Articles
Book Review: Content Strategy for the Web
24 November 2009
Violaine Truck
Past Vice President
Guest author
Kristina Halvorson will be joining us at Content Strategy Forum 2010, giving a workshop on the 15th of April and a keynote presentation the next day. Her book, Content Strategy for the Web, is part of our Content Strategy Book Raffle and Reviews series, and I was keen to review her book because for the past two years I have been trying to make the move from technical writing to web content management here in my home city of Paris. Thus, I hoped to find an answer in Kristina’s book to a prevailing question I (and presumably others) in France have: Is the title—Content Strategist—just a fancy name for one or more roles that already exist in the French job market, namely Responsable Editiorial, Chef de projet Editorial, Chargé de contenus web (Web content manager), Web Editor, Web Marketer, etc., or is it really something more?
As a French technical writer with over 10 years experience, I was recently hired as a Web Content Manager (Chargée de contenus web) but ended up doing far less interesting things than I ever did as a technical writer. I first had to accept a much lower salary than what I was used to, and it didn’t take long to realize that my role was really just being the “Marketing Director’s Assistant.” I was asked to rewrite and copy-edit the content of the company’s website, and at the end of my 6-month contract, I had progressed to copying and pasting web content into a Content Management System that the company had just acquired. That was the sum total of my job as a web content manager!
In Kristina Halvorson’s book I hoped, then, to find the answer to a prevailing question: Is “Content Strategist” just a fancy name for one or more roles that already exist on the French job market, namely “Responsable Editiorial”, “Chef de projet Editorial”, Chargé de contenus web (Web content manager), Web Editor, Web Marketer, etc. or is it really something more?
The market in France for the aforementioned jobs, is extremely saturated. Moreover, a solid (3-5 years) web agency experience is usually required to even get an interview and salaries are much lower than those found in the technical writing job market.
Over the course of the first 20 pages, I could see clear similarities between technical writing and content strategy — namely the somewhat annoying requirement to constantly prove the necessity and purpose of one’s job! How much harder was it going to be, therefore, for someone like me looking to break into that field, to prove to companies that content is not a “commodity”, that it should be “their first thought, not an afterthought,” as Kristina puts it?
Content, whether technical or web-oriented, has indeed always been “marginalized” or even “ignored by decision makers in companies,” explains Kristina. But is that even more so in France than in the US?
Looking at the Content Strategist job description on page 40, you learn what the core of the job is: “Being responsible for overseeing the successful identification and fulfillment of all web-related content requirements throughout the project life cycle.”
The main difference between the two jobs of content strategist and technical writer seems to stem from the variety of tasks that are required to examine the web content lifecycle: “Audit, Analyze, strategize, categorize, structure, create, revise, revise, revise, approve, tag, format, publish, update and finally archive”. But is this, after all, so different from a technical publication life cycle?
If there is role confusion, it exists between three types of jobs: copywriting and web writing, web writing and content strategy. Kristina worked as a copywriter then a web writer before becoming a content strategist. She writes:
Many content strategists take on the role of the web writer on some projects, which can confuse stakeholders about the strategist’s primary role. It is the web writer’s responsibility to turn content strategy recommendations into real content the user sees and appreciates.
Halvorson goes on to explain that:
The role of the web writer is hugely misunderstood by most organizations and web project teams. It’s constantly being confused with the role of a copywriter, and it’s not. It’s more.
So, if content strategists are often taken for web writers, it really reminds me how technical writers were treated in the 90’s in France when they were taken for engineers and/or secretaries, editorial assistants, etc. — Anything but the technical publications managers they were or could have been.
When Joann Hackos’ book Managing Your Documentation Projects came out in 1994, a lot of technical writers like myself looked at it as the book to not only arm oneself with “proven strategies and techniques for producing high-quality, extremely usable documentation, while cutting cost and time-to-market,” but also for a way out of ungratefulness, misunderstanding and similar brought by the employment market at the time.
What I really liked
In the Delivery chapter of Kristina’s book, I really liked the part on the role of a CMS. According to Halvorson, “many organizations now rushing to adopt web content management systems (CMS) to support their online strategies think it’s the silver bullet to solve their website challenges and power content-rich applications” (CMSMyth.com). Most web professionals, however, would agree to speak of a “fundamental disconnect in the promise of CMS versus reality.”
Reading these lines made me think of the company that hired me as a Web Content Manager to copy-paste the content that I had myself “copy-written” into their brand new CMS system! It’s good to know that “industry research and harsh anecdotal evidence indicates that 50% or more CMS projects fail in some way: botched implementations, soaring project costs, launch delays, ruined SEO and more.”
Maybe what the company that hired me really needed, instead of a web content manager, was a content strategist. Had I been one already, I would have liked to be able to tell them that “CMS success doesn’t hinge on the vendor, or features, or price point but on their plan, their people, and their process: their content strategy”.
Would I have had Halvorson’s book in hand, I would have used the many very practical tools she gives her readers, such as how to create a good content inventory (page50), “your core audit tool,” with an example of what a content inventory from Brain Traffic, her company, looks like.
Another example I would have certainly followed is when the author describes how to “demonstrate voice and tone” with her “this/not this” approach (page 86) in the Begin with Brand and messaging section. In a two-column table, Halvorson shows how to rewrite web content in a more clear and concise way.
What would have been nice to see
Although this book stands as a very practical tool, I regret not to have found more concrete examples on how to do things. More table illustrations and good versus bad website examples would certainly have been helpful.
I was also frustrated not to read more on social media and how to use them in content strategy. Probably because, according to Kristina (pages 140 to 142), you should be cautious using social media as they deserve a real commitment; “think long and hard about how much time and resources you allocate to managing it.”
Conclusion
I found this book to be an excellent read and a great tool for people in France, like me, who are dreaming of better things, of a job market where you might exercise your job as a technical writer or as a web content strategist with the recognition, acknowledgment and respect you deserve.
That said, while I continue to dream, I am still faced with the hard reality of having to find a job myself, and quickly. I have decided to take another direction, professionally speaking, finding the job market in France as regards as “web content strategy” not yet mature enough for me to be able to apply what I learned in this book.
Violaine,
This is a very interesting review; it manages to review the book and speak to the state of CS on a local level.
As you know, two of our other speakers at the forum, Vanessa Deconinck (a content strategist) and Sylvie Daumal (an information architect) will be speaking towards this situation of professional content workers in France and Europe in general, respectively. It will be very interesting to hear what they have to say and contrast it with your own experiences.
In fact we’re interviewing Vanessa as part of our speaker interview series, and her interview will be published in the coming days.
With regard to your review section on What would have been nice to see, these are good points and likely on the minds of other readers too. Just to let you know, during the drafting of the book, Kristina was bouncing a lot of ideas off the international CS community. During that time she pointed out the areas of focus she wouldn’t be covering in her first publication, particularly if these things were already covered in other books, like social media, content management, etc.
Nevertheless, it is an indication that more CS books can be written, and there’s certainly a lot of topics that could be focused on in detail. Rahel Bailie has dropped hints of writing a book, and I’m sure it’s not too long before other prominent CS people do the same.
Violaine, I saw your name in Anne Gentle’s blog post and had to link to this post. It’s good to see you writing online and great to see your picture, especially after having spoken and corresponded with you during our MadCap Flare class.
I share many of your thoughts and opinions. I believe that the increasing complexity of our field, along with fast-moving technologies, has given us an identity crisis. We seem to be struggling for new titles.
As a consultant, I am fortunate to work with the National Cancer Institute in the US, where they acknowledge that the information development realm covers many bases. I play a lot of roles there, even though I’m under contract with the technical writing team. I am currently working on a DITA project that is a collaboration between the NCI and the Health Level 7 (HL7) organization. In that project, I am helping to shape the content strategy. That much involvement is rewarding enough to me without worrying about my title. I am, first and foremost, a writer.
I recently wrote a post comparing Kristina’s book with that of Richard Sheffield:
http://www.vanarsdall-infodesign.com/2009/09/27/the-sun-shines-on-content-strategy/
Maybe you will find his book more useful. It does give a lot more hands-on examples, and I have adapted some of his spreadsheet examples for my own work.
Best Regards,
Eddie
I liked reading this.
Another job, quickly!
Anne Gentle · 26 November 2009, 03:06
Hi Violaine, what an interesting perspective, thanks for posting. I started to write a comment, but it got so long I turned it into a blog post instead! See justwriteclick.com/….
As a side note, I have to say I love your name – you must have a “must have a cool first name” requirement in the STC France chapter since you and Destry are members. :)