The practice of Content Strategy
principles, tools, and methods
Next session begins May 7 | Register now
Get expert guidance and hands-on experience with the fundamental tools and methods of content strategy, a planning discipline for digital content of all kinds.
Whether you’re new to content strategy, transitioning from a related role, or already working as a content strategist, this course will deepen your understanding of the practice of content strategy.
Why take this course?
Speak confidently to the business value, role, and key methods of content strategy.
Manage content-heavy work like website redesigns, product rollouts, and rebrands with more confidence and clarity.
Move forward. Get unstuck and stop ‘content emergencies’ from derailing projects, frustrating clients, and demoralizing your team.
Who is this for?
Anyone who wants to build a robust understanding of what content strategy truly is and how it can help people and organizations.
Content strategy is industry and audience agnostic. Its methods and tools work equally well for large enterprises, new startups, NGOs, associations, B2B and B2C marketing, and even internal and employee-facing content.
How this course can help…
Take the lead.
Build a robust understanding of what content strategy is and how it can help people and organizations. Increase your confidence discussing content strategy in job interviews or during project planning.
Explore the opportunities of a career in content strategy. Gain skills that are useful far beyond UX and the Silicon Valley.
Or, take the lead with a content project where you already are.
Upskill your team in content planning and management to reduce incorrect, out-of-date, ineffective, or even non-compliant content.
Build momentum for major content projects like re-platforming or retiring a website, combining websites after a merger or acquisition, and overhauling your site and services to be more user-centered.
Improve the quality and usability of intranets, internal wikis, knowledge bases, and employee websites.
Set client projects up for greater success.
Learn approaches you can train clients on to help them prepare and write their own content for website and UX projects.
Unlock new markets and project possibilities. Expand your competency with content beyond marketing, advertising, and social.
Learn approaches that help keep websites focused on the needs of your audience, and make them more resistant to meddling (or muddling) by narrowly-focused stakeholders.
Better understand the people and process side of content management — because your CMS can’t do it alone.
Find a way forward and act more strategically, even when your audience feels impossibly broad.
Balance the needs of current and prospective members on a single digital property with greater success.
Increase the value of your expert, member-contributed, and thought leadership content by keeping it aligned with your content strategy and business strategy.
Take the stress out of content calendars and editorial planning.
Calendar and availability
Course details
Questions this course can help you answer
- What is the business value of content strategy?
- Our content is bad, what should we do?
- We have a big content project, where should we start?
- What does a content strategist do all day?
- What does it mean to have a content strategy? How do I create one?
- How do we decide what content to create? Or to delete?
- Where should content come in on a project?
- How can we sound more like one cohesive brand with so many different writers and teams?
- How is content strategy different from content design? From UX writing? From content marketing?
- What skills do you need as a content strategist? What kinds of people thrive in the role?
Overview of topics
- CS in context: UX Writing, Information Architecture, Content Design, Content Operations
- Content strategy definitions and useful understandings
- Origins and influences on content strategy
- Key methods and deliverables for setting strategy
- Tools and methods for describing content workflows, ownership, and governance
- Content strategy is not content marketing + why it matters
- Key skills for content strategists
- How to approach a website project (e.g. a “redesign”)
- Introduction to playbooks and workshops
- In-depth: Strategy statements
- In-depth: Prioritized audiences
- In-depth: Page tables and content templates
- Introduction to content testing methods
- Editorial tools for content planning and production
- Establishing and managing a product or brand voice
- Common roles and specializations in content work
Prerequisites
You’ll get the most out of this workshop if you’ve been part of a company or organization that has to balance competing audience and business priorities with a digital property like a website or app.
There are no specific prerequisite educational requirements. Classes and materials are delivered in English.
Curriculum Notes
This course was designed by Scott Kubie.