Content Strategy: Connecting the Dots Between Business, Brand, and Benefits

Two very smart authors with some valuable insights about creating a business case for content strategy. However, I found it somewhat ironic that I had to buy the print version of this book when a main premise of it was the importance of preparing your content for a multi-channel, multi-delivery world. I have all of my other content strategy books on my iPad (Kindle App), and I would have preferred to have this book on there, too.Considering the $40 price point, I wish the authors would have gone into detail in a few more places instead of using phrases like, "simplified for the sake of space" or "that's not the point of this book". I know it wasn't their intention, but it felt sort of like a cop out to briefly introduce important concepts and then quickly abandon them. I didn't realize "space limitations" were a consideration when creating a book. I would have loved to get a deeper understanding of the parallels between CS work and consulting work.Despite these minor quibbles, I enjoyed it. I liked the technical expertise they brought to the table, and that they didn’t feel compelled to dumb it down. I felt like this book was more serious and "weightier" than Halverson's "Content Strategy for the Web" and McGrane's "Content Strategy for Mobile", although I enjoyed both of those as well.I’d recommend this text alongside Wachter-Boettcher's "Content Everywhere", Jones's "Clout", Bloomstein's "Content Strategy at Work", and Redish's "Letting Go of the Words". Along with the works of Halverson and McGrane, each of these books is helping to define and shape the field of CS. You can add “Content Strategy” to the list.

I've been living and breathing this book for the last month and a half while I worked with a marketing colleague to put a content strategy business case together for my organization. The information, tips, and examples in this book have been a huge help to me in this effort. Highly recommend it for anyone trying to show just how critical content is to businesses today.

You've heard about content strategy but still have questions. Or you want your company to implement a content strategy but you can't convince your executives. Then you need to get a copy of Content Strategy.This isn't a Dummies book. It assumes that you already know about things like CRM and branding. It doesn't tell you how to create good content. It doesn't lead you by the hand through the process of developing a content strategy. (It couldn't: as the preface explains, content strategies are highly situational.)It does give you everything you need to make the business case for a content strategy. It describes the business benefits and the characteristics of an effective content strategy, using numerous case studies and examples distilled from the authors' extensive experience. It maintains its focus (no small feat when you have such rich subject matter and such knowledgeable authors): not belaboring basic ideas and not wandering into the weeds of detail. It even offers an extensive glossary to bring you up to speed on terminology.While you'll take away a lot, however, reading Content Strategy will require you to invest some serious time and thought. That's understandable: content strategy is a complex topic.Still, the book would be enhanced by a substantive edit. The outline is inconsistent -- for example, the B2C and B2B case studies in chapters 13 and 14 have completely different sets of headings. Some ideas are covered more than once -- like "what we mean by content" on page 4 and then again on page 36. (To the authors' credit, they never contradict themselves.) I'd like to see more evaluative statements -- for example, in chapter 19 where different municipal websites are shown but not really critiqued ("this worked because..." or "this technique is recommended when...").The writing is sometimes opaque. Again, the subject matter is complex. But I'd like to see stronger verbs and fewer instances of have, help, and the various forms of to be. I'd like to see crisper, less complex sentences. I did see a few copyediting mistakes -- not enough to disrupt my reading, but enough to notice.The book ends with a list of basics to help you launch your own content strategy. The advice in the list is great, and it builds on the principles laid out in the book. Still, the list is daunting: ten recommendations, all presented as having equal weight. Could the ten be distilled to, say, three or four top-shelf recommendations, with the rest secondary? Or could the ten be grouped somehow, so as not to leave the impression that content strategy is great for business but only slightly less complicated than brain surgery?All in all, though, the book's flaws are decisively outweighed by its strengths. Regardless of your experience level, you'll learn a lot about content strategy. You'll find advice that's relevant, realistic, and business-savvy.Creating a good content strategy is hard work, but it's worth the effort. Reading Content Strategy might seem like hard work, but it's worth the effort too.

"Connecting the dots..." does a great job of explaining the importance of requirements, the content lifecycle and the various categories of content consumers. Each category can different requirements, but they all share a common #1 goal, to "find answers." This book helps you ensure that your content strategy satisfies these content requirements and goals.There are a lot of case studies in this book and they include great analysis nuggets. I especially loved the study that discussed [the dissection of] "intertwined goals, some from different departments." And the study that stated [content is the responsibility of] "different departments with different budgets."A big strength of this book is its depth. The depth comes from the authors and their valuable real world experiences. But, the book does not overwhelm you. It has just the right amount of details and is still very readable.

This book covers the subject of content management from a number of perspectives, is nicely organized, and is very easy reading. The first third of the book is very useful for business owners looking for the ROI justification for developing a content management process. It is studded with case studies from a variety of domains so it's easy to extrapolate from at least a couple of case studies directly to your own business environment. Whether you've had an internal request to fund a content management implementation or whether you read about it in the trade journals, I think budget owners will come away with a good understanding of where the "return" on the investment will come from and will be better able to quantify it.The second third of the book goes under the covers for implementers... how to define content as components that can be reused, referenced, linked, and assembled into higher level organizations. This is covered in-depth and will help implementers quantify the "investment" part of the ROI. As with the first section, it is written in a very readable style.The last third of the book is dedicated to the nuts and bolts of developing and implementing your content strategy. Whereas the first section of the book answered the question "why should I?", and the second section answered the question "at what cost?", this section answers the question "how do I get there from here?"This book provides a thorough covering of the topic for both business and technical audiences, with a pleasantly readable style.[Full disclosure: the publisher provided a copy of the book to me at no cost. After reading, I subsequently purchased another copy from this site at my own expense.]

Over the summer of 2012, I was part of a Provincial Government UX training course in which Rahel came in and led the class. Not only was she exceptional at giving clear and concise, easy to understand information, but she did it in a way that was engaging and highly informative. While I have not yet received my copy of this book, I have no doubt that it will reflect her instructing style by giving applicable, real world techniques that will prove useful in my professional development.

Even before picking up the Bailie/Urbina book, I'd been convinced of the importance of content strategy by some of my own experiences, and also because of the messages promoted by the likes of Karen McGrane and Sara Wachter-Boettcher in their respective publications.While this book echoes some of those messages, it provides a little more, and in that respect sets itself apart from many other content strategy books. For example, it provides extensive, practical advice on how you can promote content strategy within your business. In my experience, this can be a tall order, but the advice prescribed in the book will help you get your message across; it provides strong arguments for why content is a business asset, gives guidance on the ROI of content strategy, and why a poor strategy can lead to lost sales.In addition, the book provides a decent level of technical content, particularly around the use of XML, metadata, and semantic markup. While not in huge detail, it's more than you might get in similar books, and it's a good starting point for those looking for guidance in this area.Recommended.

This book is an invaluable resource for those that need to clearly understand the practical business reasons for implementing a content strategy. Although technical writers can be great at communicating how something works to an end user, it seems they have a hard time getting the message across to management as to why they need more efficiency, speed, and quality. Management and decision-makers, on the other hand, are semi-aware of the benefit of content, but can't seem to match the writers' perspectives with their own when being told how important a content strategy really is.This book brings both worlds together with class by actually connecting the dots between writers, management, and decision-makers.It should be read by anyone that has heard of content strategies but that has become confused with the mutlitude of information out there, because it just simply makes sense of it all.