You read Content Strategy for the Web or maybe just some blog posts on the subject. Maybe you attended the Web Content conference last week or just think content strategy could be for you.

No matter your expertise, there’s no mistaking: we need more intelligence devoted to content strategy. Here are 25 ideas for content strategy blog posts you should think about writing. How about tackling one this week?

If you do, feel free to link back to this post so your readers can get inspired too. In that respect, props to Chris Brogan and his post, 50 Blog Posts Marketers Could Write for their Companies, for inspiring this post.

Which post are you going to write?

For the content strategy newbie:

• How did you first hear about content strategy? What piqued your interest that first time?
• What are the top 3 benefits of a content strategy program, in your opinion. Or what 3 ways will it change the way you work day to day?
• How are you educating yourself about content strategy? What blogs or books are you using?
• How does your previous (or current) job prepare you for future content strategy work?
• Some say that content strategy practitioners are to copywriting as information architects are to design. Have you found this to be the case in your position?
• How do you explain content strategy to your closest co-workers? What metaphor aptly describes content strategy in your office?
• From where do you draw your daily inspiration? This could be a person, place, experience, book, or feeling.
• What do you most enjoy about content strategy? What makes you the happiest in your job?

For the content strategy journeyman:

• What has been your most successful content strategy effort? What one thing helped it work?
• How do you explain what you do to your grandparents?
• What personality traits have you found serve you well? Which ones trip you up?
• What’s the biggest hole in your industry that content strategy can help fill? How is your industry in particular reacting to content strategy?
• In the latest action movie you’ve seen, which character would have been most like a content strategist? Why? Is the content strategist the hero?
• Having had some experience in the practice, what are you most looking forward to in the next year in content strategy? Where are the biggest opportunities?

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You’ve heard about content strategy, but aren’t exactly sure what it is. And you don’t know exactly how it fits into the agency process.

It’s OK. We’ve got you covered.

The video below tells you everything you want to know about content strategy, but didn’t know you needed to ask. It’s only 3 minutes long. And it uses Post-It notes. Quick and easy.

Check it out below or on the OnlineMarketerBlog YouTube channel. I hope it’s helpful – I’d love to hear your comments!

Don’t forget to stay subscribed to videos via iTunes. Thanks!

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Chip and Dan Heath’s new book, Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard, is not perfect, but it will certainly be useful to marketers.

The book focuses on ways to harness logic and emotion to guide the way to change (and the path that will help get you there). It’s a metaphor that business owners and marketing professionals will find especially useful.

I’ve already written about this book – you can find it referenced in recent posts – but I wanted to devote the sixth episode of my Marketing Minute podcast to the book.

Find my review directly below or on the OMB YouTube channel.

What did you think of the book? Am I correct in my assessment? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

Read up on more of my recent book reviews or buy Switch on Amazon. You can also subscribe to the podcast for updates only when I post new videos. Thanks!

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Yesterday, I was in a tough meeting. We knew there was a problem. But we couldn’t figure out the answer. (Sound familiar?)

We talked about capabilities, functionality, and process. Nothing was clicking.

Taking a recommendation from Switch, I asked a simple question that (for me) turned around the meeting:

If this problem was solved right now, can you describe what it would look like?

Immediately, the conversation changed. Once the goal was identified, all we needed to do was come up with a plan to get there. As strategists, this is our golden zone!

It wasn’t until this morning that I realized why this was so important, especially in a creative agency.

Scott McCloud explains the six steps in the creative process in his (awesome) book Understanding Comics. The six steps are:

1. Idea/Purpose
2. Form
3. Idiom
4. Structure
5. Craft
6. Surface

For more details, just buy the book (you should – there’s a ton of great theory in there). But creation process aside, just look at those words.

Remind you of an agency at all?

Account folks give form to our projects. Developers build the structures that hold our creations. Designers use their craft to create beautiful surfaces. (I’m taking some liberties with McCloud’s list, but you get my drift.)

So where do content strategists appear?

We touch all points in the creation process, but our main impact is felt at the beginning of this process – shaping ideas from insights and determining how to satisfy users as well as the business objectives.

We all get stuck seeing only the trees instead of the forest from time to time. But strategists are required to see above the treeline and point the way toward the goal.

Asking someone to describe what a solution looks like in effect takes them from ground level where they worry about their position, their budget, their resources, their deadlines…and transports them to the end goal. Whew!

Once we imagine ourselves at the goal, it’s much easier to turn around and figure out how we got there. There’s less clutter. Less in-fighting. More solutions.

As the idea people – designers of the core content experience – it’s incumbent upon us to guide the idea-creation process. And sometimes to take that first step, we need to just imagine being at the last step and then figure out how we got there.

What do you think?

Have you found that asking your teammates to describe success has helped guide your strategy? What hiccups have you faced along the way?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Image courtesy of Ha-Wee via Flickr

[Read Bogotá part one for more awesomeness about Bogotá Change and Switch.]

The Carrot Law

Mockus wasn’t finished. There were 70 homicides for every 100,000 people – far, far too high.

Instead of trying to confront the whole populous with PSAs, instead of confronting the symptoms by increasing penalties for public intoxication, he simply halted the problem at its source.

Mockus sent out the mandate: Bars must close at 1am. Fewer drunks. Less drunk. In bed earlier.

He called it The Carrot Law – slang for someone who doesn’t smoke for drink. And it worked.

Likewise, the Heath brothers assert the power of small changes in Switch. And that these small changes can have a huge impact.

“It’s a theme we’ve seen again and again – big changes come from a succession of small changes. It’s OK if the first changes seem almost trivial…With each step, the Elephant [your emotional urge] feels less scared and less reluctant, because things are working.” (page 147)

Other tactics complimented The Carrot Law. Police were reeducated in non-violent tactics – not broad “interactions” as a whole, but each small interaction with citizens.

In addition to violence in the community, Mockus also focused on violence originating in the home. Children were encouraged to report offenders in their own families and taught to direct their anger at inanimate object.

The belief in the administration was that violence in the home was just repeated in the streets. This was a full-scale, city-wide re-direction of aggression.

Maybe it sounded crazy went it started. But in the 4 years under Mockus, the number of deaths was reduced by 1/3 and kept going down afterwards.

Enrique Penalosa – A Businessman For Urban Design

Mayors in Bogotá are restricted to one term, so after Mockus, newly party-less Enrique Penalosa became the city’s second independent mayor.

Unlike the professorial Mockus, Penalosa was a businessman. But he’d promised to continue the work Mockus began.

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