On May 24, I attended my first Content Strategy New England event, organized by my friend and higher ed partner-in-crime Rick Allen. The speaker was none other than Kristina Halvorson, author of the book on the subject, Content Strategy for the Web (Amazon affiliate link). It was hard to turn down an opportunity to hear her speak, for free, to a small but enthusiastic audience at the lovely Microsoft NERD.

While I have long identified as a content person, the idea of “content strategy” as a field is new to me (and everyone else, apparently!). But as she described the tactics and methods of practicing content strategy, it just felt like common sense — at least to me.

Here are some of Halvorson’s points about content strategy. I won’t attempt to define the entire practice, just a few points that stood out to me:

• It’s about having a content lifecycle
• It requires thinking about the substance of your messaging. What are you trying to say, and what do you want people to leave with or act upon?
• Content should be findable, usable, contextual
• Establishing and adhering to workflow and governance are critical. This is not maintenance; this is human oversight. Who are the decision makers? Who has buy-in?
• A proper content audit and assessment takes into consideration not only the content itself, but skill sets, workflow and politics.
• No one cares about content strategy; the term means nothing. It may be best to not even mention it. Instead, focus on identifying pain points and key performance indicators, then introduce the solutions (which, of course, would be functions of content strategy).
• A lot of selling content strategy involves switching places. You, as the content strategist, need to appreciate the client’s reality and mediate between it and a user’s reality. The client needs to find an objective place where (s)he can understand the problems with their site. It’s up to the content strategist to ask the right questions that raise those problems into view and demonstrate the problems to the client.
• Content strategy is not just about web copy; it also ties into social media channel upkeep.
• Content strategy would fail without collaboration. It cannot happen in a vacuum.
• By evaluating search engine usage, you can discover a site visitor’s natural language and use that to inform content strategy.

The thing is, many of us have been doing this for a while. Now, it has a name, a hashtag, a meetup group and something of an identity. Its importance can’t be understated, but it often falls by the wayside. Sometimes,  you need to hype and brand something to give it the recognition and value it deserves, even if it’s nothing new.

One thing that Halvorson said that really resonated with me was that content strategists should, at heart, be writers. After all, it’s about effective communication, and in one sense or another, that is a writer’s stock and trade. I also appreciated that she believes no one can be an expert at everything, and we need to find our niche and collaborate with the experts in other areas. But I also believe (as I expect Halvorson would agree with) that a little knowledge can go a long way, and knowing enough about related web disciplines to know the right questions to ask, and to understand why a no means no and a yes means yes, can be very valuable. To that end, I know just enough about server infrastructure to be dangerous.

The best part of the event was that it was question-driven. Halvorson didn’t give a spiel, then leave 10 minutes for questions. The hour and a half she spent talking was almost entirely dedicated to addressing concerns and offering solutions, ideas and perspective to people’s concerns. It felt more like a private workshop than a speaker event, and that’s pretty special.

The content strategy community assembled at the NERD struck me as committed, engaged and hungry — hungry for understanding, education and collaboration. It was a great group of people and an awesome event, and I look forward to future gatherings and connections.

Amid all the talk about content as king, here — finally — is the sewing circle working feverishly to make sure that the emperor has clothes.

Photo by 42Jellos/Flickr Creative Commons