Content Strategy's cousin is Dramaturgy. (thoughts on "Content Strategy for the Web")
When I was in theatre school, my teachers would always tell me, "know your audience." Years later, when I became involved with digital media and content creation for the web, the mantra was "know your audience." Tonight we spent a delightful 90 minutes discussing "Content Strategy for the Web" with its author Kristina Halvorson.
"Content Strategy for the Web" resonated for me, and it wasn't until the end of the book that I realized why. Kristina is a playwright. She has a foundation in dramaturgy. Great plays result from great scripts. Great scripts result from great writing and testing with an audience. Rehearsals often result in re-writes to fine tune a new play's rhythm and pace. "Know your audience."
To me, web development is very similar to theatre. Perhaps that's why more and more theatre people find a home in the web and champion the use of similar processes for its development.
Right off the bat, Kristina starts with a phrase that I heard (and used) during rehearsal. "Less is more." Content is about getting to the point and clarifying intentions. Actors are trained to clearly define their sub-text to bring clear communication to their audience. Playwrights must take their plays through a process of excruciating dramaturgical dissection before the surviving bits can be assembled into a leaner production ready whole.
As we read on, Kristina looks at why today's web content has problems. Content is subjective, there is no right or wrong about it in some cases. It's not owned by anyone, it's a play being written by the actors or the stagehands, or the audience. The rush to get content published has resulted in the equivalent of "B" movie scripts being passed off as Masterpiece Theatre. Well written web content is the exception, not the rule.
Since the web audience is unable to launch rotten tomatoes at the website's content, web content creators are ignorant of their downfall. Lowered expectations result in lowered production values. According to Kristina, good content strategy is a commodity. This is in stark contrast to dramaturgy where rotten tomatoes were very real, and were launched both figuratively and literally.
Write what you know. This is a simple strategy for playwrights. When it comes to web production though, it is rare that the web content strategist can seek out only those content projects they know. To remedy this, Kristina discusses the role of a Content Audit. Both quantitative and qualtative audits can bring the web production team closer to the content inner story. This then leads to the analysis.
Content analysis gives us an understanding of the context for that data. Now we begin to bring the writer back in and create the story framework for the content. What is the journey you want to take your audience on? Is it to buy something? Learn something? Take action with something? That is journey is based on the strategy. This is what every dramaturg delves into with a script. Finding that story's backbone is what drive all the rest of what scenes survive. So it is with a Web Content Strategist and their much needed content strategy.
At this point in the book, we start to move into writing strategies for groups. Kristina discusses workflow, writing strategies, delivery, measurement, and maintenance in the ensuing chapters. I won't write a syopsis of these chapters as they are straighforward and I encourage you to seek out this book and read it. I feel it is up there with Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" in terms of walking its talk.
At the end of the evening, I said "I have a background in dramaturgy, and I am amused that it would be preposterous to design a set and THEN write a script, but this is pretty much the accepted practice in today's web development."
"Content Strategy for the Web" is full of important ideas for every member of the web team. The ideas in this book are universal and vital to the further refinement of the web content we create and publish. "Content is King!" isn't good enough anymore. "Well made content is King!" is the new rallying cry of the Web Content Strategist.
(Thanks to Marie Hohner for an excellent synopsis of the book.)
