Kristina Halvorson is a self-described "leading advocate" (although not
the definitive expert, she modestly claims) of an emerging discipline:
content strategy.
"Even a year ago, I was able to track every article that was posted on
content strategy," says Halvorson, president of content-strategy firm
Brain Traffic, headquartered in Northeast Minneapolis' East Bank neighborhood. "Now it's way beyond anything I could ever keep up with."
That was the vision behind Brain Traffic, for Halvorson's 2009 book
Content Strategy for the Web, and for the inaugural
Confab conference, which Halvorson and Brain Traffic hosted earlier this month.
Attendees from all over the country and beyond converged on Downtown Minneapolis for the three-day event.
Halvorson cited three main objectives she hoped attendees would get out
of the conference: to gain a broader understanding of the discipline, to
begin to develop ideas about how to introduce or further integrate
content strategy practices in their work, and to begin to identify and
explore their own specific roles in the process.
While it was not the first content-focused conference, says Halvorson,
Confab's focus went beyond the execution of content to treating it from a
strategic standpoint, something that is "becoming more and more
critical," she says.
Why? The cross-section of industries represented is one clue; attendees
hailed from "just about every sector and sized company," says Halvorson:
health care, entertainment, financial, higher education, nonprofits,
"mega-global agencies; 1-, 2-, 3-person agencies, marketing folks, tech
folks, design folks," she lists, trailing off.
"There were speakers under the same roof at this conference who had never, ever crossed paths before," she says.
That, too, was part of the vision. "All of these people need to be
talking to each other within an organization, or between client and
agency, about this larger issue of content and how it moves through an
organization," Halvorson says.
Halvorson calls content "a gigantic challenge within organizations."
While her book focuses on web content, it is just "one piece of the
puzzle" that touches many others: print, social media, content
management strategy. "There is a method to that madness," she says.
Kate Huebsch, president of St. Paul-based
Highpoint Creative,
understands this full well. A Confab sponsor, HighPoint's five-woman
team provides marketing communication writing across media--and has
been for 23 years.
"I don't think [the term content strategy] really lived the way that
we're using it now until the last couple of years," Huebsch says.
"There's always been something strategic about it, but now it's fun to
see a whole discipline building around it.
"You can make things beautiful, you can make things work well, but until
you cough up the content, you have nothing," says Huebsch, noting that
"anything that's being communicated is content, "from websites to
newsletters to call-center scripts."
The strategy is in asking, "Are you being consistent?" she says. "Are
you being effective? Are you actually helping somebody with it? I think
people, clients have thought of content as an after-thought, and now I
think people are realizing it really needs to drive strategy. It really
needs to be one of the first things you think about."
Others seem to agree: the conference sold out nine months in advance,
and the 200-person waiting list had to be shut down, says Halvorson, who
envisions future Confabs and other content-focused events.
"The payoff I have seen is that the conversation has taken off," she says.
Source: Kristina Halvorson, Brain Traffic
Writer: Jeremy Stratton