Book Review: Content Strategy Connecting the Dots for an Epic Win

Content Strategy: Connecting the Dots Between Business, Brand, and Benefits, by Rahel Anne Bailie and Noz Urbina

 “Highly recommended to anyone looking to take their existing business-critical content life-cycle to the next level.”

I have a habit of relating most things in my life to video games and board games (some people call this gamification). I find that this way of thinking is especially relevant on a professional level. My quest—as someone who produces and manages content within a content lifecycle—is to overcome obstacles, to complete these tasks, and to achieve my epic win:

• Have content recognized as a business asset
• Continuously demonstrate a positive return on investment (ROI)
• Make content more valuable to users, by continuously improving the user experience (UX)
• Make content adaptable enough to be future friendly (multi-channel publishing)
• Leverage existing technologies (markup and semantics) and industry best practices (structured content and reuse models)
• Use content assets to manage risks, wherever possible
• Implement a repeatable process for implementing, managing and growing these tasks

Anyone who’s ever played a game without a strategy probably realized they should have had one. Sure, you might win the game or eventually complete your quest, but at what cost? Why spend 100 hours accomplishing something that you could have accomplished in 50; or why do something wrong three times when you can do it right the first time? This is where a strategy guide would come in handy.

The snapshot review: Content Strategy: Connecting the Dots Between Business, Brand, and Benefits is the strategy guide I was looking for (weighing in at 383 pages for the eBook version). It contains just about everything you would ever need to know to get started developing a comprehensive content strategy, in any industry, and for any type of content.  Authors Rahel Bailie and Noz Urbina have put a lot of their thought leadership and practical experience into a book that serves its readers well in achieving that epic win. As a gamer, I found it easy to interpret the book’s content:

• Introduction (to business-critical content and content strategy)
• Your first day in the field (why having a content strategy is important, how it can add value to your organization)
• Tactics (why content should be treated as a critical business asset and the importance of ROI and UX)
• Resource management (a close look at what content is, and why this resource is so critical)
• Tools, equipment, and crafting (the importance of using the right tools and technologies to create and manage content)
• To battle (developing and implementing a content strategy)
• Glossary

Overall, I’m really impressed with this book. As someone who’s worked in the technical communications field for over ten years, most of the terminology, strategies, processes, and technologies etc. were already familiar to me. The information is well-focused, well-organized and easy-to-read, a trifecta for professionals who have packed schedules and a need to advance their skills and knowledge.

The authors clearly state that this is not a ‘how to’ book. I tend to agree with that; however, there are several case studies that did contain valuable ‘how to’ type information. But the real value, I found, was how the authors brought everything together to explain why content lifecycle and content strategy are important, why you shouldn’t have one without the other, and then listed all the things that need to be considered.

Since content strategies come with often-hefty price tags, being able to being able to sell your sponsor on this idea is crucial. Noz and Rahel present the business case for content strategy in clear and compelling terms. They also manage to bridge the gap between the technical side of things (XML, DITA, semantics, and structured content) and the business side of things (ROI, risk management, and brand building).

I recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in content strategy or anyone who works with content now (with or without an existing strategy in place). I recently noticed that content strategy (+16%) was one of only two skills on my LinkedIn profile that were identified as trending upwards (the other one was online publishing). So jump on this trend, buy this book now, and plot a strategy towards achieving your epic win.