My background wrt content strategy is a little fuzzy. I’ve been a CMS dev/architect on and off for about 20 years.
Before that, though, I was a freelance writer. Columns for tech magazines, copy for local marketing gigs, company newsletters, etc.
When I started working with @lullabot over a decade ago, the mix of media, publishing, marketing, and edu clients was super exciting.
It still is! It’s given me a chance to work with complex technical requirements, zany governance models, super-rigorous editorial processes…
Along the way that mixed background has often helped me play translator for design, editorial, IT, marketing, and business stakeholders.
I’m far from in expert in many of those disciplines, but being conversant has been a huge help. Over the years, it’s also convinced me…
…That a clear understanding of what the content is and what it’s supposed to do, shared by all of those disciplines in an org, is CRITICAL.
A lot of my day-to-day work now is “content modeling” and “content architecture,” but my idea of what that means keeps getting broader.
A “content model” can’t just be boxes and lines, a spreadsheet of fields, data types, and usage notes. “Why” and “how” are critical, too.
Those artifacts, while useful & essential for parts of the project, can’t exist in isolation from journey maps, wireframes, sitemaps, etc.
And those artifacts can’t represent of just one team’s understanding of the domain. They have to reflect a shared understanding & language.
With that in mind, I’ve been trying to boil down “the stuff that must be understood for a content project to succeed” into managable chunks.