Content Strategy For The Web (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
I read this book in 2010. Now I am reading the 2nd edition for my UX Book Club. Times have changed. I have changed. I look forward to re-discovering and re-exploring ideas from this book. I'm going to read it on Readmill.This is an important book - a must-read if you are in any way into content strategy. I call this an umbrella book. It's the overarching one to read, especially at a high-level. It has some of the arguments to bring to the C-level. It also has the planning info for getting started with your strategy. There are loads of checklists, which means there is actually more work for you. You don't just read this and walk off and do your strategy thing. You need to sit down and think of YOUR situation as you go through the questions. What answers or challenges do you have in your particular situation. Some of my co-readers did wonder whether this was aimed especially at larger orgs. Places with thousands of employees, e.g. How would the tiny place - little company with 1 webmaster be able to apply this? Like many of this type of book, there are not always tailor-made solutions for each person's situation. You need to figure out how to adapt it to YOUR situation. Which means you may not like the book because it makes you work. But that is what is required of you - work. We're talking strategy here and that requires a lot of sweat, at least the mental kind. I was a bit surprised to have a different type of quadrant in this version. It was a people and content quadrant (you'll understand when you read the book). I realised, during our book club discussions, that that was the difference from the previous version IMO (and from my feeble memory). There is emphasis on the people factor and that is an important distinction. You need the relationships to be in place for any of this to work properly. Maybe all practioners need to go get a psychology degree? :) Seriously, you need to get everyone involved and in a way that makes sense for them, and that is more hard work on your part.Again, perhaps obviously, this is a book that you put on your shelf as a reference book. You can read it once now, but you don't do everything at once. Therefore, you will come back to it again and again as you proceed on your content strategy journey. Excellent. Short, but covers all the key points. And Halvorson isn't afraid to mention other books for when you need to take a deeper dive. Cogent, coherent, doable, practical advice. Bottom line: content has to be a key area of focus all the way through when it comes to web development. Best bit: a chart that shows what tends to happen (negatively) to web content when certain areas (such as Marketing or IT or UI or Operations) have monopoly control over the content.
What do You think about Content Strategy For The Web (2009)?
Great starter book to learn how to build content strategy from the groun up.
—dawn
It's fun to read a book for school that has some humor in it for a change.
—pariss
