We live in an era when healthcare is getting more complex, not less. Health literacy is low, due to a combination of the complexity of the system, the complexity of the human body, and the state many people are in when they get to their providers.
Patients and their families or friends are stressed, scared, and struggling to focus at the times they most need to use our websites, read our articles, or interact with our devices. This can lead to anything from higher costs to misused prescriptions.
Where do content creators come in? In our digital world, content strategy can be the key to educating and guiding patients and families, helping them to better work with their healthcare providers.
Marli Mesibov works as a content strategy lead at life sciences firm Verily and in a recent member’s call, she introduced us to the concept of health literacy and shared examples of how content strategy can impact health.
What might 2024 bring?
What happens when you bring together leaders from different industries who are working on different fields?
Yesterday our digital transformation friends at diconium in Hamburg hosted our sold out annual Christmas member's meeting, where we had an afternoon of learning and networking across the different fields we cover incl design leadership, employee experience, digital strategy and product management.
As the legendary advisor and influential consultant Ram Charan famously said:
"Listening isn't just hearing; it requires the willingness to entertain other viewpoints - especially opposing ones"
Like a miniature version of our 3-day Aarhus conference, we made it through 10 lightning talks in a packed afternoon with quite some thought provoking perspectives. In between we had a bit time for reflections and the conversation continued over some good food.
Read moreBias in content strategy
In the past year Marli Mesibov has done significant research into chatbots, conversational interfaces, and voice UI. What she has found shows racism and bias in many areas of automated content. The reason is clear: an algorithm is only as strong as the strategy, taxonomy, and user testing that creates it.
In order to develop AI that is delightful, it must first be unbiased. We can do that in the people we hire to develop our products, and the ways in which we test and create the initial content.
In a recent member call, Marli reviewed concrete tactics for developing unbiased AI. Marli is Content Strategy Lead at Verily Life Sciences in Cambridge, MA and also a past Boye conference speaker.
Read moreExpert of the month: CJ Walker
“Great. Now you can ask ‘would you like fries with that ?’ in seven languages”
This is what CJ Walker’s family and friends jokingly told her when she graduated as a linguist. Back then in the ’90s, the job market wasn’t exactly booming with demand for people trained at modelling and documenting language, but much has fortunately happened since then.
Following extensive work on user manuals and technical communication jobs at Alcatel, HP, the European Union, and Microsoft, in 2007 she founded Firehead, to focus exclusively on content recruitment and training. Since then, she has actively helped shape the content strategy community, trained and placed people in content jobs around the world.
She also helped organise the very first content strategy conference in Paris in 2010 and is our expert of the month.
Read moreWhat’s going on with content?
This is not just any random piece of content you might find on the Web. You probably found it by clicking a link from another site or from an email, but I assure you that I wrote it.
Just to clarify, given the huge rise in content, much of it written by machines, this piece of content is actually written by a human and based on a collaboration led by Angus Edwardson from GatherContent and several of our peer group members who work with content and content creators every day.
As you’ll see, content is not just content and while this specific piece of content might look timeless on your screen (you didn’t print it, did you?), much is changing when it comes to how we work with content and how we consume content.
Read moreExpert of the month: Michael Andrews
Content strategy in 2021 is changing as we are improving our understanding of both writing for the web and how content is consumed in today’s world
When I recently talked to Michael Andrews, I wasn’t surprised that we would talk about content, but I was reminded of how the explosion in channels is having a big impact on content. Michael shared his latest thinking on how customers are beefing up their content game and how we are moving away from web pages towards content as a living system.
Michael is Content Strategy Evangelist at Kentico Software, where he advises global enterprises on how to innovate their content practices and operations. Today he is based in Arlington, Virginia, but he has also lived and worked in India, UK, New Zealand and Italy. He is our expert of the month.
Read moreCreating a content design practice
Great content doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It gets bogged down in teams, organizations, silos, and process.
Beth Dunn is a content leader, speaker, coach and author of the new book Cultivating Content Design. In the book, Beth helps you break the vacuum seal and bring unity and joy back to content. She gives you the power to fundamentally change your organization’s approach to great content—with the tools and team you already have.
Read moreContent design drives great customer experience at Mastercard
Content design and how it helps deliver successful digital products at Mastercard was the topic of our recent member conference call. Heading up the Content Design practice at Mastercard's Tech Hub in New York City Melinda Belcher shared her perspectives and made a fitting comparison to the UX space as a part of the conversation.
Her challenge is delivering content at scale and content design is clearly an emerging term that’s resonating with many. Let’s look at how they do it at Mastercard and what you might learn from it.
Read moreMaking Content Strategy Stick
Content strategy has been around for a while as a term, but personally I do think that the pandemic has shown the importance of communications and specifically content.
As Hilary Marsh said in our recent member conference call:
Read moreContent is everyone’s work
We can’t rely on the content strategy of the past
There’s good news at the moment: Digital strategies and playbooks which used to be just gathering dust are now being put to good use. Also, silos which have so far made internal collaboration difficult are coming down. And perhaps most importantly, the importance of the digital mindset is no longer questioned.
Ashley Budd from Cornell eloquently summed it up our member conference call yesterday:
Read moreWe can’t rely on the content strategy of the past
Content strategy meets product strategy
"Content" can become a headache or an afterthought in many projects—but it doesn't have to be that way. In our recent conference call, Katie Del Angel from Shopify shared her perspective as a product content strategist at Shopify.
From defining scope to gaining team alignment, developing concepts and solutions to ensuring scalable implementation, the tools of content strategy can help product leaders every step of the way during projects.
Whether you have a content strategist on your team or not, having content strategy techniques in mind and knowing when to use them can make product management smoother for everyone!
Thinking beyond the words: the complexities of content strategy
Life as a content professional is so much more than writing. It’s moved way beyond the words.
The words will always be a large part of what I do, whether that’s writing, editing, or reviewing. But increasingly, much more now needs to happen before the words are published, and again after.
Read moreHappy editors make better content
Too often, content models are developed with no consideration of the system in which they have to operate. This leads to a horrible editorial experience, which is one of the overlooked topics in today’s digital workplace.
In Real World Content Modelling, the new book by Deane Barker, he examines how content actually gets modeled inside a content management system.
Read moreHow does your CEO know your content strategy is successful?
How does content strategy deliver on issues CEOs care about? The best way to find the answer to this question is to ask the CEOs themselves.
CEOs focus on measurable business results, smooth processes, and confirmation that the organization is using its resources most effectively. And content plays a significant role in all three of these.
Read moreDesigning Connected Content - a 2019 update
With digital content published across more channels than ever before, how can you make yours easy to find, use, and share? Is your content ready for the next wave of content platforms and devices?
It has been almost 2 years since Carrie Hane published the Designing Connected Content book together with Mike Atherton. In our recent member conference call, Carrie shared learnings from after the book went to print.