Much of the information that I engaged with this week and found surprising came from the interview with Kevin P. Nichols, author of the book “Enterprise Content Strategy: A Project Guide.” His journey into content strategy is an interesting one, and his various stories about how he applies content strategy in his everyday work have really driven home for me the idea that content strategy is a really ubiquitous field. I think one of the most surprising things for me in this interview was his focus on user experience and accessibility.
While I know that accessibility is a major consideration in content creation, I had not realized that it was also a matter of legal compliance as well in many cases. It’s really interesting to me that content strategy as a field envelops everything from these major legal obligations on content to seemingly minor things like visual design. There’s so much weight to the job of content strategy that I never considered; it’s so much more than what I previously envisioned as a process of planning how to make “good” content more effective.
I feel that what was most valuable for my own career goals was Nichols’ story of how he began work in content strategy in standardizing educational content for presentation. As someone who wants to be a professor, I don’t think that I’ve really thought much about how to design my course content in such a way that it’s useful not only to students, but also my colleagues. Even academics don’t work alone – courses are planned and executed in such a way that any number of instructors could present material to students.
I think that the lessons that Nichols presents in his text and the lessons in this course can be applied not just to industry technical writing, but to any sort of content creation. Curricula are content like anything else, and like any other content they need to be applicable to and useful for different audiences. I think that listening to Nichols talk about his experiences has helped me to realize that my future content has just as much of a need for the application of content strategy as anything written in a business context.
Joseph L Meyers 