My newest article, A practitioner view of content strategy best practices in technical communication: a meta-analysis of the literature, is currently available in the proceedings of the 37th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication. In the article, Jack Labriola, Sheryl Ruszkiewicz, and I attempt to systematize current best practices in content strategy through analyzing existing literature.

Why Should We Care About Content Strategy Best Practices in Technical Communication?

Whether you’re a technical communication researcher, teacher, practitioner, or some combination, content strategy will only grow in importance as technical content takes center stage in many organizations. From marketing to customer support to learning, technical content helps customers and other stakeholders use the products and services they need. Furthermore, it’s important that those of us invested in this emerging discipline work to systematize best practices. This is challenging, considering content strategy best practices require an equal commitment to both strategy and to day-to-day concerns. We present a framework for understanding existing best practices as well as building new ones in the future.

What Do These Best Practices Look Like?

1. Content Auditing: Assessing the effectiveness of additional content is paramount in keeping content current, reliable, and authoritative while planning for future content development.
2. Content Modeling: It’s also important to create structured frameworks for developing content in order to ensure future content follows quality guidelines.
3. Content Management: Finally, managing all this content across channels, including ensuring it stays relevant and authoritative, requires equally sophisticated techniques and the tactical use of technologies like content management systems and analytics tools.

Get the Full Article

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3353943 (permanent) (subscription required)

Cite The Article (APA)

Getto, G., Labriola, J., & Ruszkiewicz, S. (2019). A practitioner view of content strategy best practices in technical communication: A meta-analysis of the literature. Proceedings of the 37th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication, No. 9, 1-9.

Check Out My Book On Content Strategy!

Content Strategy in Technical Communication is available for purchase via Amazon.

Instructors can also request a free desk copy directly from Routledge.