Adventures in Content Strategy
"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." Benjamin Franklin
“The secret is not to go to sleep until you’ve written your words for the day. You might be sleep deprived, but you’ll finish your novel.” Matt Cutts, Try something new for 30 days As part of my manager training through Alphabet, someone recommended I watch Matt Cutts’ inspirational talk “Try Something New for 30…
Working at an Alphabet company has its perks. One of those perks is management training! And in both management and content strategy, we use content as guidance to help people reach their goals. It’s funny to realize that my first role as a manager was in 2012. I remember asking my manager at the time…
By 2025 we’re expected to have a billion new internet users. Many of these NBUs (Next Billion Users) will have low literacy. What will this mean for UX writers and content strategists? How can we best communicate with NBUs with low literacy? Why will NBUs have low literacy? The last billion users of the internet…
Yesterday the New York Times daily newsletter The Morning shared their perspective on vaccine communication. The long and the short of it: when health experts spread mixed messages, they lose trust. It sounds obvious when you put it that way. But of course no health expert intended to give mixed messages. The real issue is…
Back at the end of 2019 I thought to myself “I’ve read a lot of difficult, complex books. In 2020 I just want to read fun books!” Then March happened. I actually couldn’t read at all for a few weeks, and when I started reading again I could barely focus on Star Wars books, let…
In 2019 the UN released a report showing gender bias in AI. 71% more targeted awful things said to female assistants than not. In other words, the robots were sexist. But are robots really sexist? Of course not. Robots are products, and they do what their builders (consciously or unconsciously) tell them to do. Why…
In a recent webinar I learned how sensitivity editors review fiction books. I found myself wondering: as part of inclusive UX, how might we incorporate cultural sensitivity editing? Inclusivity is a broad term. It means making sure that a device or content or system works for everyone. Specifically, people who are often excluded or marginalized….
I sometimes hear a content strategist joke about being a “content therapist”. But it’s not so far off! Most of content strategy isn’t about writing. It’s about listening. In a way, we are (unlicensed) therapists. Content therapists! In other words, we need to understand how people feel in order to communicate with them. How we…
As we approach the end of the year, many organizations are having their annual conversation around design freezes and technical debt. This year I found myself wondering: why don’t we have end-of-year freezes to spend time on content debt? What is “Debt”? Technical debt typically refers to work that piles up and never has a…
Sorry, I can’t help with that: Content strategy for chatbots, by Michael J. Metts “People love AI”. No they don’t! People love doing more meaningful things than managing their utilities through an app. Business people love being able to say that they work on AI. So where do these requests come from? Will a chatbot…
