Content strategy

Content strategy (CS) is a working discipline in the field of interactive design.

What is content strategy?

As Jessie Collins explains in a Navigation Arts essay from November, 2007, a content strategy addresses the following:

* Tells you how much content should be on your site, where it will originate, and how often it will be updated;

* Sets the tone of your site by determining vocabulary and writing style; and

* Helps align the verbal messages on your site with the design and the organization created by the site's structure.

Content strategy versus copywriting

It is most often compared, in the corporate world, to advertising copywriting and, in the academic world, to library sciences.

Content strategists (or, as they are sometimes labelled, interactive copywriters) tend to work for interactive design agencies or the new media units of traditional advertising firms.

But content strategists are not copywriters:

Collectively, the tasks of planning for, obtaining, writing, editing, managing, and maintaining content may be termed "content strategy." Many site owners and managers hear the word "content" and immediately think "copywriting," but writing site copy is only one component of the strategy.

As a consequence, Collins concludes, "The dismissive reflex, 'content equals copy' overlooks the complexities inherent in a long-term content strategy and can have far reaching effects on the success of a site."

An emerging field of interactive design

In an essay for Boxes and Arrows published March 26, 2007, Rachel Lovinger, a Senior Content Strategist at Avenue A/Razorfish, compares the evolution of the term "content strategy" to that of information architecture:

"The analogy I’ve been using recently is that content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design. I find this analogy to be especially encouraging because six years ago, as the crest of the first wave of the web was about to break, people had no idea what “information architecture” meant either."

While recognized as a field of practice in its own right, many of the principles of content strategy may be considered emergent, paralleling the evolution of web content specifically, and the ascendance of user experience design generally.

Unlike most fields of interactive design, at this time there are no popularly cited texts taking content strategy as their subject, and unlike, for instance, information design, there is no single evangelist (pace Edward Tufte) to speak for the domain. That said, noted usability expert Jakob Neilsen, who wrote one of the seminal considerations of writing for the web in 1997, has discussed content strategy in name in 2007.

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