Synopses & Reviews
If you’re like most organizations, your content problems seem insurmountable. Unanswered questions keep you up at night: How much content do you have? Where does it live? What does it say? Who owns it? Is it helping your business and satisfying your users?
Maybe you've tried a site redesign, a new CMS, and host of other extensive (and expensive!) "improvements." But, the hard truth is that without consistent, compelling content, even the most ambitious web, social, and mobile initiatives will fail. Dealing with content is hard! It’s complicated, time-consuming, and often overwhelming. So where do you start?
Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach are here to help. At the helm of Brain Traffic, the world’s leading content strategy consultancy, they’re coaching businesses on how to solve even the most complex content problems. In this friendly, approachable guide, the authors:
- Explain the fundamentals of content strategy in plain language
- Walk through the research and analysis you’ll need to conduct to develop a detailed strategy
- Teach you to make smarter, achievable decisions about what content to create and how
- Reveal easy-to-use tools to plan for, create, deliver, and govern online content over time
- Give solid, practical advice on staffing and resource allocation for content-related roles and responsibilities
- Uncover why so many online projects implode in the content development phase...and how to avoid the associated, unnecessary costs and delays
- Provide case studies of successfully executed content strategies on websites and other online platforms
When it was first published in 2009, Content Strategy for the Web was an instant classic. It was the catalyst for the global content strategy conversation, helping organizations understand and implement content strategy as part of their larger business strategies. Much more than a simple introduction, this second edition builds upon those foundational ideas and gives you what you need to transform your content into a valuable business asset.
Review
“This is the go-to handbook for creating an effective content strategy. The Post-it® notes and dog-eared pages in my copy are evidence
of that!” — Aaro n Watkins, Director of Digital Strategy, Johns Hopkins Medicine
“By far the most comprehensive and accessible book on content strategy available. Required reading for our entire team”
– Lucie Hyde, Director of Content, eBay Europe
Synopsis
FROM CONSTANT CRISIS TO SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS
BETTER CONTENT MEANS BETTER BUSINESS. Your content is a mess: the website redesigns didn’t help, and the new CMS just made things worse. Or, maybe your content is full of potential: you know new revenue and cost-savings opportunities exist, but you’re not sure where to start. How can you realize the value of content while planning for its long-term success?
For organizations all over the world, Content Strategy for the Web is the go-to content strategy handbook. Read it to:
- Understand content strategy and its business value
- Discover the processes and people behind a successful content strategy
- Make smarter, achievable decisions about what content to create and how
- Find out how to build a business case for content strategy
With all-new chapters, updated material, case studies, and more, the second edition of Content Strategy for the Web is an essential guide for anyone who works with content.
About the Author
Kristina Halvorson is the founder and president of Brain Traffic, a content strategy, information architecture, and web writing agency. Since 1997, Kristina has led content strategy and web writing projects for over 100 web sites and several Fortune 500 companies. She is a passionate advocate for content strategy, the hidden discipline that lives between information architecture, web writing, and the build process. She speaks regularly at conferences and universities worldwide.
Melissa Rach is vice president of content strategy at Brain Traffic, an agency focused exclusively on helping clients solve messy content problems.
Table of Contents
Foreword: The Rapid Rise of Content Strategy at Facebook and Beyond
Before We Begin
REALITY
1 NOW: Hit the ground running.
2 PROBLEM: Why does your content (still) suck?
3 SOLUTION: Content strategy to the rescue.
DISCOVERY
4 ALIGNMENT: Down with silos, up with people.
5 AUDIT: Take a close-up look at your current content.
6 ANALYSIS Your content lives in a complicated world.
STRATEGY
7 CORE: Core strategy: the center of it all.
8 CONTENT: Substance and structure: the stuff they come for.
9 PEOPLE Worldflow and governance: the path to victory.
SUCCESS
10 PERSUASION: Making the case for content strategy.
11 ADVOCACY: Get out there and do something.
12 HERO: Save the content, save the world.
Content strategy reading list
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
About Brain Traffic
Index