So the time has come that I went through and read a book that I purchased long ago, and that book was The Elements of Content Strategy. As the book reads,

“It will not show you how to turn your BA in English into a $100,000 salary in ten easy steps.”

Rather, it is like a “quick-guide” as I would like to call it, to content strategy. The book is a short foray into content strategy, separated into three chapters that pretty much cover what is needed in such a small book. Chapter One, “Basic Principles” starts the book off and warmed me up to content strategy and thinking differently about it. I had never thought about content strategy when doing web work. I was always in the mindset of, “Whatever the client wants, they get. Be finished and let them worry about the content.”

Content needs to be appropriate for what the site is about. It needs to be right for the users and the company. The way the content is presented, structured and what is contains is critical for a successful website. If I sell Frisbees, I’m certainly not going to talk golf clubs.

The chapter touches on context. Emotional, physical and cognitive. Making your users feel like geniuses and giving them what they need (or trying to) and more or giving them the option of seeing more. The chapter also goes through what good content is, and that is certainly an important start to the book, I even picked up on a few things.

So without giving any more of the book away, it is definitely worth picking up/buying and reading many times. Chapter Two is “The Craft of Content Strategy” and Chapter Three is “Tools and Techniques” a very invaluable chapter for me personally to have read.

Overall, the book was a big hit with myself. You’ll have to be the judge of that. All I can say is, that this book certainly shed some light on content strategy, for me and educated me more in what content needs to be, needs to do and how it needs to be projected from any project. Erin Kissane hits a home run with this one and A Book Apart publishes yet another excellent book in a series of useful and wonderful books.