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The Language of Content Strategy
The Language of Content Strategy is the gateway to a language that describes the world of content strategy. With fifty-two contributors, all known for their depth of knowleEA Digital (delivered electronically)e, this set of terms forms the core of an emerging profession and, as a result, helps shape the profession. The terminology spans a range of competencies with the broad area of content strategy.
This book, and its companion website, is an invitation to readers to join the conversation. This is an important step: the beginning of a common language. Using this book will not only help you shape your work, but also encourage you to contribute your own terminology and help expand the depth and breadth of the profession
138 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 18, 2015
[Please note that some topics were excellent. The topics that aren't coupled with some of my concerns make this a 3-star read. It's worth reading.]
The title is clear about what this book is about: the language of content strategy. I appreciated the lexicon, and it made me wish this were part of a series, similar to A Very Short Introduction books. The Language of UX. The Language of IA.
I find that lexicons do more than define terms for us. In general, these collections function as overviews of a discipline. They explicitly state what matters to the discipline, and they also imply what matters to the discipline simply by the topics included and how those topics are defined. (Lexicons can also shed light on the discipline's history and can be fun for amateur etymologists.)
This book is a comprehensive overview of content strategy. As someone who has practiced some content strategy, I liked seeing where that work is situated. I liked that my work was defined by industry-standard terminology, and I found an appropriate way to talk about what I most like about content strategy - inventories, analysis, semantics, and taxonomies, and the editorial side rather than technical side (instead of “liking words and not code”). After reading this book, readers can be confident that they share a common language with practitioners, so hesitate to engage no more.
This lexicon lets you know what’s important. Behind the scenes: repeatable, reusable, automated, and structured. For the consumer: personalized in every way - accessible, adaptive, translated, and localized as well as appropriate for grade level, device, location, and situation. “The right content, to the right audience, anytime, anywhere, on any device.” (Abel)
Consider these words: architecture, engineering, matrix, model, optimization, and system. And these: analysis, audit, inventory, lifecycle, management, quality assurance, scorecard, and strategy. They’re not necessarily the words you associate with content, but they are the language of content strategy.
Other things I liked:
-- I was able to construct workflows from the entries, such as: content brief -> requirements matrix -> content inventory -> content audit -> content analysis -> content matrix
-- Topic structure and layout design. The topics answer (formatted as headings): What is it? Why is it important? Why does a content strategist need to know this? The layout ensures that the start of the topic is a verso and the completion of the topic is a recto, so the topic is uninterrupted by page turning.
-- Colophon (too long to quote). The creation of the book mimics the best practices outlined in the lexicon.
Some things I wasn't crazy about:
-- I wonder whether the layout was a self-imposed constraint on the presentation of information. In a book about content best practices, why are you describing a visual to me instead of showing an image? In other topics, I would have benefited from a visual example. If the layout is a concern, images could be part of an appendix, although that’s not ideal. If the genre of lexicon is a concern, remember that dictionaries have pictures.
-- Some topics were too vague. It’s as if you need to know the topic to understand its definition, but if you know it, you don’t need the definition.
-- Where topics are similar, it would have been nice to know how they differ or how they relate to each other, for example, structured content and modular content. Maybe it’s obvious to people already working with structured and modular content. (It could be compared to synonyms in a dictionary.) Sometimes these relationships were defined, which is why I was able to create workflow diagrams.
-- The book includes 52 topics written by 52 content strategists, which makes me wonder if 52 is a marketing gimmick for the website or if it’s a coincidence that the important content strategy terms are exactly 52 in number. (And I know you have to stop somewhere.)
-- Perhaps out of scope (encyclopedia instead of dictionary), but metrics were mentioned several times. Perhaps one sample metric could have been included to better understand how the topic subject can be measured.
-- Some topics repeated the “what is it text” in the “why you need to know” text. And "why it's important" is really "why you need to know" - because it's important.
-- Some topics were too general and would have been enriched by examples.
-- Some topics didn’t answer the heading questions appropriately.
The best topics explain how the deliverable/technology/analysis is used, what it captures, the results/benefits of using it, and some of the gaps created by not using it.
-- Sarah Beckley’s “Content Matrix,” Laura Creekmore’s “Metadata,” Don Day’s “Structured Content,” Leigh White’s “Single Sourcing,” and Claudia Wunder’s “Information Architecture” are overall good examples.
-- Robert Glushko’s “Document Engineering” uses an effective, real-world example of taxes to illustrate the difference between narrative and transactional types.
-- Char James-Tanny’s “Accessibility” and Lisa L. Trager’s “Search Engine Optimization” provide comprehensive lists of best practices.
-- Sarah O’Keefe’s “XML” highlights several benefits and offers an applied example.
-- Bill Swallow’s “Globalization” offers advice: “it is best to work backwards.”
-- Lori Thicke’s “Translation” includes data to support a business case for translation.
-- Sharon Burton’s “Folksonomy” and Kathy Wagner’s “Content Scorecard” include how-to information. Burton also uses a good Amazon example to illustrate her topic.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and I use it only to illustrate some of the nice touches of particular topics.
The title is clear about what this book is about: the language of content strategy. I appreciated the lexicon, and it made me wish this were part of a series, similar to A Very Short Introduction books. The Language of UX. The Language of IA.
I find that lexicons do more than define terms for us. In general, these collections function as overviews of a discipline. They explicitly state what matters to the discipline, and they also imply what matters to the discipline simply by the topics included and how those topics are defined. (Lexicons can also shed light on the discipline's history and can be fun for amateur etymologists.)
This book is a comprehensive overview of content strategy. As someone who has practiced some content strategy, I liked seeing where that work is situated. I liked that my work was defined by industry-standard terminology, and I found an appropriate way to talk about what I most like about content strategy - inventories, analysis, semantics, and taxonomies, and the editorial side rather than technical side (instead of “liking words and not code”). After reading this book, readers can be confident that they share a common language with practitioners, so hesitate to engage no more.
This lexicon lets you know what’s important. Behind the scenes: repeatable, reusable, automated, and structured. For the consumer: personalized in every way - accessible, adaptive, translated, and localized as well as appropriate for grade level, device, location, and situation. “The right content, to the right audience, anytime, anywhere, on any device.” (Abel)
Consider these words: architecture, engineering, matrix, model, optimization, and system. And these: analysis, audit, inventory, lifecycle, management, quality assurance, scorecard, and strategy. They’re not necessarily the words you associate with content, but they are the language of content strategy.
Other things I liked:
-- I was able to construct workflows from the entries, such as: content brief -> requirements matrix -> content inventory -> content audit -> content analysis -> content matrix
-- Topic structure and layout design. The topics answer (formatted as headings): What is it? Why is it important? Why does a content strategist need to know this? The layout ensures that the start of the topic is a verso and the completion of the topic is a recto, so the topic is uninterrupted by page turning.
-- Colophon (too long to quote). The creation of the book mimics the best practices outlined in the lexicon.
Some things I wasn't crazy about:
-- I wonder whether the layout was a self-imposed constraint on the presentation of information. In a book about content best practices, why are you describing a visual to me instead of showing an image? In other topics, I would have benefited from a visual example. If the layout is a concern, images could be part of an appendix, although that’s not ideal. If the genre of lexicon is a concern, remember that dictionaries have pictures.
-- Some topics were too vague. It’s as if you need to know the topic to understand its definition, but if you know it, you don’t need the definition.
-- Where topics are similar, it would have been nice to know how they differ or how they relate to each other, for example, structured content and modular content. Maybe it’s obvious to people already working with structured and modular content. (It could be compared to synonyms in a dictionary.) Sometimes these relationships were defined, which is why I was able to create workflow diagrams.
-- The book includes 52 topics written by 52 content strategists, which makes me wonder if 52 is a marketing gimmick for the website or if it’s a coincidence that the important content strategy terms are exactly 52 in number. (And I know you have to stop somewhere.)
-- Perhaps out of scope (encyclopedia instead of dictionary), but metrics were mentioned several times. Perhaps one sample metric could have been included to better understand how the topic subject can be measured.
-- Some topics repeated the “what is it text” in the “why you need to know” text. And "why it's important" is really "why you need to know" - because it's important.
-- Some topics were too general and would have been enriched by examples.
-- Some topics didn’t answer the heading questions appropriately.
The best topics explain how the deliverable/technology/analysis is used, what it captures, the results/benefits of using it, and some of the gaps created by not using it.
-- Sarah Beckley’s “Content Matrix,” Laura Creekmore’s “Metadata,” Don Day’s “Structured Content,” Leigh White’s “Single Sourcing,” and Claudia Wunder’s “Information Architecture” are overall good examples.
-- Robert Glushko’s “Document Engineering” uses an effective, real-world example of taxes to illustrate the difference between narrative and transactional types.
-- Char James-Tanny’s “Accessibility” and Lisa L. Trager’s “Search Engine Optimization” provide comprehensive lists of best practices.
-- Sarah O’Keefe’s “XML” highlights several benefits and offers an applied example.
-- Bill Swallow’s “Globalization” offers advice: “it is best to work backwards.”
-- Lori Thicke’s “Translation” includes data to support a business case for translation.
-- Sharon Burton’s “Folksonomy” and Kathy Wagner’s “Content Scorecard” include how-to information. Burton also uses a good Amazon example to illustrate her topic.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and I use it only to illustrate some of the nice touches of particular topics.
August 29, 2018
This is a great series of books that establishes a language for content developers and technical writers to use.
October 7, 2015
A very handy "mini dictionary" of key concepts and terms in content strategy. The information is quite meaty, but the execution had some odd flaws. Each concept definition is written by a different contributor, and contributors used varying pronouns ("we" and "our" versus "you" and "your"), voice (some heavily passive, some outstandingly active), and complexity of language. Some definitions were very clear; others were so dense I was rereading the page repeatedly. (Maybe I was just tired?)
Also, I was puzzled at the lack of clear organizational structure for the definitions. They're grouped into categories, but not organized alphabetically by term or contributor's name. They're also not organized by steps in a process - "globalization" clearly states that it must come before "localization", but it's included last. Huh. (You might think I'm being overly nitpicky, but this is by content strategists and technical communicators writing about concepts like "information hierarchy". Things like having a clear organizational structure in a reference work is... I don't know... *pretty basic in the field*.)
This is a good reference for getting up to speed on the basic concepts though. It was part refresher / part new stuff for me. I was madly googling terms like "findability" so I could find books to tell me more.
Also, I was puzzled at the lack of clear organizational structure for the definitions. They're grouped into categories, but not organized alphabetically by term or contributor's name. They're also not organized by steps in a process - "globalization" clearly states that it must come before "localization", but it's included last. Huh. (You might think I'm being overly nitpicky, but this is by content strategists and technical communicators writing about concepts like "information hierarchy". Things like having a clear organizational structure in a reference work is... I don't know... *pretty basic in the field*.)
This is a good reference for getting up to speed on the basic concepts though. It was part refresher / part new stuff for me. I was madly googling terms like "findability" so I could find books to tell me more.
May 18, 2015
I'm not sure I've ever written a review on here - but the layout of this book is terrible. Five content strategy focus areas are provided, with important concepts. For some reason, a content strategist's name appears at the top of each page, followed by the concept and its definition. After that follows with a bio of the strategist and then an example of why we should know this concept.
Talk about irony - content strategy should never revolve around the strategist. This is wasted ink, paper, and time. This book needed to be reviewed by information architects.
The concepts themselves are fine. Nothing too surprising here.
I would recommend reading Content Strategy for the Web by Halvorson and Rach instead.
Talk about irony - content strategy should never revolve around the strategist. This is wasted ink, paper, and time. This book needed to be reviewed by information architects.
The concepts themselves are fine. Nothing too surprising here.
I would recommend reading Content Strategy for the Web by Halvorson and Rach instead.
September 4, 2015
Ended up buying this one as a reference book. Short, succinct with each definition written by another content management pro (with their contact/social media info). Eventually all will be committed to memory, but good to have in the meantime.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews