An overview of content strategy from the biggest players in this young but burgeoning field. For more, go to www.HowWhyWeb.com .

1. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
Required Reading
o Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson
o The Discipline of Content Strategy by Kristina Halvorson
o Content-ious Strategy by Jeffrey MacIntyre
o The Web Content Strategist's Bible by Richard Sheffield

2. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
Required Reading (continued)
Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data by Rachel Lovinger
A Content Strategy Primer by Rachel Bailie
It's Time for Content Strategy by Melissa Rach
Content Strategy: A Google Knol by Jeffrey MacIntyre et al

3. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
What Is It?
Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable
content.
Kristina Halvorson »
A content strategy is a plan for creating, sharing, and governing content effectively.
Melissa Rach »
[Content strategy is] a repeatable system that defines the entire editorial content
development process for a website development project.
Richard Sheffield »
Content strategy is an emerging field of practice encompassing every aspect of content,
including its design, development, analysis, presentation, measurement, evaluation,
production, management, and governance.
Jeffrey MacIntyre »
Content strategy deals with the planning aspects of managing content throughout its lifecycle,
and includes aligning content to business goals, analysis, and modeling, and influences the
development, production, presentation, evaluation, measurement, and sunsetting of
content, including governance.
Rahel Anne Bailie »

4. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
What's At Stake?
[T]he content strategist must work to define not only which content will be published, but
why we're publishing it in the first place. Kristina Halvorson »
[T]he web is content. Content is the web. It deserves our time and attention. Kristina
Halvorson »
[T]he main goal of content strategy is to use words and data to create unambiguous
content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences. Rachel Lovinger »
[C]ontent strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design.
Rachel Lovinger »

5. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
What's the Problem?
Generally speaking, content is a shared pain point across all web disciplines. It's late,
It's formatted incorrectly. It's poorly written, out of context, not audience-focused,
out-of-date, incorrect, inconsistent. Kristina Halvorson »
[Dummy copy] distills copy down to an ornament, making decorations of our content
assets and all but insisting the content will sort itself. Jeffrey MacIntyre »
Web projects expose all of the organization's content inconsistencies, inadequacies,
and inefficiencies. Melissa Rach »

6. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
How Do You Do It?
Editorial strategy defines the guidelines by which all online content is governed:
values, voice, tone, legal and regulatory concerns, user-generated content, and
so on.
Web writing is the practice of writing useful, usable content specifically intended
for online publication.
Metadata strategy identifies the type and structure of metadata, also known as
"data about data" (or content).
Search engine optimization is the process of editing and organizing the content
on a page or across a website (including metadata) to increase its potential
relevance to specific search engine keywords.
Content management strategy defines the technologies needed to capture,
store, deliver, and preserve an organization’s content.
Content channel distribution strategy defines how and where content will be
made available to users.
Kristina Halvorson »

7. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
What Kinds of Skills and Specialties are Involved?
o Information Architects (IAs) and copywriters seem to precede content
strategists in many organizations.
o The most prevalent content strategist working today has a background in library
or information sciences.
o With a focus on metadata, taxonomy, the semantic web, and search engine
optimization (SEO), the content analyst thrives in sifting large data sets,
providing strategies to corral, deploy, and manage the content in an orderly or
seductive fashion.
o An editorial strategy, produced by such a specialist, outlines how different
content producers can fulfill their roles as publishers.
o 'Content strategists combine the skills of writers, editors and publishers to
think in a holistic way about what users should see when they visit a site.'
Jeffrey MacIntyre »

8. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
What Kinds of Skills and Specialties are Involved? (continued)
Richard Sheffield's Content Strategy Mind Map charts over 100 skills and specialties:

9. Content Strategy: A Reading Guide
by Nathan Bierma
HowWhyWeb.com
What Other Resources Are Out There?
More articles at A List Apart: in addition to 1,2, here's 3,4,5,6,7,8
Content Strategy article at Wikipedia
Writing for the Web: The Right Strategy by Shay Howe
Content Strategy for the Web Professional by Jonathan Kahn
Thank heaven, 11 fresh content strategy links from Julie Espinosa
#contentstrategy on Twitter