My studies of Content Strategy: A recap of the first year
I am halfway done with my studies of Content Strategy. A sentence that feels weird to say, because the first two semesters have gone so quickly and basically flew past me in the blink of an eye.
So I wanted to do a little recap of what I have learned during my first two semesters of the Masters Programme.
Be aware of the content that is already out there
We all love to create new and exciting content. That being said, we publish content without realizing what’s already out there on our platforms. Especially websites can be a dumping ground for old and outdated content that is not needed, or even wrong. Long gone is the ability to locate all the content and the knowledge of what content has already been published. This happens to the best of us, even me.
So the fabulous Paula Land and amazing Margot Bloomstein introduced me and my fellow colleagues to content audits. I wasn’t aware that you can filter and crawl already published content with tools like Screaming Frog. So during my first semester I got the chance to do a qualitative audit and a content inventory and even use those methods in my project work for the semester.
A content inventory basically is a list of all the different types of content currently available on a website, which includes images, files, text and many more. This is a quantitative approach and offers more information about metadata, H1 headlines, descriptions, etc.
A content audit is the qualitative approach to content that often follows a content inventory. Before starting the qualitative audit a set of criteria is chosen and the content will be measured under those criteria. Here it is all about the quality of content and accessibility and discoverability for example.
Those methods I was already able to put into use during my day job, which was really interesting to do and to see how much content was outdated on my company’s website. Spoiler alert: I removed all the unnecessary content now and improved the content based on the results of the qualitative audit.
Interviews are not just for newspapers and radio stations
We all know interviews from celebrities and politicians that air on the TV or are published in the newspaper. But Interviews can also be really helpful to understand the users needs when it comes to a website and content. Ask users with a qualitative interview what they expect from the content. What do they need and want? What are they looking for?
This helps to improve the content and to create new content that is actually of use to the users.
User experience is more than clicking through a website
In my last post I talked about the Thinking Aloud Test and the Heuristic Evaluation. Those methods were really interesting for me to learn and gave me some insights on how you can actually learn more about the experiences of your users and what can be improved.
This is helpful to assess your current situation of content and how the users feel about everything. Interesting to learn for sure.
Check out Fleur Jeanquartier!
My thoughts overall after 2 semesters of studying content strategy
It has been exciting, interesting, exhausting and fun. I love to learn more about the topic and all the related methods and areas. I am excited to learn more about all that the masters programme still has to offer.
Even though the first semester was overshadowed by the pandemic, my classmates are awesome and easy to work with. We have a great energy among us and they are simply amazing. I am really looking forward to seeing them again. I made memories I´ll never forget. Especially the London week I will treasure forever.
So I say bring on the next semester and more interesting things to learn!
