As a freelance web designer, I talk to quite a few people that want their content published online. But what I rarely have someone tell me is that they have high aspirations for their content.  Rarely do the clients feel their content is special and that it is carrying their brand and their experience with it.

So, the challenge of a freelancer (at least what I feel what one challenge is) is to present not only their front facing web presence well, but to help build and strengthen their brand through their content, even if they didn’t think of this when they came to me for a web site.

If you or someone you know is getting ready to unleash content on the world, what guides the creation efforts? To quote a bad song, what’s it all about?  What content will this website deliver? And everyone wants to add their opinion when you get to asking them. It’s kind of like debating what content should be on the homepage. Which is another thing: what content should be on the homepage?

This leads you to look at Content Strategy—that combination of Web Savvy, Information Architecture and editorial process that adds up to something infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. Ok, that sounds all smart, but I know my clients still really want to “know” what is content strategy? In a nutshell, Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content. Make sense? I know, kind of scholarly, yet kind of simplistic, but look at it this way: If Information Architecture helps us say “where” content lives, Content Strategy tells us decide “when” it lives. The combination helps us as well as our clients understand “why” it’s there in the first place.

If it is really doing its job then content strategy defines:

  • key themes and messages
  • recommended topics
  • content purpose (how content will bridge the space between audience needs and business requirements)
  • metadata frameworks and related content attributes
  • search engine optimization (SEO)

When I talk to a client about content, I ask a lot of questions about how their business works and what messages they want to get across on the web site. I look at (and sometimes create) the wireframes and the proposed information architecture of the website, consider interaction instructions, and then determine how best to deliver this message.

Anyway, it’s a fascinating topic and one I had thought of recently after going over the book Content Strategy for the Web. A great description of this book: “Content Strategy for the Web will do for Web content what Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think did for Web usability.” – Interactions Magazine.

It is a good read if you have some time and it really makes you think. Which is what you need to do early on when a client approaches you about content for their site.