In response to your first point – understanding the subject matter is important, but you can’t always count on having someone with deep subject matter knowledge AND other content strategy skills. In these cases, I think that a combination of doing a lot of thorough groundwork (in the form of primary and secondary research) and partnering with a subject matter expert can suffice. Similarly, the needs of the target audience are learned by doing research, it’s not an inherent skill (though the ability to make connections and gain insights based on the research is tied to several of the other skills I listed).

As for CMS tools, I personally think it’s more important to understand the general principals of how they work, less important to be super familiar with any particular tool. The easiest way to get this understanding is by working at a place that publishes content on the web and getting involved in that. If that’s not possible, there may be online tutorials you can take for some of the more prominent tools. CMSwatch.com has a lot of reports and courses. It won’t be free, but you could gain some in depth knowledge there.

Of course, there are probably as many different opinions about this as there are content strategists. If you want to know more about the tools and processes that other CSs find most valuable, consider joining the Content Strategy Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/contentstrategy) – it’s a great source of information, and you can pose questions like this and get a wide range of perspectives.

If I could add one thing (yes, it seems that some of us can’t keep our hands out of your already very fine recipe), it is to be explicit that a content strategist needs to see the relationships among content and content types. The ability to create analogies, to see the interrelationships among content types, and to abstract them to another level is critical to developing an effective content strategy.

Thanks again for the post!

1) I would add, in addition to editorial capabilities, that a content strategist have a deep understanding of the subject matter they’re “contenting” about and the needs of the target audience. Generic content not tied to the specific needs of the reader doesn’t cut it these days.

2) And as an ex-journalist trying to BECOME a content strategist, what are the key CMS tools or at least processes one should know?

Great post; thanks much.

If I could add anything, it would only be to to say that alongside an ‘understanding of logic,’ an appreciation for taxonomy–a yen for auditing and defining organizing principles–is critical.

Such a person is going to wrestle order out of chaos and find fresh ways to rethink and reorder data. This can result in structural improvements to how content is ordered, sure, but also to the workflows and processes required to maintain content organization.