Predicate | The Day 2 Problem: A Tour of Editorial Strategy

Editor's Notes

1. Hello, Fort McPherson! I fell asleep in the barber chair. True story.
2. I’ve been working as a titled content strategist for about 5 years and been in professional services and interactive media for 10. The editors of A List Apart asked Kristina Halvorson and I to introduce the field of content strategy to its readers about a year and a half ago. The rest is history--but let’s have a quick refresher.
3. To the content strategist, the history of content online is essentially a history of shovelware.
4. Unwritten: don’t treat content as an afterthought in your web projects.
5. What’s the role of content strategy--intelligent, structured content--and editorial strategy in advancing from prototype to product? What about packaging, producing and selling it? How will digital publishers expand their current editorial properties in a way that maintains (and broadens) their relevance online? They’ll look to something called editorial strategy. And so will anyone looking to effectively engage users with ongoing content production.
6. He has said similarly that “treating content as a high-value asset requires a publishing approach”.
7. It’s true. And it’s a good subject for the next time we get together. Every problem with content is about being effective, relevant and remarkable with content. The same is true of publishing. Content strategy, like information science, is descended from publishing. Content strategy is a form of product development. We are situated between PRODUCT and plumbing.
8. EDITORIAL STRATEGY The strategy and tactics underpinning a digital property’s content offering at launch and beyond. It is a product strategy for establishing the right mix of at-launch content production and aggregation for all content types, including directional postlaunch recommendations. This document informs the Content Specification.
9. STYLE GUIDE* and EDITORIAL CALENDAR* are cousin deliverables aimed at operationalizing content activities. The Style Guide is a detailed production guide for all content modules intended for content owners and authors. The editorial calendar is dashboard tool for planning, tracking and measuring content production, delivery and related analytics. The former, often paired with creative design specifications (e.g., image sizes), consolidates house editorial standards as they relate to the new platform. This can include detailed workflows and standardized processes, a governance model for various content types and even walkthroughs and training related to new tools and process improvements. At its most extensive, this document can double as a metadata schema or asset management guidelines. The latter, combined with a programming matrix, acts as a management tool for rationalizing content production requirements for editorial management and for aligning content activities (in multiple channels) to business and brand priorities through a unified framework.