Content Strategy Toolkit, The

Description

“Quality content increases value. Poor-quality content destroys value. It’s as simple as that. Meghan’s book has specific, practical, and immediately actionable ideas that will help you increase the quality of your content.”

—Gerry McGovern, CEO, Customer Carewords

“You will thank Meghan for her no-nonsense approach to forming and executing content strategy. If you apply the techniques and tips in this book, you will advance not only your content but also your career.”

—Colleen Jones, CEO of Content Science and author of Clout: The Art + Science of Influential Web Content 

“Ever wondered what to include in your content audit? Struggled to sell your boss on content strategy? This book is for you. Packed with activities, diagrams, and sample documents, The Content Strategy Toolkit is a supremely practical guide you’ll turn to again and again. Best of all, Meghan Casey doesn’t just explain the tools—she helps you figure out which ones you need, when.”

— Sara Wachter-Boettcher, content strategy consultant and author of Content Everywhere 

 “This book is a must read for people who truly value customer experience. Organizations can’t say they have consumer-centric sites without having a firm handle on their content and the tasks their users are trying to complete. The practical advice you’ll gain will help you ensure your site has a solid foundation.”

— Jane Keairns, Assistant Director of Digital Strategy—Corporate Marketing, Principal Financial Group

“Practical, relevant, and realistic: Those are the qualities that describe content strategy, and those are the qualities Meghan Casey brings to every chapter in this book. We’ve long suffered projects that are the stuff of fantasy and lofty castles in the sky. Content strategy puts a foundation under those fantasies so you can communicate consistently, effectively, and sustainably. Arm yourself with this book and gain tools, techniques, and tips to bring to every project.”

— Margot Bloomstein, author of Content Strategy at Work: Real-world Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Project and Principal at Appropriate, Inc.

“The Content Strategy Toolkit is a great resource for helping you to align stakeholders and take control of your content. If you’re a seasoned professional or just getting started, Meghan’s experience guides you through complex, challenging projects. Business goals? Check. User needs? Check. You with a satisfied smile from a job well done? Check.”

— Andrew Crow, Head of Design, Uber

“Ms. Casey has written the essential guide for anyone involved in the creation and care of online content. She provides clear direction and scalable methods, explaining why they are important along the way. And, she’s included tips on how to talk about content strategy in the language of business and budgets. It’s easy-to-read, it’s actionable, and it’s certain to find a spot on every content strategists’ bookshelf.”

— Clinton Forry, Vice President, Content Strategy at Weber Shandwick.

Today businesses are competing for attention with thousands of content providers. And they’re not who your CEO imagines. They’re BuzzFeed, Instagram, Hulu, Bloomberg … and the list goes on. You can bet they have a content strategy. Meghan Casey gives you the inside story on how to build a business case for content strategy, apply cold-eyed analysis to all the content you’ve got lying around, and reshape it into marketing gold.

— Anne Condon, senior marketing professional in the healthcare industry

A tactical resource for developing clear and consistent content in all mediums, including website, packaging, and direct contact with customers.

•   Expert advice and insight from a content strategist at Brain Traffic, one of the world’s leading content strategy agencies.

•   Covers the key components of developing and implementing a content strategy.

•   Includes a carefully curated set of practitioners’ tools, including meeting agendas, workshop plans, and deliverable-starter templates.

•   Foreword by Kristina Halvorson, founder and president of Brain Traffic, author of the #2 best selling book on Amazon for content management.

Section I: Get Budget and Buy-in

Chapter 1: Identify the Problems and Opportunities
Chapter 2: Convince Leaders and Get the Resources
Section II: Set Up for Success
Chapter 3: Get Stakeholders On-board
Chapter 4: Set and Align on Project Objectives
Chapter 5: Run the Project

Section III: Dig In and Get the Dirt

Chapter 6: Understand Your Business Environment

Chapter 7: Learn About Your Audience and Users

Chapter 8: Get Familiar With Your Content

Chapter 9: Review How Work Gets Planned and Done

Chapter 10: Put it all together

Section IV: Articulate Your Strategy

Chapter 11: Create a Content Compass

Chapter 12: Decide How You’ll Measure Success

Chapter 13: Design Your Content

Section V: Put Your Strategy Into Action

Chapter 14: Create On-strategy Content

Chapter 15: Plan and Maintain Over Time

Appendix: List of Tools

Index

In this essential guide, Meghan Casey outlines a step-by-step approach for doing content strategy, from planning and creating your content to delivering and managing it. Armed with this book, you can confidently tackle difficult activities like telling your boss or client what’s wrong with their content, getting the budget to do content work, and aligning stakeholders on a common vision. Reading The Content Strategy Toolkit is like having your own personal consulting firm on retainer with a complete array of tools and tips for every challenge you’ll face.

In this practical and relevant guide, you’ll learn how to:

• Identify problems with your content and persuade your bosses it’s worth the time and resources to do it right
• Make sense of your business environment and understand your audience
• Get stakeholders aligned on business goals and user needs
• Set your content strategy and decide how to measure success
• Create, maintain, and govern on-strategy content

You’ll learn to control your content—and not have it control you.

This go-to guide is ideal for Web design, user experience, business students and any other students tasked with developing clear and consistent content in any medium. It provides guidelines for developing and implementing a content strategy, and an abundance of examples along with concrete suggestions and action plans for implementing these strategies.

Meghan Casey is the lead content strategist at Brain Traffic, the world’s leading agency devoted exclusively to content. She helps a wide variety of clients–startups, nonprofits, colleges and universities, Fortune 50 companies, and everything inbetween–solve the messy content problems most organizations encounter every day. She has also helped The Nerdery, a software development shop, build content strategy into their User Experience practice. Meghan is a regular trainer and speaker on content strategy topics and once inspired workshop participants to do the wave. Yep, that really happened. She has been working with content and communications since 1996.

Additional information