What did you read or watch that surprised, delighted or disappointed you? Why?
I was delighted to read that content strategists are focused on content quality over content quantity. It’s nice to hear that there’s a job focused on thinking about the audience instead of being focused on churning out vast amounts of content. It seems like content strategy is a career path centered on keeping the audience in mind at all times. At the same time, the content strategist must also be mindful of the business they’re working for–including the stakeholders and their business goals. Being mindful of these two ends at the same time sounds like challenging work, but it sounds like it’s the core focus of the content strategist–to create a quality content strategy while thinking about both the stakeholder and the user at the same time.
Quality content can often be hard to find. We live in an age in which we have unending access to content on our computers and on our phones. Our access to content is at an all time high. How do we know if the content we are viewing is quality content? Companies are spending a lot of money to market their products on social media, and as a user of social media, it often feels like these companies are too focused on getting a high quantity of content out and hoping that social media algorithms push the content to the appropriate audience. Companies should instead invest time in understanding their audiences before content creation. The audience should be in mind throughout the entire content lifecycle. For that reason, it should be increasingly important for companies to invest in content strategists. As both a user and as a student of content strategy, it would be very refreshing to see companies being more mindful about their content and invest time and money to make a quality content strategy.
What was most meaningful for your own career goals? Why?
As I stated above, I really appreciated the focus of this module being on evaluating the quality of a company’s content and opposing the idea that a high quantity of content is best. As an aspiring technical writer, it’s increasingly important to keep this principle in mind. I tend to enjoy writing long, complex sentences that can confuse audiences. I like writing with my own voice in mind. These aspects of my writing can be great for more creative work–blog posts, for example, but they’re not great for writing user manuals or API documentation.
I think it’s fair to say that in technical writing and in content strategy, the voice readers should be hearing is the business’. Oftentimes, I write without thinking through a piece first, and I go through rounds of editing to make it sound like I knew what I was doing the whole time, but in technical writing and content strategy, planning and evaluating the content seems like half of the work, if not more. Extensive planning is one way that a technical writer or a content strategist can ensure the piece they’re creating is of the highest quality. I’m really looking forward to developing this skill further in my master’s program, but for now I’m enjoying writing these blog posts in my own voice!