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Small Steps to Content Strategy

Small Steps to Content Strategy. Who Am I?. Neil Perlin - Hyper/Word Services. Internationally recognized content consultant. Help clients create effective, efficient, flexible content in anything from hard-copy to mobile. STC’s lead W3C rep – ’02 – ‘05.

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Small Steps to Content Strategy

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  1. Small Steps to Content Strategy

  2. Who Am I? • Neil Perlin - Hyper/Word Services. • Internationally recognized content consultant. • Help clients create effective, efficient, flexible content in anything from hard-copy to mobile. • STC’s lead W3C rep – ’02 – ‘05. • Certified – Flare, RoboHelp, Mimic, ViziApps.

  3. Why Have a “Content Strategy”? Big Issues in Small Steps Contents

  4. Why Have a “Content Strategy”?

  5. Shifting Environment • We’re in an era of increasing flux: • Writing in relative decline vs. other forms of comm. • “Content” being created by more sources in more forms than ever before. • More single sourcing to more different outputs. • Technology advancing rapidly, with brand new things coming.

  6. The Response • Working under these conditions quickly, cost-effectively, and responsively means defining and formalizing how we create and use content – a strategy. • The “winging it” days are ending. • May also help tech comm justify its existence by participating in and even helping direct the larger strategy.

  7. Why Now? Why Not Now? • Now? • You’re at a transition point – preparing to go online or switch online formats anyway. • Your workflow problems have grown to the point that it’s time to take action. • Content strategy is hip, we’re hip, ergo… • Not now? • No reason – defining CS simply boils down to revisiting how and why you work the way you do and changing as necessary.

  8. Philosophy and Cautions • Distinguish between strategy and tactics. • Prepare for the former before doing the latter. • Make decisions deliberately. • Avoid the “Ready, fire, aim… oops” approach. • But avoid paralysis by over-analysis. • Don’t overcomplicate. • Anticipate a continuing, often messy effort.

  9. An Unpleasant Question • What doc group goals are we pursuing? • What company goals are we pursuing? • Does the company know or care that doc is pursuing those goals – e.g. what is doc’s credibility within the company.

  10. Big Issues In Small Steps

  11. Four Big Issues • Strategic Direction • Definitions • Culture • Standards

  12. Strategic Direction • What’s the company’s strategic business direction? • How does doc support that direction? • In the past, doc was reactive and didn’t have to know about strategic direction. • Today, as companies are adapting to weird new technologies (QR codes?), we can help make the decisions. • If not, then others will make decisions for us.

  13. Help Define That Direction • Learn the company’s direction in general and with regard to “content,” NOT “doc.” • Such as social media. • Help set that content and general direction. • Get enough credibility to get involved. • Stay involved to keep, extend that credibility. • Think ahead and extensibly. • Stay on the edge – embrace technical change.

  14. Definitions • “Strategy” – Must define it to create it. • Business aspects, technologies, other? • “Topic-based authoring” • “Structured authoring” • May just mean that content has “structure”. • “Online” – Web? Browser-based online help or doc? PDF? Mobile? Other? • Any other?

  15. Culture and Politics • How does doc relate to other groups? • With what representatives? Credibility? • Willingness to speak other groups’ language. • Effect of company culture when picking reps. • Young, petite, shy women may have problems. • So may lone reps and hostile writers. • Need a political sense. • Doc reps must participate in all events.

  16. Need To/Willingness To Keep Up • Hard to keep up with technology and tool changes. • Names are confusing or confusingly similar: • Windows Help vs. Windows help. • WebHelp vs. Web Help. • HTML Help vs. HTML help. • Single sourcing vs. multi-channel publishing. • Google Docs? • Native apps vs. web apps vs. eBooks.

  17. Need To/Willingness To Keep Up • The issues: • What are these new technologies? Tools? • How and when may they affect my company? • And me? • Are people amenable to keeping up? • Will strategic change make people leave? • You’ll gain people with new tool and technology skills but lose people with domain knowledge.

  18. Political Issues • Missing the point – Doing something for coolness, or not wanting to kill a bad idea for fear of losing a learning opportunity. • Infeasibility – A plan to kill the doc group by having the engineers write the content, or wanting to “automate” doc work via a CMS. • Yet the idea keeps popping up…

  19. Political Issues • Posturing – Pushing “bold leaps,” even if impractical, unneeded, or harmful. • Turf – Content strategy may require some-one to give up some power. • Competition – “Content” is cool and pays well, so consultants are now competitors. • Defining a content strategy is often what they do; we need to do so too in order to compete.

  20. Standards • Does/would your company support: • External standards – For technologies, outputs, etc. • From external bodies – W3C, OASIS, IDPF... • Like XML, HTML 5, CSS, ePub, mobi… • May affect tool selection. • Internal standards – For workflows. • Like information structure and templates, indexing, wording, CSS specifics, etc.

  21. Some Broad Standard Suggestions • Consider your culture. • Make standards “invisible” by embedding them if possible, like Flare’s master stylesheet. • Publicize the standards, train people on them, made adherence mandatory.

  22. And Some Specific Ones… • Think ahead – will these idea fly in your company? • Develop in-house expertise. • Stay out of the code. • Use styles and CSS for all formatting. • Stay flexible – font sets, relative sizes. • Validate your code – try http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator • Think inside the box – Avoid tool “hacks”.

  23. Validation Example • For example, this page:

  24. Validates To This… • From Jigsaw – but do these errors matter?

  25. Thinking Outside That Box… • This WinHelp code: Produced this:

  26. Until the Box Closed… • As HAT HTML converter “fixed” to this:

  27. Now What? • Once you understand the environment, you can move to implementation specifics: • Information analysis and type definition. • Control mechanism definition. • Output definition and cross-output feature set “rationalization” • Sources and types of content, writing changes. • Tool evaluation/re-evaluation, purchase.

  28. As You Do, Remember… • Plan before you begin in order to: • Minimize flailing and operational disruption during implementation. • Help internalize the processes in the company. • Minimize feature and expectation creep, esp. in political environments. • KISS!

  29. Hyper/Word Services Offers… Training • Consulting • Development • Flare • RoboHelp • Mobile Flare • RoboHelp Multiscreen HTML5 • ViziApps • Mimic • Single sourcing • Structured authoring

  30. Thank you... Questions? Hyper/Word Services 978-657-5464 nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net www.hyperword.com Twitter: NeilEric

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