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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.
In the end, students will be able to:
Tell a cohesive story, which translates into conversions
Stop wasting time and money re-writing the same or similar content over and over
Give customers one clear message that's consistent in all mediums
Determine whether their content is boosting their brand and the bottom line
Develop guidelines that let them say no to unnecessary content that's not on-brand
Keep content up-to-date by improving organization and making the task less time-consuming
List of contents
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
About the author
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.
Summary
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.
