Content Strategists

You can tell I follow most of SDL Tridion's thought leadership online because you've likely seen me comment on a few of the many Tridion blogs.

But I also follow practitioners, consultants, and industry gurus with broader or more in-depth Content Management System expertise. Here's an overview of a few great strategists that can help you craft "content" implementations that addresses your business, technical, and most importantly, visitor needs.

Robert Rose

Most recently, I've caught Robert Rose's SDL presentation at the Customer Experience Summit in London. His challenge-the-status-quo presentation style and sense of humor are backed up with very very familiar CMS stories. He makes a strong point that content is an asset that deserves to be managed strategically.

Highlights from his video include:

• 12:00 on Silos in Marketing where we've "basically thrown teams at stuff" including Social, Social CRM, Web, Web content, E-commerce team, E-business strategy, etc.
• At 22:00 he suggests a team for facilitating your content in the form of an editorial board or center of excellence.
• The story about "42 clicks to publish something out to the web" at 32:00 was awesome because he points out that you can call the vendor. Customers wonder, "We can do that?
• You might chuckle or wince at the point that RFPs come back with all 5's.

He suggests individuals should have the ability to change their details, one of the points I've made separately in my "don't be creepy" post.

Gerry McGovern

If you're struggling with massive amounts of content and don't know where to start, consider determining your top tasks, seeing if your CMS can poop (Tridion can!), and following industry thought leader Gerry McGovern.

Practical, evidence-based approaches to content management create business, organizational, and customer wins. The long tail may work great for selling products, but pay attention to the Stranger's Long Neck (it's on my reading list) in terms of your content strategy.

Kristina Halvorson & Melissa Rach

Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson & Melissa Rach was one of the first books I've read on the bigger content strategy picture. I'll share a quick "why you need to read it" post soon.

And More...

And I'm finding more content strategists:

• Seth Gottlieb has 15 years in several CMS roles and blogs on the sweet spot where "Content Meets Technology"
• Jonathon Colman, former Principal Experience Architect (yes, there are such roles) at REI turned Content Strategist at Facebook, has a great collection of presentations (check out "Why Our Content Sucks"). If you think my list is a bit much, check out his Epic List of Content Strategy Resources.
• Deane Barker also has years of CMS industry experience. And he's been sharing since before many of my colleagues (including myself) were even practitioners.

Tying this back to my favorite CMS, Deane Barker has an interview on North Patrol describing the history and challenges of Content Management Systems. Be sure to read to the end, then contemplate the Future of Content from an SDL Tridion Product Management perspective.

In your CMS projects, in additional to the functional whats and technical hows, consider or even start with the strategic whys.