Review: The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane

The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This short book is a good overview of content strategy. It presents the concepts and includes many references for deeper reading. I’m a web designer who creates websites for small businesses, and those sites are too small to warrant a sophisticated content strategy, but this book was still worth reading for the fundamentals such as making content useful, concise, and supported.

I liked the quote from Kristina Halvorson in Content Strategy for the Web:

"...online, you don't have a captive audience. You have a multi-tasking, distracted, ready-to-leave-your-site-at-any-time audience who has very specific goals in mind. If your content doesn't meet those goals, and quickly, they will leave."

I liked Kissane's advice to "Act as user advocates...reduce distractions in sidebars, fight ads that obstruct content, and give readers the equivalent of good light and a quiet room." He also makes a good point that content strategists must turn soft, aspirational goals into specific, measurable success criteria.

Good Content

"Good Content is Useful"

"Define a clear, specific purpose for each piece of content; evaluate content against this purpose."

"Good Content is Concise"

"Omit needless content."
Why is too much content bad? It makes everything more difficult to find, and results in lower quality content.
Common needless content: mission statements, press releases, long feature lists, rambling video and audio.

"Good Content is Supported"

"Publish no content without a support plan."
"Information published online is a live green plant." Content must be posted, updated, and removed as appropriate.

Storytelling

The inverted pyramid: order information from most to least important to the reader.
5 Ws and an H: what, who, when, where, why, how.
Show, don't tell: demonstrate, don't describe.

OptimWise - Web Design & Development Simpsonville/Greenville SC