Sunday, March 11, 2012

Content Strategy: Yes

A friend's kid wants to be a copywriter. I was like, "Honey, what do they teach kids in school these days?"

Copywriting isn't just words for print, anymore, unless you want to get left way behind -- it's  part of content strategy, spanning media and platforms, across the website, mobile, and social, including:

  • Will there be video clips? Images? Product descriptions? 
  • What will/does the CMS do about tagging and structuring content?
  • SEO and HTML: What's your plan for the H1s, H2, H3s,  URLs and keywords?
  • Email marketing and retention: Planning for who gets what messages, when.
  • Customer service: You'll need autoreplies, followups and recommendations for guiding the call center people.
And that's just a taste.

"Content strategy refers to the planning, development, and management of informational content—written or in other media. The term is particularly common in web development since the late 1990s. It is recognized as a field in user experience design but also draws interest from adjacent communities such as content management, business analysis, and technical communication." -- Wikipedia

"Our industry is growing. Which means it’s changing. I believe a certain amount of Defining The Damn Thing (DTDT) is necessary, as it helps us clarify the boundaries of what we do. Sometimes I get frustrated by our inability to settle on a standard set of labels and descriptions for what we do, and I laughed a bit when we were mocked by the US News and World Report Best Careers 2009 report for not being able to agree on a name for ourselves." -- Karen McGrane