Search the web and you’ll find a growing list of jobs for content strategists, but what do they actually do?
Content strategy is really just the latest term for something many of us have been doing for a long time – planning, managing, and developing all of the text images, videos, and other content that goes into creating modern, multimedia websites, blogs, newsletters, social media strategies and more.
The best content strategists are comfortable wearing many hats, but mostly we are:
- part editor
- part producer
- part project manager
- part information architect
- part quality control officer
- part content wrangler
- but above all else – most of us love a good story
That doesn’t mean technology isn’t important to us – it’s just that some of us think it’s about time that web designers put as much time into the front end – the words, images, and multimedia on a website, as the back end – the databases, HTML, and other code that make up a website work.
Like me, many content strategists started their professions in print or broadcast – former managing editors and producers make great content strategists, but you do have to understand what makes the digital world different
I like to call myself a journalist turned geek — I spent the first part of my career as a reporter and editor, but I’ve been developing websites – and even writing code — for more than a decade now and I truly believe that the best content strategists understand at least the basics of technology, as well as the content
No matter what your background, one of the first challenges is simply mastering all of the vocabulary. Terms like: content matrix, and multivariate testing can sound intimidating at first, but if you’re a word person (and most good content strategists are), then you should be pleased to learn that you can catch up with all of the buzz words pretty quickly.
Discover what it takes to be a content strategist, why it’s such a hot new job category, and how to think more strategically about the content on your website and all your digital media endeavors, in my new course at Lynda.com, Developing an Effective Content Strategy for Your Website.
Get a free 7-day trial subscription to Lynda.com by visiting http://www.lynda.com/trial/JanineWarner
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