Content is king. If you are in the web business you’ve probably heard that statement more times than you can count. And, if you’re like me, you mostly believe it but know that you don’t have the resources to pull it off. I mean, king is pretty top ranking.
Kristina Halvorson in her book, Content Strategy for the Web, breaks down in simple language exactly how to get control of your content and turn it into the king.
Her advice, think (well, agonize) over content this way:
- Learn — why your content needs a strategy.
- Plan — what content you have now and how it got there.
- Create — how you’re going to get new content that drives your message.
- Govern — making sure your great content stays that way.
This book is not for the faint-at-heart. Making your content king requires persistence, discipline and obsessing over details that are mostly ignored by web site owners. In the end I found that Kristina’s book gives such clear instructions that even an amateur like me could implement many of her ideas and concepts. I was able to apply many of these concepts during our web site redesign in 2009. Approaching content as a discipline gave me resources to create a document for our web site that systematically outlined the pages I needed, layout for each page, and an ongoing recording of updates and SEO data.
Believe content is king? Turn your belief into reality by following the strategies outlined in Content Strategy for the Web.
