About Content Strategy: Practice Areas
UX Discovery & Design
We bring our content-driven, content-focused expertise to the table to collaborate with IAs, UX Leads, and Strategists to contribute ideas to the vision and design of a site. Design should not be just a “container” for content.
Messaging Strategy
We work with client stakeholders, client marketing, Razorfish Strategy, IAs, User Research, and other to identify the key messaging and content that will support both the brand and the UX vision for the site.
Findability & Access Points
User’s want to get at content and providing it to them is part of the UX puzzle. We dive into issues
of nomenclature, labeling, taxonomy, and metadata that supports user access points, navigation, and organization of content. We look at metatdata and semantic technologies as tools for delivering content. We will advise on SEO best practices as it pertains to content.
Content Delivery
At a low tech or non-tech level, we advise on how content delivery mechanisms, tools, technologies, and requirements affect the site experience and feed design. At a technical level we advise on metadata, semantic web technologies, platforms, channels, and syndication tools.
Content Creation & Maintenance
We advise the client on needs, gaps, best practices, and planning strategies for the maintenance of their content. Whether a project is managed in a waterfall or as an agile effort, there are usually some phases outlined for convenience and timelines. Within a project phase there are common, overarching questions about the site’s content and project that Content Strategist is equipped to address.
So where and what is the content strategists role within the website development process?
For example: A client says let’s rebuild my homepage from scratch.
Walk me through the process of who (IA, Content Strategist, Copywriter, Creative, HTML, QA etc) is doing what until the page is deployed to the production servers.
This a great resource, Razorfish! Don’t know if anyone there cares to answer my question here, or has time, but I just wondered where you guys, as an agency, divide copy and content. I’ve worked as both a content strategist, and a copywriter, and I’ve found that I was doing aspects of both of those things in each of those roles, depending on the project, client, and agency needs.
Does Razorfish separate the two roles? Copy is ideation and finding the ‘story’, and content is all of the things listed above?
Thanks again for indulging my curiosity!
Kevin,
The content strategy department at Razorfish sits within the User Experience group. Copywriters are in the Creative department and are divided into web development and advertising groups.
Although this separation is usually observed, often content strategists will write site copy, particularly user assistance copy: instructional, help, and customer service.
So what are the typical project tasks that a content strategist does? trying to understand the difference from a copywriter and a ux person.
where and when does persona development come in?
Michael,
The short answer is that persona development begins in the Discovery phase. It usually flows directly from end user research, including 1-1 interviews and/or in-place observations. Alternatively, Personas could be a self-standing deliverable, without a full-cycle project, and could stem solely from analysis of the site and its presumed audiences, rather than direct, in-person research.