Adventures in Content Strategy
"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." Benjamin Franklin
How Content Design Shapes Chewy’s Customer Experience, by Allison Bland Chewy cares about pets. Allison wanted to make sure Chewy’s content reflected that, and made it a joy to shop, and not an annoyance. Content Design at Chewy What does content design look like at Chewy? The biggest question Allison initially got when she joined…
Write Better, Faster, and with More Authority, by Angela Gorden UX writers can do more, and be more authoritative with three ways of working. They have 3 super powers. 1. Product thinking You write better with product thinking because you think beyond buttons. You write faster, because you have a holistic approach and consistent guidelines….
How UX Writing is like Standup Comedy (and also how it’s not), by Vivek Sri Vivek first wanted to be a standup comedian. He uses basic comedy rules to improve UX writing. Premises, punches, and p* A joke starts with a premise, but then the punch is the twist. But UX writing shouldn’t have a…
Don’t Just Translate, Boost your UX Content With Transcreation, by Anna Potapova When McDonald’s started the “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign, the Chinese version was “I just love it and in Russia “That is what I love.” Why is it different? China and Russia don’t have the tense that “I’m lovin’ it” is written in, in…
UX for Toddlers and Other Humans, by Lindsey Thomas With a toddler, Lindsey has had to rethink how she communicates. 1. Set expectations For her son, she says “first we’re going to eat breakfast, then we’ll watch 1 episode of Yo Gabba Gabba, and then go to daycare.” For end-users we also want to break…
Program Design is Obscenity, by Madeline Grdina Good design is a moving target, but (like obscenity) we know it when we see it. But how? How do we recognize what we can’t define? Invisibility It’s popular to say that good design is invisible. “Less is more”. Yes, bad design may get in the way of…
How to Win Over Designers and Influence Engineers, by Chelsea Larsson At Zendesk the content strategists are considered designers. It’s pretty close to the ideal. But it wasn’t always this way. Two years ago content was being left out of meetings, and Chelsea was both doing her content work and a salesperson – selling the…
When I think about a common snack food, I think of apples and peanut butter. But in many cultures peanut butter is a bizarre food, not a common snack. So in a recent localization conversation, a coworker asked “should we remove all examples?” The answer is no. Localize your examples! As we localize to different…
Last week was Mental Health Awareness week. I guess I missed it, so this is belated. Though, to paraphrase The Bloggess, “wouldn’t it be awesome to just have to be aware of mental health one week a year?” (Apparently there’s also a month in May.) Anyhow, many people see weeks like this as an opportunity…
As a content strategist it’s important that I think beyond how I write, or what I think is “normal”. It’s my job to hyper-analyze my own work, so as to catch my own unintentional biases. It can be a bit crazy making. Sometimes I feel like I’m just guessing! And how do I know where…
