Content in Context

Zack Bent, Participation Points © 2007

If you’ve been following the emergence of a content strategy community, you may be aware that an interest group has recently formed in New York City. On Thursday, June 25, 2009, we held our 3rd monthly event, an informal discussion, led by Karen McGrane of Bond Art + Science, about making the business case for CS.

Maybe you know Karen? She recently shared this stunning presentation on the value of content strategy to an effective Web presence.

Our group had a fine time talking strategy for content strategy. Our biggest takeaway: until the necessary resources for content strategy deliverables become standard budgetary line items, interactive projects will continue to fail.

(On the bright side, as one of the participants remarked—modesty forbids my naming her—past failures are the best argument for change.)

During the evening, we discussed the difficulty of working in a field that integrates perspectives from data management, user experience design, marketing, product development, and editorial strategy within an industry that resists their intersection. We grumbled about our frustrated efforts to convince the powers-that-be that our work is essential to their ROI. We vented about projects gone awry because we were brought in at the eleventh hour to “rescue” the content.

And that represents one of our major challenges as a group. Right now, we’re talking mostly to ourselves. And in preaching to the choir, we’re full of fire and brimstone.

Sharing our experiences with one another is empowering. Many of us have felt frustrated and isolated for years. We bond by discovering we have similar ongoing critiques of industry practice. We’ve felt similarly dissatisfied with the career options available to us and worried similarly about the future of the Web. We’re happy to discover that if we’re iconoclasts, we’re a whole bunch of iconoclasts—with room for more.

But in our delight in (finally!) finding like-minded colleagues, let’s make sure not to get trapped in past resentments. Time marches on. Business requirements become more complex, specialized design skills become more respected, and content—the very stuff the Web is made of—remains at the bottom of ye olde toteme pole.

We’re not engaged in a battle for professional recognition. Or (disingenuousness alert) not solely. Most, if not all, of us believe fervently that our approach is essential to a future in which multiplatform digital content will be mashed up and redistributed in ways most of us haven’t even begun to imagine.

So let’s start the brainstorming now. What can we do to help?