CHAPTER 10 The Two Faces of Content Strategy: Balancing the Needs of Users and Editors
a person really wants the university library link to be one of the top head-
ings on the website, that person can certainly make a case for it using our
existing criteria.
Our goal in this case is to reframe the conversation, taking advantage
of that person’s goals and making allowances were possible. For instance,
imagine a university website where four different departments are vying
for the same website real estate. You have options. You can show them data
that refutes their claim, which can backfire if future gut feelings can’t be
summed up with relatable numbers. You can give in and save the fight for
a larger battle, which could anger and alienate other departments. Or, you
can filter out some of the voices by finding passion projects.
Ultimately, each department or stakeholder is super-focused on a few
ideal things. Make an allowance here or there based on those passion proj-
ects, all while pointing out the vast amount of information you have to deal
with. Be empathetic to their needs and give a little bit, all while helping
them empathize with your situation.use editorial tools to help communicate
Often, the biggest difficulty we face isn’t in organizing people and creating
workflow — it’s simply finding a way to give everyone access to changes
and comments within our own content. Thankfully, this is a problem be-
ing worked on through several online Web applications.
There are solutions for Web content planning, such as GatherContent,
that help you collaborate on site maps, content models and other pre-de-
velopment needs. Once that site’s gone live, there are collaborative edito-
rial applications like Editorially or Poetica that promise to create a single
source for content feedback.
And, seriously. Given the issues we all run into when gathering a thou-
sand word documents from seven different departments and organizing
them into something usable, we can only assume that more people are
going to make more online solutions. We’re right on the edge of a content
tool explosion.