Recent Posts

Editorial Triggers: A GatherContent Advent Calendar Video

This year, I was asked to help participate with GatherContent’s Advent Calendar video series. My topic – editorial triggers – is small, but important, in that it affects both one-off and non-frequent content workflows while saving us the trouble of that “OMG NEED TO GET THIS DONE NOW” stress. Thanks to GatherContent for including me […]

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Podcast Feature: Write Now with Sarah Werner

I am excited to say that I was featured on an episode of Write Now this past week! And while it’s not necessarily 100% about content strategy and its ilk, it’s about the writing process, how I ended up where I am in life, and how my decisions and practice have led me to this […]

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Five Hundred Pages In

Five hundred pages into a content audit, I had a laundry list of things we could to to make the redesign work. My client – a mid-Atlantic university – was angling for a new CMS and a new redesign, and I had spelled out some standard content updates. But I was still searching for that […]

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Tools, Dependence, and My War with the Road

It was dark when I stood up. There was a flash and a lot of movement, and then it was dark. Except for one streetlight, and then another. The road was a black canyon, kept awake by the steady blinking of my back taillight. Instinctively, I moved every limb and concentrated on the pain. Where […]

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“Small CS: A Shoestring Approach to Content Strategy” – Now What? Conference 2015

The discussion around content strategy is framed by large examples, but it’s also the work of regional organizations, small universities, and mom and pop stores. How do we adapt the big concepts of content strategy to work within the constraints of a small organization? This transcript of my talk from Now What? Conference 2015 in Sioux Falls (April 30, 2015) explains more.

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Kill Your Processes

We spend a lot of time in the beginning learning these letters — often without any larger picture. We know that these shapes help us spell, but we don’t dive into what it means to spell. We just do it. We know what we can do, but we don’t know what we should do.

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A Few Words on Mismatched Minifigs

My son has taken the head off of every one of his LEGO minifigs. He has rearranged everyone’s hair, given them new pants, and tossed the weapons into a giant pile on his LEGO table. He has no regard for canon. In the story of Star Wars, it’s now Darth who shot first, doing so […]

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Where You Are Is Perfect: Thoughts On Titles, Promise, and Camp

I don’t know what to tell people when they ask me what I do. I tell them that I help plan websites, because using my actual professional titles – content strategist; information architect; user experience strategist – leads to more confusion. Confusion not about what the title means, but about whether or not I do the things necessary to claim those titles. Some thoughts on that, camp, kayaking, and a painting that turned out to be totally bogus.

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Barker on Hyperlinks and Emphasis

Deane Barker at Gadgetopia puts together an interesting post about what we imply when we link something. More than just the words themselves, we are subtly drawing attention to certain emphasis, even if unintended.

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