experience matters

DJ Francis | Critical Mass Chicago

“Content strategy is brand new and we’ve been doing it for 15 years.”

-Kristina Halvorson

This was the seminal quote from†the Web Content 2010 conference held a few weeks ago here in Chicago. People (read: clients and bosses) are giving our work credence, despite an ever-evolving struggle to plan for, create, monitor, and evaluate online content.

This sentiment gives voice to both a frustration and excitement surrounding content strategy.†And thus practitioners of library sciences, taxonomies, copywriting, sociology, psychology, and content strategy, itself, came together – to learn, commiserate, and plot a way forward for our burgeoning profession.

Smart Folks, Smart Lessons

Learning was central as it should be, with insightful presentations by content strategy notables like Kristina Halvorson, Rachel Lovinger, and Jeff MacIntyre. A few of the lessons that impacted me and the work we do at Critical Mass included:

• A content strategy methodology is beginning to firm up. Whether you call it “Plan, Create, Govern” or “Audit, Plan, Build, Grow” or another variation, the building blocks of content strategy are starting to become almost universal (pointing to the maturation of the practice).
• Content governance is a huge missing piece, especially for agencies. While it’s getting easier to sell the planning and creation elements, content maintenance seems to still be getting short shrift.
• There is a great opportunity to bring in younger content strategists. Spending my 32nd birthday at the first day of the conference, I was one of the youngest attendees and most certainly the youngest full-time content strategist. It will be interesting to watch an influx of Millennials†during the next few years who come naturally to social media channels and distributed content, but perhaps lack the “publishing” experience brought by the Boomers (and the potential sweet-spot offered to Gen Xers).

Despite those learnings and many more (I will be referencing the materials shared at this conference for a long time to come), I was struck by the perfect blend of vexation and opportunity, to get back to Pulizzi’s quote.

A Time of Huge Opportunity (And What To Do With It)

We are at an amazing cross-roads where our audience is receptive to our message. Now is the time to be selling.

Conferences like this offer the opportunity to commiserate, but I thought speakers and participants at Web Content 2010 were wise to acknowledge this sentiment, but quickly get back to the business at hand (namely: growing our businesses).

Let’s face it: Some folks will never understand what we do and that’s OK. Others will green-light it, but not want to delve into your audit spreadsheet (also OK – and understandable). And some people don’t like words, period.

You aren’t going to change them. But you can prove your value to their business. Use your content strategy work to highlight missed opportunities and then celebrate when your work fundamentally changes their business for the better.

Content strategy is brand new to your clients and bosses, even if you’ve been doing it for 15 years. Thank goodness for conferences like Web Content 2010 that teach us both how to do it right and how to prove our value.

DJ is a Senior Content Strategist out of the CM Chicago office.