Discuss: The Case for Content Strategy—Motown Style
by Margot Bloomstein
- Editorial Comments
2 A similar concept in advertising
A similar approach is widely practiced (from a designer & copywriter point of view) in the advertising industry where an art director works in partnership with a creative copywriter to generate concepts and ideas.
In my experience it allows a much greater breadth of creative idea generation and much more balanced, strategic and considered output. It also creates a much more appealing role for copywriters, working strategically, rather than simply on keyword density analysis.
Good stuff!
posted at 09:09 am on August 18, 2009 by alstevens
3 Detroititus
Hi – great article, as ever.
RE: the title. My inner pedant couldn’t resist pointing out that Aretha recorded ‘Respect’ for Atlantic in 1967 and was never signed with Motown.
posted at 11:14 am on August 18, 2009 by Perryb
4 You can take the Content Strategist off of the pro
…but you can’t take the content strategy out of the project.
posted at 04:37 pm on August 18, 2009 by sonarc
5 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat…
juuuuuuuust kidding!
excellent article emphasising integration of content and messaging as part of the whole brand experience design, not as an afterthought.
posted at 08:02 am on August 19, 2009 by megUX
6 Really Useful stuff.
A great article with lots of good points to take note of. Its something that my clients always ask for help with and one that sometimes can be a challenge.
posted at 10:25 am on August 19, 2009 by tbathgate
7 Very helpful
My company is in the midst of a platform migration. It struck me (the IA) just recently that we’ve been focused on the when, how, and how much of getting all of our pages moved over without focusing on the why, so I’ve been advocating for a content audit to make sure that what we migrate is the right stuff. Trying to explain the value of audits, which sound time-consuming and expensive, isn’t always easy, but you’ve made a great case for them here, in addition to just generally advancing the case for content strategy. Kudos, and thanks!
posted at 03:15 pm on August 19, 2009 by redmolly
8
My development firm has recently jumped on the content strategy bandwagon and I am the content strategist. The downside is that I have more work than time since we are integrating content strategy into our projects. This article is great at describing how content strategy (and content strategists) fit into all parts of a project. I’ll be sharing this with my team, who all thankfully have readily accepted working with content early on.
posted at 10:36 am on August 20, 2009 by carriehd
9 Jumping into the fray...
@Duncan: It’s my hope that the “good, common sense thinking” can balance out the “extreme division of labor” you describe. In short, I believe every experience that includes words (at the very least) demands content strategy. The degree to which that deserves the focus of a specialist correlates with the overall size of the team, its talents, and the budget.
@sonarc: BINGO! The same way “you cannot not communicate,” content will take form whether that’s by design or not. Then again, nature tends toward entropy, and far too many overgrown websites are proof!
redmolly & carriehd: Sounds like you two should join forces. :)
posted at 01:21 pm on August 20, 2009 by Margot Bloomstein
10 thank you
Was starting the IA work for a new project today and was hunting through my RSS for any recent related articles. I should have started with ‘a list apart’.
I was half expecting to see a list of content strategists and their mobile numbers at the bottom of the article but I forgot to look for it about half way through when I stopped and started wrapping my head around the concept and how it can make my life easier.
Thank you for an excellent thought provoking article.
posted at 11:34 pm on August 20, 2009 by eltonlester
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1 Excellent
As much as I dislike the extreme division of labour that’s so prevalent in our industry, with everyone being a ‘specialist’ or ‘expert’ of some kind, which I personally find a bit ridiculous, this article outlined some good, common sense thinking with regards to planning.
Nice work.
posted at 06:25 am on August 18, 2009 by Duncan Macdonald