Content strategy book review
Hooray for Kristina Halvorson’s book Content Strategy for the Web. It left me inspired, affirmed, and with a pile of notes on process improvements that will help us to help our clients.
The book is an easily digestible introduction to the principles and practice of content strategy. There’s the case for content strategy – growing by the day – and a process for creating useful content that supports your business goals. Overarching ideas are supported by tangible deliverables and by the end of the book you see how it all fits together.
Because it’s an emerging practice, content strategy means many things to many people. One of the best things about this book coming out now is that it illustrates how all the pieces of the puzzle can come together.
Just as there’s no one-way to create information architecture or design, how you put your content together depends on many things.
On the surface content strategy is quite unsexy really – there’s a lot of documentation – but when done well it has the power to transform business performance, which has undeniable appeal. As Kristina asks early on, how can you afford not to have a content strategy?
The book is a great resource for inhouse and freelance content strategists and writers but it’s just as valuable for web project managers, information architects and UX people.
Why? If web design agencies seriously take this stuff onboard it’ll mean major changes to the way they approach their projects.
For the better, of course.