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To make content that’s relevant to people, we choose the words and sentence structures that will best contribute to achieving our communication goals. The voice should be based on a deep understanding of the intentions of the content creators, as well as the needs of the content consumers. This approach can be captured in an editorial styleguide providing guidelines and examples that will help others craft content and messages in a similar voice.
To make content more useful to machines, we structure it and define standard elements so that the content can be used and reused dynamically. We write taxonomies and add metadata so that the content can be identified more easily. We create relationships between content so that it has more context and can support a variety of complex functions.
To make content more efficient to produce, we evaluate and recommend solutions for creating, enhancing, organizing, and using content, including content management systems, metadata tools, search engines, and faceted navigation applications. We establish business rules and workflows that will optimize the use of these tools and systems.
To make content comprehensive, we determine content requirements for a site, inventory existing content, identify gaps, evaluate possible sources for additional material, and manage the process of getting that content into production. Given the right background or source material, we can write labels, overviews, or even longer content if needed.
And don’t be surprised if, in the course of doing these tasks and creating these deliverables, those old philosophical questions pop up again to complicate seemingly straightforward issues. Here’s another brain teaser for you: “What distinguishable qualities indicate that some content items will be as relevant in three months as they are today, while other content will be out-of-date in a few hours?” (Hint: There’s no single correct answer.)
"Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design
