Over the past few years, seemingly out of nowhere, there has arisen a new discipline devoted to the concept of having a strategy around th content on your site or in your publication. There are conference devoted to content strategy, books being published, blog posts bein written, and careers being built around it.
But here's a little secret for you. Ready? Content strategy is nothing new.
Shocking, isn't it?
The fact is that the very same goals—putting the right content in front of the right audience at the right time—were just as valid in an analog as a digital world. In fact, when you think about it, storytellers in the oral tradition spinning yarns around the campfire had to be just as conscious of who their audience was, what the audience wanted to hear, and how it could be presented in the most engaging and memorable way.
Think of your favorite book or magazine. For that publication to exist, someone had to
Identify an audience
Select a topic/theme/point of view/personality
Source or develop content
Work with designers to make it the presentation attractive and readable
Determine length, format, presentation of the stories
Make content easy to find (add a TOC or an index)
Oversee production
Publish it
Sound familiar? Change magazine to website and you have the breeding ground for a whole new crop of people who now have a spiffy new title. But some of us have been doing it all along.