I realized recently that I haven’t updated the Resources page in three years. Obviously, there are a lot more recent, more interesting resources out there now. So many, in fact, that I should probably entirely replace what was there. But I do want to retain that info, so here it is in a post. Refreshed Resources page, coming soon.
[As of 10/7/09]
I gathered the following resources to be a handout to go along with my “Content Gone Wild!” talk at the MIMA Summit 2009. These articles and sites support the Content Strategy practices discussed in the examples from the presentation. These are not the only resources, and they’re not necessarily the final word on these topics, but they should provide some good information and get you started with practical techniques and tips.
General Content Strategy Resources
- Content Strategy Knol, by Jeffrey MacIntyre, Colleen Jones & Bob Maynard
- Content Strategy Google Group
- Scatter/Gather: A Razorfish Content Strategy blog
- Search for #contentstrategy on Twitter
- Content Strategy for the Web, by Kristina Halvorson
Research
- “User Research for Personas and Other Audience Models,” by Steve Baty , UXmatters
- “Setting Up Business Stakeholder Interviews, Part 1,” by Michael Beavers, Boxes & Arrows
- “Setting Up Business Stakeholder Interviews, Part 2,” by Michael Beavers, Boxes & Arrows
Content Assessment
- “Content Analysis: A Practical Approach,” by Colleen Jones, UXmatters
- “Content Inventory,” Usability.gov
Writing for the Web
- “Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web),” by Jakob Nielson, Alertbox (An old classic)
- “Writing for the Web,” by Sarah Horton, Web Teaching Guide
- “Web content, writing for web sites,” by Shirley Kaiser, WebsiteTips.com (includes links to many writing resources)
Voice / Tone
- “Tone in Business Writing,” by Victoria Kellough and Angela Laflen, The OWL at Purdue
- “What’s all the fuss about tone of voice?,” by Barnaby Benson, Barnaby Benson Ltd
- “Online tone of voice for business,” Tom Albrighton, ABC Copywriting Blog
Taxonomy & Metadata
- “Metadata: Defined,” by Rachel Lovinger, Razorfish White Paper
- “Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy,” by Christian Ricci, Boxes & Arrows
- “Representing Taxonomies: What am I looking at here?,” by Rachel Lovinger, Presentation from Semantic Technology Conference 2007
Social Media Strategy
- Social Media Governance, by Chris Boudreaux (Policies from several companies and organizations)
- “Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Guidelines,” by David Deal, Razorfish
Corporate Blog Strategy
- CEO Blog Watch
- “Blogging Strategy 101: a Primer,” Scout
- “Corporate Blog Design: Trends and Examples,” by Steven Snell, Smashing Magazine
- “Corporate and political blogging — get rid of the fear, be yourself!,” by Robert Scoble, Scobleizer
- “10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging,” by Paul Boag, Smashing Magazine
- “10 Features of Successful Blogs,” RSS Pieces
Globalization
Looking for Taxonomy & Metadata Resources?
Here are some resources I gathered about metadata, taxonomy and ontology data.
Glossaries
- Taxonomy Glossary on CMS Wiki
- Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! – A paper on Topic Maps that includes a good overview of these terms. By Lars Marius Garshol of Ontopia.
Making a Business Case
- Dublin Core Metadata Initiative – includes business cases, ROI presentation, etc.
- Taxonomy today, ROI tomorrow – By David Berlind, ZDnet
Working with Existing Data
- Thousands of OWL documents are indexed in Google. Add “filetype:owl” to your search and see what comes up.
- Piggy Bank – open source tool for scraping data from a website.
Prototyping – test it out
- MindJet® MindManger® – commercial mind mapping software
- FreeMind – open source mind mapping software
- Bubbl.us – an online brainstorming tool
- TopBraid Composer™ – a commercial tool for building ontologies and semantic web applications. TopBraid Ensemble™ adds a layer that makes it more user-friendly for content providers, and may also be useful in prototyping.
- Protégé – an open source ontology editor
- Knoodl.com – a semantic wiki, combining collaborative editing with ontology models
Shared Knowledge – join a community
- Taxonomy Community of Practice
- CM Pros – Content Management Community of Practice
- Semantic Web Interest Group
Information Design
Meaningful Data 