; we are also those responsible for helping those who
sustain it.A Renewed Focus on People
Just as I discovered with that first WordPress blog, people who maintain
and create content are faced with leaps in technological advancement,
complicated new systems, and an inherent change in their workflow. As
we better understand how people access the Web, we find our current
methods aren’t working as well as we had hoped — that we’re forced to