by Janus Boye
"Content" can become a headache or an afterthought in many projects—but it doesn't have to be that way. Katie Del Angel from Shopify shared her perspective as a product content strategist in our recent member call.
Specifically, she covered why content strategy should be every product manager's best friend. From defining scope to gaining team alignment, developing concepts and solutions to ensuring scalable implementation, the tools of content strategy can help product leaders every step of the way during projects.
According to Katie, whether you have a content strategist on your team or not, having content strategy techniques in mind and knowing when to use them can make product management smoother for everyone.
Where is content strategy today?
The simplified take on content strategy as offered by Elizabeth McGuane at Shopify
As a part of her introduction, she shared a brief background to content strategy and also addressed some of the baggage that the term carries today.
Past Boye conference speaker, Kristina Halvorsson coined the widely used definition of the term:
“Content strategy plans for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.”
Katie offered a simpler version as offered by her colleague Elizabeth McGuane:
“Content strategy is just content planning, and products need content.”
In Katie’s own words:
“Over the years on the agency side, I noticed that content strategy is a major resource for project managers in implementing digital experiences. In product, the work of content strategy is even more instrumental in helping to plan experiences in really dynamic contexts.”
And she also offered this very brief version to prove the point that content strategy is a key driver (an often underappreciated one) for user experiences:
“Experiences without content are pretty meaningless.”
Content strategy enables product management
As a part of her presentation (download the slides as PDF), Katie covered goals of product manager through the lens of content strategy. Here’s the notable slide:
How content strategy can help product managers
For each of the phases and throughout the call, Katie shared some really good questions to consider.
Don’t make content an afterthought in your product
Who’s really responsible for the content part of your product?
In spite of needing to manage many moving parts, Katie made the point, that the product manager can find ways to focus and align teams using content strategy methodologies. To quote her:
The true potential of content in product is to shape and drive the experience!
Katie also shared 7 tools of content strategy that can help drive efficiency in product management:
Message architecture
Voice and tone guidelines
Competitive analysis
Journey maps
Content inventory and audit
Style guide
Content testing plan
The slides (as shared above) has plenty of practical examples for each.
Learn more
Rosenfeld Media recently published Writing Is Design by Michael J. Metts & Andy Welfle, which Katie referenced in her talk. This is a book about words and the user experience.
You can also view the entire 30-minute recording below. In closing you’ll hear Katie’s take on of the biggest misconceptions about content strategists. Teaser: They are not only copy writers.
Finally, if you are ready for another learning experience, do consider joining our in person product management peer groups or our upcoming conferences.