Video: What is UX Content Strategy?
About this video
This video is the recording of a live virtual talk hosted by NYC-based meetup group, the UX Come Up on May 19th, 2020.
In this video, guest speaker Veronica Camara discusses:
What is content strategy in user experience (UX)
The content strategy process and common deliverables
Content job titles explained, including UX writing and product content strategy
How you can get started in content strategy
Live Q&A session
Hosts: Miguel Molina and Pamela Guzman (UX Come Up Organizers).
Related resources
See my guide on How to Learn Content Strategy (UX) for a comprehensive recommended books, blogs, podcasts, conferences, courses, and more. Updated quarterly.
Upcoming workshops
Stay connected on Instagram for news about more upcoming MeetUps, conferences, and public workshops we’re hosting.
Also, we do full-day workshops for product and editorial teams.
Video Transcript
Miguel: It is our pleasure to introduce you to our first guest speaker who's waving on the camera right now, Veronica Camara. Veronica is a UX content strategist, UX writer and an all around rock star you expert. She's worked with many great companies, helping them with content strategy. I'll let Veronica talk about herself. Thank you so much for joining us. The floor is yours.
Veronica: Alright. Mic check. Can everyone hear me?
Yeah. Alright. Awesome. Thank you for the intro! It's so great to be here. I'm super excited about this series. Hold on really quick. Is there a way to mute that? I don't want to hear the sound of people joining... I feel like that's going to be a distraction. OK. Perfect. Great.
Well, I guess we'll just jump in—loud and clear in Europe. Awesome! Thank you all. First of all, thank you for joining from so many different parts of the world. I see we have over 70 people who are live today with us. That's really exciting. It's great to see that there's this much interest in the content side of UX. I think it's a really exciting specialization. It's really, like, hot right now. There is so much opportunity. So, I'm really excited to see this much interest. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.
Let me see if I can figure this out first…
Hey, everyone, who's joining, we're just getting started. You haven't missed anything yet.
All right. Is everyone seeing slides and not my home page...? OK, great. All right. So today we're going to be talking about: What is UX content strategy? What do all these weird content UX terms mean?
I'm super excited to jump in. So let's get right to it.
Today we are going to be covering: What is UX content strategy? What do content strategists do in UX? What are some of the deliverables that they make? What's the UX content process?
We're also going to talk about content job titles explained. There's a lot of different or a lot of different titles and jargon in the field right now. So we'll talk through some of that. And then we'll go into how to break into your content strategy. If this feels like a specialization that sounds really exciting to you, then we'll talk about some career paths in this field.
I want to introduce myself first, especially in the spirit of this series, and talk about my own "come up" in UX, because I did not have a traditional path into the UX industry. And I think that that can go to show you that you don't necessarily have to take a traditional career path to have a really fulfilling career in UX that's a good fit for you. So, I actually got my Bachelor of Arts in Art History. So, not marketing, not human-centered design, nothing related. But I got really great research and writing skills.
So I ended up in content marketing. And there, I was doing a lot of writing, blogging, copywriting — basically just running the gamut of all the different things that I could kind of test out. And eventually I started working as a Content Manager. And it was while I was in this role as a Content Manager that I started to feel like something was missing from my content practice. I wasn't really happy with the marketing approach. I didn't feel like it was the best fit for me personally. So, I sort of just stumbled upon UX content strategy, like on the Internet somewhere, and it was like a light bulb went off in my brain. And that was it, I felt like: this is the thing. This is the perfect fit for me. It's really logical and rational and strategic, but it's also very user-centered. And that was just, that was the part of marketing that I felt like I was missing. I didn't feel like I was serving people enough. It felt like I was in service too much of sales. So I just started doing content strategy things as as a Content Manager. I had a really flexible and open-minded team when I was a Content Manager. So I started just doing things like content audits and kind of getting into things like user testing as a Content Manager and exploring the field from my position as a Content Manager.
And eventually—while I was doing this I was building a portfolio— I got recruited into a content strategy role at Charles Schwab, which is a Fortune 500 financial services company. This was based in Austin at the time. So I learned a ton there. That's really where I kind of honed my skills. I had an amazing mentor and, you know, it just kept clicking. It felt like the right thing for me. And eventually I decided to kind of go out on my own. And I founded an agency focused only on UX content strategy. And now we also offer UX writing services as well. So I really think of myself as a UX designer who just happens to specialize in content strategy. We'll talk more about that as we keep going.
OK, so this first part of the presentation—and by the way, we're gonna have plenty of time for Q&A later so, you know, keep track of your questions. So this first section of the talk, we're going to talk about what even is content strategy and what do content strategies do. So let's start here. So, when we think about UX content strategy, I like to frame it this way, especially to an audience who has some knowledge of user experience.
What is the user experience? Right. So a user experience is, "the overall experience of someone that's using a product" like a website or a mobile app, or some kind of computer application. Right. And part of that experience is content. If you think about the last website that you went to, or trying to navigate Meetup.com, or the last app that you used, there was content as a big part of all of those things.
You can't have a useful, usable or delightful user experience without content. So UX content strategists are just designers who happen to focus on the content part of the experience. Again, the user experience is rooted in a lot of content. It wouldn't make sense without content. We would just have beautiful boxes and shapes that were clickable, but they wouldn't really mean anything. So content strategists are just designers focused on that piece of the puzzle.
But let's look at a formal definition, Just to give a little bit more shape to what this means. So one probably the most popular definition is: "Content strategy guides the creation, delivery and governance of useful, usable content." A lot of pieces in there. But one of the things that might, or should stand out about this is that content strategy is “guiding” the creation of content, not necessarily creating content.
So it's not really a writing role. And we'll talk more about this later. Content strategy is guiding all of these things about content, but not necessarily creating the content. So it's not a writing role. It is a strategy role where you're working on all of the pieces around making content really use. All right. So this is also probably one of the most popular visualizations, a set from the same source from Kristina Halvorson at Brain Traffic. By the way, she wrote really the seminal book on content strategy called Content Strategy for the Web. I think that was like 2009 maybe. So this is the content quad, which just visualizes the four main areas of practice within content strategy. So all of these pieces of the quad have an impact on whether or not the content is any good. So you've got editorial, the editorial perspective of content strategy, right—the actual words and the tone of voice and then messaging has to be good. There's the user experience side, right. Is it meeting user needs? Is it usable? There is the structure side of content strategy, like: where is it in the website? How is it organized? How is it laid out on the page of a website? The structure of the content.
And then there's this whole people, processes and systems part because if you worked it with content on a large scale, you'll quickly find that the process part of content can totally ruin things. You can have an amazing writer. You can do great research. The structure could be perfect. But if your workflow is really messy and the end result is like completely different than your original intention. So this is the content slide from brain traffic. We still have so many people joining. I'm really excited. If you're joining, you've missed just a little bit. But there will be a recording. All right.
Just to give you kind of like another version of this. This is how I tend to talk about it. It's based on the content, but it's just slightly different language. So content strategy, the way that I think about it is the intersection of these four things. So I think of that process, people side as a business strategy, because it's a lot about, like, what are the human resources, processes, systems, even the technology that the business needs to invest in to make the content good. And then there is like, the user research and usability side. Your content has got to be user-centered. Otherwise, you're really not doing UX. And then there's the information architecture and all the technical requirements that you have to balance as a content.
And finally, at the bottom, that editorial aside. What's the voice? What's the messaging? So it really is kind of a balancing act. It is a very multidisciplinary type of role that enables you to kind of touch different pieces of, you know, the process of UX design and synthesize all of that. So it's really fun.
All right, so let's talk about what do content strategists do, because that was a lot of a lot of words, a lot of definition. But let's make it more tangible. What do content strategies do all day?
So some of the things we do is define user needs and business goals, just like a U x designer. Your content isn't really any good. It's not what your users care about. And if it's not meeting your business goals, because then you won't have a business to keep producing content. We also work to create evidence based content guidelines, and I think the key here for me is evidence based. It's a UX practice. It's user-centered. So we're not creating content guidelines based on guesswork or sales psychology or, you know, principles that are more common in marketing, we’re creating content guidelines based on what users really need based on evidence from user research.
We also work to either create or co-create information architecture, which is like sort of the back end of how content is structured in an experience.
And the easiest way to think about it is like this. The navigation system in a website. That's the structure. That's the architecture that you'll see. And I say create or co create, because it really depends on your role. Some content strategists take total ownership of architecture, some content strategies that maybe work at really large companies. They'll collaborate with dedicated architects. It just depends.
We also work on designing content workflows and content and governance systems, which basically just means content strategists also care about how the content is created, who's doing what? Are the writers supportive? Do the stakeholders that are reviewing the content? Do they have what they need? What are all the systems around content? Let's make sure the systems that we have. Don't ruin the content for the end user. (That can happen).
We test and evaluate content over time. You really don't know for sure if your content is working, if it's meeting user needs. Unless you get it in front of real people and work iteratively, just like you, UX designer. And lastly, it's a very collaborative role. We are often spending a lot of our time just collaborating and talking to visual designers, developers, engineers, copywriters, you UX writers. It's definitely a collaborative type of role.
All right, so let's visualize some of this work. What are some content, strategy, deliverables? What does it look like? So we've done all of our content strategy work. We're handing something over. What might that be? I think this sometimes helps clarify what a content strategist really does.
So similar to a UX designer, we might create a user journey map and a user persona. Especially at the beginning of a project or working with a new client. Or working at your in-house business. Your content can't be user-centered if you don't know who it's for. So we would do things like user research. And then the result of that would be a persona, a journey map and empathy map. Something like that.
We also work on the structure of content to create things called content models or page tables or content types. And this is where that structure side of content strategy comes into play. The content model is about different types of content in your content management management system and your CMS, how those pieces of content relate to each other, how they're structured. It’s kind of the back-end side. We also create things like site maps and user flow diagrams. If you're in a UX boot camp, or working as a designer, you've probably seen a site map before.
This is a little messier looking, we work on sometimes things called mental models or content audits. This is kind of these are ways to evaluate the content that you already have through basically structured activities and processes. So like, just auditing all the content that exists already, trying to find the gaps in the content, seeing, you know, what user needs are we meeting and what user needs are missing.
On a lighter side, we work on things like messaging strategies and brand voice guidelines, giving writers something really clear and specific to reference when they're doing the writing work. So, again, content strategy is the strategy side. It's not necessarily writing. It's creating the guidelines and the strategy for the writing.
All right. We do a lot of other things, too, but those are just some examples. All right.
So let's think about, what is the content strategy process? And if you are familiar with UX design, this will probably seem very familiar to you as well.
So this is ideal, right? Things aren't always ideal, but this is a content strategy process that I would attempt to go through. Best case scenario, I'd have a nice discovery period where I'd get to talk to stakeholders and do some user research. A define stage. Do some prototyping. Do some user testing. And then you'll see that arrow after test, it would be iterative. And this is just one example for content strategy — a discovery phase, user research... I might do interviews with users and users, survey anything to try to figure out what content do people actually want. I do a content audit to evaluate the content that we already have, stakeholder interviews to figure out what the business needs are. Then I'd start to create some of those guidelines and give the content some definition and create a content style guide. Create one of those content models for the CMS. Create a site map if it's a mobile app. It might be something like a user flow diagram, something along those lines. Then, during the prototyping stages is where I tend to step back a little bit and I'm supporting people like copywriters, UX writers, designers as they're working to create no draft copy wireframes and get a prototype out. And then from there, I kind of jumped back in a little bit more hands on and work on things like usability testing.
All right. We've got this draft website. Is it working? Do people like it? Let's get it in front of some people. Maybe do a survey again. Do some data analysis. It's an ongoing process. So obviously, this is like a project process. If you're working in-house, like at the same company full time, you might kind of just rotate in this last section of like prototyping and testing, creating and testing, and maybe like once a quarter or once a year, you'll do some formal research work. Right. So it really depends on how your team is working, you know, what kind of role you have. But overall, these are the steps that you might take in a content strategy project.
So to kind of sum it up, content is part of the user experience and content strategists plan and guide user-centered content. All right, so part two.
So let's talk about content job titles.
There are so many out there and it's often really confusing. All right. This is the first question that usually comes up: “Wait, what is your ex writing? I thought that you guys writing and content strategy were kind of the same thing. How are they different? Are they different?” Things like that. So the short answer is yes, content strategy and UX writing are different. We'll talk about that more in a second. So this is just one way to visualize it.
Obviously, this is very simple and there are other specialties in UX. So I think of UX as the broader category, content strategy as a specialty or specialization, and UX writing as kind of a subspecialty within both of these categories. So it's almost like a even more narrowed down content strategist. They're really focused on the writing, whereas content strategists are focused on the strategy. I mean, that's really as simple as the explanation gets.
Where it gets tricky is — some organizations, some companies, depending on the size of the team, depending on their budget, or maybe you're a freelancer—sometimes one person is doing both jobs. And that's why it's confusing, because you might hear someone who's a content strategist talking about doing writing. And then they're like, “oh, it is a writing role.” Or you'll hear a UX writer talk about doing strategy. So then it's confusing.
Really, what's happening is that that person is basically doing two jobs, or there's just a lot of overlap at that particular company. That's more or less how I see it. And that's not, like, good or bad either. You know, I've worked for smaller companies or freelanced with smaller companies where I did both jobs because they didn't have the budget and that's what made the most sense for them. But ultimately, they are different skill sets. The same person might have both skill sets, but they are different.
So in a perfect world, let's imagine that we have a strategist and a UX writer. The content strategists would be conducting the user research, the UX writer is writing copy that's informed by the research. There's probably some collaboration, right. Content strategist is creating the broader plan for things like messaging and brand voice, the UX writer is implementing that plan by writing. So it's really focused on the writing. Content strategy is creating the information architecture, whereas UX writing is writing specific pieces of content in the architecture.
So this goes into a couple of more examples, but that's kind of the main summary, is that content storage strategy is just more strategy and planning focused. And then the UX writers get into the copy, writing the buttons, writing the microcopy, writing the sign-up and onboarding flow. All of that, those small interactions.
But then... there are so many other things. What about content marketing roles versus UX content roles? What about people that just say “content strategy” and they don't have the UX in front of it? So many things.
So, the main difference between the UX type of content strategy and the marketing type of content strategy is just their goals are different and their approach is different. They're both working on content, but really just for different purposes. So content strategists on the UX side are really looking at content as part of the user experience, whereas content marketing strategists are looking at content as part of marketing and sales. Content strategists, their big goals are meeting user needs, improving usability of an interface, accessibility, and a marketing person wants to drive brand awareness, get conversions and support the sales funnel. Content strategists are working on things like websites and apps, human-computer interactions. Content marketers work more on things like blogs, social media, email campaigns, paid advertisements, maybe even print content.
All right, last thing. What about all those other terms, though, I'm so confused?
There's so many roles now, for product content, brand content strategy, web content strategy and content design. And so many others, I see them a lot. I often get like a recruiter InMail for all of these new content strategy related roles, like “content architect” is one that I saw recently. The thing to keep in mind is that it is a fairly new field and every company is going to approach it a little bit differently. And all of these different terms, you know, don't let them confuse you too much. It's just people trying to figure out the best way to verbalize what they want out of a role.
But since these are some of the most common ones, this is kind of a breakdown of what these people might focus on. Product content strategists, they're probably really only working on like a mobile app, some kind of product. A web content strategist, that one's easy. They're focused on websites. Brand content strategists, that's a popular one. That's more of that high-level, omnichannel work that would inform content marketing more. All the brand touch points. And then, content designer. We're starting to see this more and more. That's a term from the U.K. It was coined by someone named Sarah Richards, who's amazing. I've seen her speak a few times. This is really focused on user-centred content creation. So content designers are doing research, but then they're also writing. It's less about the systems and the structure.
At the end of the day, though, before we move on, don't get too confused about all the roles. You know, everyone's just trying to explain their job in the best way. Really, the heart of content strategy is a user-centered approach to content.
All right, so this last part of the talk, let's talk a little bit about your UX “come up.” if you're interested in specializing in content strategy as a designer. If this sounds like something that might be good for you, let's talk about that a little bit more. So some of the skills that are really central to any type of content strategies is you want to be a great communicator. Like you said earlier, you're really having to work with lots of different people. Think about the best way to share information with users. So communication skills is key. Strategic systems thinking, and this is the part that my brain really loves. It almost feels like the scientific method sometimes, right? It's very logical, rational, as much as I love creative, creative work. I kind of like to keep my creative work for myself, you know, from my own time. So I love that I can come to work and feel like I have a lot of clarity in how to solve problems, how to approach problems and challenges, and how to frame content for people. Collaboration again, just working across functionally user-centered design knowledge. Ultimately, it is a design role. It is a UX role. So you have to have a fundamental understanding of UX. And lastly, you have to care about the content and the user experience. I guess you don't have to be a little preachy, but I find that when I go to content strategy conferences and work with other people, we are some of the most passionate people that I've gotten to work with.
Content strategies really care about content. We really care about the user experience. It's not always easy work. And really what I think seems to drive most of us is that we get so annoyed by bad experiences and by crappy content and we want to fix it and we want to help. So if you feel the same way, you know, if you've been to a website that had a horrible four, all four page and a bunch of broken links and content where you were just scrolling endlessly and you couldn't find what you need and you were like, I just want to fix it. You might be a content strategist. All right. So potential path. Just for fun. There's no one right way to get into content strategy, but you might start with some self study or some formal study of UX. There's tons of great books, blog posts, podcasts, all kinds of free resources about content strategy that you can dig into. You can also do a UX bootcamp, study, or ideally, you know, do both because boot camps don't necessarily focus on all these specialties. You can attend talks like this. So just learning about it as much as possible. And then I would move into things like doing specked work, which is basically just a pretend project and the content strategies. You might try to do an internship or volunteer trying to build some case studies in a portfolio and then look into, you know, some junior UX roles or even adjacent roles.
Like you said, I really got into content strategy and did a lot of content strategy work as a content manager, even though it wasn't exactly my job title. I had access to everything that I needed to do, content, strategy, work anyway. So I just did it anyways. So if you are kind of in that phase of your career where you feel like you've got some knowledge, you've got some case studies and you're just sort of stuck there, there's there aren't many junior content strategist roles because it's a new field. You might look at adjacent roles where you'll be able to do content strategy work anyways, unofficially. And then from there, you might find, you know, a senior level UX role as a content strategist. So one thing I do want to say that is a little bit tricky and not to be a downer, but to be realistic, is that because it's such a new field, like you said, you won't find a lot of junior UX content strategist roles. And if you ever find one, send it to me as proof. I don't know if I've ever seen one. It's interesting because I think what happens is that in a design team, there's usually only a few UX content people.
It's just new. You know, there's not a ton of budget for it yet. It's still hard to get by in for a content UX role. So if a company can only hire one UX content person, it's probably going to be a senior level role. So that's why there's a lot of senior UX content strategy rules and not so many junior UX content strategy roles, lots of UX writing opportunities and other, you know, content related opportunities that are more junior level. But I don't often see senior level you or sorry, junior level content strategy roles. I hope that made sense. But the point of saying that is don't let it discourage you. You can still do content strategy work in other roles. You can do it as a freelancer. You can volunteer on projects. There are ways to get to that senior level. Even if you can't find, you know, the perfect job title, you know, junior content strategist. You might not find it, but you can still get there. All right. And just to give you an idea of the opportunity that exists today, this is literally from two days from indeed today I looked for senior UX content strategist job titles. This is who's hiring for this specific role: Squarespace, Adobe, MailChimp, Nerd Wallet, CIGNA, the health insurance company, so across all of these different industries.
These very cool companies are looking for senior UX content strategists...These jobs are real and they exist and were hiring today. But I can also tell you that Facebook has a huge content strategy. Team Shopify has a great content strategy. Shopify content strategists often speak at conferences. And I’ve met some of them, they're really smart people. So there are great companies that are investing into UX content strategy. And I think that more and more people are going to follow suit. More companies are going to jump on this bandwagon, especially because some of these cool companies are doing it first. So my final thoughts about content strategy as a career path and even your ex writing. I just wanted to highlight that, too. If you feel like that's a better fit for you, both of these skills are in high demand right now. They're trendy. They're cool. But there's low talent supply because it's still new. So I feel like this is a really key moment for people who are interested in content strategy as a UX career path. I think it really is a great time to get into this specialization. Companies want this. They're looking for this. They're looking for people that understand UX and understand content and can help put the pieces together. But there's not a lot of people that do this.
Could be you. But for real. You know, I think I think it's a great opportunity and it's work that I really love doing. Right. I think that's it. So we're going to hold there. And we've got time for questions. I'm sure there are questions, I don't think I could possibly answer every question in that short presentation. So let's see. Miguel, should I stop sharing? Actually...
Miguel: Sure. First, I just wanted to jump in and share some virtual collapse. Thank you so much, Veronica. That was amazing. [Claps]
Pamela, do you want to help us out with questions? Maybe we can give some.
Pamela: Yeah. Thousands. Yes. I had some really great, great questions. Let me scroll back up. Give me a second.
Miguel: Ok, great.
Pamela: Ok. Question for Veronica, ideally. Which part of the— at which point of the project process do the content team / strategists provide the UX designers with some content?
Veronica: Yeah, that's a great question. So at what point in the design process does a content person come in? Ideally at the beginning. Ideally, a content person is involved in user research because that's like the ideal way to really understand what your users need in terms of what content do they need. But, of course, you know, that's a perfect world. It doesn't always go that way. You know, I've been on projects where they kind of they do all of the design first. Right. They create these beautiful, empty wire frames that don't mean anything. And then they come to me and they say, we have all of our website done. Now we need content.
I'm like, you don't know what you need. You need content first. But, you know, sometimes you just have to work with what you've got. So ideally, content comes first.
But sometimes you just have to get scrappy and, you know, retrofit some of your work.
Pamela: Awesome. Thank you. Are there more folks with corporate communications, slash messaging and PR backgrounds in these roles?
Veronica: Yeah, there's definitely a lot of people that come into content strategy from like an editorial background. Maybe they were a writer of content marketer, a PR person, or a communications strategist. Absolutely.
And what's interesting is, you know, a lot of people also are doing a lot of content strategy already without realizing it. I've talked to a lot of senior writers like senior writers and quotes that will sort of come to me and say, hey, I just discovered content strategy. I think I'm already doing it. And I'm like, I think you are, too. You just didn't have the language for it yet. So you have people come into it from all different fields.
Pamela: For sure. Thank you. OK. This is an interesting question from Michael. Do you ever run into friction between pushing UX concepts and meeting marketing slash editorial business goals? If so, how do you resolve that?
Veronica: Yeah, of course. You know, I think there's always that sort of I think there's always that balance and that struggle sometimes. Like your users want one thing and your sales want another thing and maybe your product and your engineering team wants a whole different thing. So, you know, that's really why I feel like communication skills and just sort of that collaborative, communicative nature of a common strategist is so important because you do often have to deal with—[laughs]
Well I shouldn’t say deal with, but navigate those kinds of situations. And oftentimes the way that, you know, specifically if it's marketing wants one thing and I need to push back, I'll often bring data just to say, like, OK, this percentage of our user base really wants this thing. Like, we can't ignore this anymore. We have the data. We did a survey like 80 percent are interested in this type of content. It's harder to ignore user needs when you have research and that like tangible data that you can reference. So that does help a lot.
Pamela: Awesome. Thank you. We have so many good questions, I'm trying to group them together. If they sound the same. So they don't sound directly like what you asked people online. Someone else asked it. And I'm reading up with one because I grew up.
Pamela: What advice do you have for breaking into us writing coming coming from a copywriting and content marketing background?
Veronica: I love that question because I came into it from a content marketing background. So to me, if you've got a content background, you're really in a good place because you've got the content side. So now I would really focus on learning about the other side of you. You understand things like voice and tone as a content person. You already probably get that. So what I would focus on learning is, you know, learn about usability, learn about user-centered design, read some UX books. You know, there's even free courses on Lynda or Udemy that you can take about UX design. So I would start there because you've already got the content side.
Pamela: That's awesome. Thank you. OK. A question from Leo. Hi, Leo! What is an example of a brand executing UX content strategy successfully?
Veronicaa: Yeah, I think there are so many. There are so many. One that comes to mind is AirBnB, I feel like what's sometimes interesting about content strategy work is that it's almost invisible. It's so good that you don't notice it because it feels intuitive. AirBnB has some really great microcopy, some of that predictive search copy that comes up in the search bar. All of these little bits and pieces, obviously. Obviously, the front end, what we see is like the work of a writer. But there are content strategies that are being B because they know the higher content strategies that work behind the scenes to craft that experience in a holistic way. I think they do a great job to Shopify. They do a really good job of this.
Gosh, there are so many. MailChimp. Yeah. Tons.
Pamela: Ok. Also, how do you define “content”?
Veronica: [Laughs] I love it. I love it because, oftentimes people think content means writing and content. I define content as information. It's just delivering information to a user through an interface. So that could be writing. It could be a video. It could be audio. It could be an infographic. Right. So. So, absolutely. Part of the content strategist's job is to start with the user needs, what information do people want to know and then move into. All right. Now we know they want to know this information. What's the best way to give it to them? And that's when you start to put some structure around it. And you may decide not to do any writing at all. You might do a video.
Pamela: Awesome, I love that question and answer good content means so much right now, and it's everywhere. What tools are you using for managing a content inventory and how do you work with designers and developers?
Veronica: Yeah. So I really like tools like AirTable. It's just a really flexible database. It's searchable. You can tag things. You can organize things really well. So I like something like a searchable database, really, and any searchable database that you can work with. I like every table. I've seen people use Google Sheet systems. There are also tools like gather content that help people manage and wrangle content operations. But yeah, personally, I use a table a lot. And then sorry, there was a second half of that question, right?
Pamela: And how do you work with the developers? I think what it was.
Veronica: Yeah, I think. OK. I think I understand the question better. Yeah. So there's like a lot of content and you're handing it over to a development team? Definitely. I've definitely worked on projects like that where the scope is just insane. Yeah. I would do some type of database where all of the content and different information about the content is categorized somewhere like in a spreadsheet. And then you have like a separate repository of really well structured copy docs. I have this particular format that I use for copy docs so that it makes sense to developers. But yeah, a combination of spreadsheets and documents.
It's a good question.
Pamela: Do you have some tips for moving from UX research into UX content strategy or UX design?
Veronica: Yeah. First of all, UX research is so cool. So you've already got like a lot of the core skills that you need. It would just be kind of getting involved in those later parts of a project. So what I would do is and obviously I don't know your situation, but if you're already working full time as a you UX researcher, I would just basically reach out to other people on your team or at your company and basically just ask if you can, like, shadow some of their work, like, hey, I do UX research and maybe you're like handing off some of your research insights, but can I just tag along for some of your work? Like, can you just get involved in some way? And usually people are thrilled to like, share, share their knowledge and share their work. Obviously, aside from that, you know, just kind of some of the things we talked about, you know, reading about it, learning about it, and then maybe trying to to do some freelance or volunteer work.
Pamela: So what are your favorite resources to stay up to date with content strategy?
Veronica: Oh, I was muted. I will personally, I really enjoy conferences, conferences and webinars from just other people in the industry that are doing really interesting work. So I have a bunch of content strategies that I follow on Twitter who often post, you know, their blogs or their case studies. Sometimes, you know, sometimes small design agencies will host webinars. I also really love Confab, which is like one of the only content strategy conferences out there. They're doing it virtually this year. That's a great one. So, yeah, so many cool ways to keep up with the industry.
Pamela: Do you know when that conference is?
Veronica: It's happening right now. Actually, I didn't. I went last year in person. It's usually in Minneapolis. I decided not to do the virtual confab. Hopefully I'll go next year. I've got a couple of other other events I'm doing this year instead, but it's a great one. Nielsen Norman Group also does a content strategy like certification or day. So, yeah. And by the way, I do actually have a list of all of these things. I have a running list of a bunch of resources that I actually update every quarter with books, podcasts, conferences. So I'll make sure that maybe we can get that resource list out to everyone.
Pamela: Awesome. Thank you so much. What questions do you ask yourself to get you closer to how you present that content information to a user? Is there a rule of thumb that you go by?
Veronica: Yeah. That's a really good question. I wish there was like a super easy answer. I mean, part of it is part of it is understanding the context and the constraints around how someone's going to be interacting with the content. You know, if I if I know that if I know that someone is just looking for a really specific answer to a question, like it's just gonna be like a bullet point, you know, versus like if somebody if the user need is more about like entertainment and like fulfilling, like, more emotional needs than it might be a longer piece of content. Right. So it's just about it's just about the context, the environment that the user is in. I mean, there are so many pieces to that. So it's a really good question, but it's so it would be a very long answer.
But that's a good question. That's really like what content strategy is about.
Pamela: And maybe that's a whole ‘nother talk. You spoke about mentorship for UXCS. How can one find a good UXCS mentor?
Veronica: Yeah. So I feel like ideally you get to work alongside someone. That's kind of what I have in mind when I say mentorship. You know, I think it's a term that gets thrown around a lot and it's a little bit vague. But I think the ideal situation would be to find a job or even a freelance project or someone that you can shadow who has more experience that you can just work alongside and see how they work and ask them questions and, you know, help them, but also, like, learn from them as you go. I really think that's the ideal way. Ideal way to go to try to work with someone.
Pamela: So I'm going to ask two more two or three more questions so we have time for our lives.
Pamela: Is there a hybrid role between UX design and UX content strategy, if someone wants to kind of do both in their career.
Veronica: Yeah, I would say that's kind of what that's kind of content design, which is that term. That's that more came out of the U.K. where it's still very research based. But they do a lot more content creation. So I would say that kind of hybrid in between, as is content design. But again, you know, companies kind of just have so many different terms for things that it kind of also just depends on where you work. And like the team that you're on.
Pamela: Yes. How do we stay connected with you? I think Miguel provided your Instagram. If there's any other way you can share it.
Veronica: Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram, which I think is in the chat. You can also just read a bunch of my articles that are free and pretty in-depth, like I love how to guides for content strategy on my website, which is just AVO agency dot com. Follow me on Instagram. I'm pretty easy to find. If you search my name, you can probably find me somewhere and I'm happy to chat with anybody.
Pamela: So awesome. Thank you for that. Do you have a good example or can you think of one of a content strategy portfolio piece?
Veronica: Yeah. So if I— Well, I can tell you that I look at a lot of content strategy portfolios because as a business we work with a lot of freelancers and consultants. So I spend a lot of time looking at content strategy portfolios. And I'll say that I look for, I want to see somebody's process and their thought process and their thinking, not necessarily like a bunch of deliverables. You know, I think the wrong way to go with a portfolio is like a bunch of screenshots of your copy or like a screenshot of the website that you that you worked on. That doesn't really give me any context for why you made the decisions that you made. So just being thoughtful about how can you communicate your working process in a case study.
Pamela: And does a UX content strategist play a role in producing content or curating content?
Veronica: Yes. So I would say absolutely, because they're kind of creating all of those guidelines and direction for the content. So usually the way that all work with content produced writers is in a more collaborative way. So I might kind of walk them through like my content guidelines. I might give them something like a page table if it's a website, almost like an outline. And then I'll, you know, I'll be super available to them. Like it's usually a fairly collaborative process with a writer or even if it's like a designer that's working on something like an infographic or someone that's working on a video. I think the bulk of that process is just communicating and being available for each other to to talk things out, to sometimes just whiteboard things in person or even on online virtual whiteboard things, you know. So just being available and communicating.
Pamela: Cool. OK. Do you find yourself having to fight for a seat at the table when working with a design team? I've heard this being hard for UX writers. Sometimes I feel like we have a few UX writers. And I've also, as you know, if you have any good advice for them to be able to highlight their skills and transition into content. So those are two questions. But I think that they kind of go together a little bit.
Veronica: Yeah, I hear this a lot as well from writers, especially UX writers and sometimes even content strategists like how do I get more involved in design conversations? Because there is still this separation in people's minds that there's design and then there's content. And really they're not that different because the user experience needs both of them. But for some reason, they get separated a lot. And a lot of it is just asserting yourself and showing up even when you're not invited to the table. You know, if you're working in-house and you know that there's a design meeting happening on Friday, email all of the people and say, hey, I hear there is a meeting happening, please forward me the invite. I would like to be there, you know. And eventually, you know, just building those relationships, too. I think that I find that especially designers love working with content people because you're actually making their job a lot easier. So if you can just get more face time and more collaboration time with your designers, they'll start to learn that, oh, this content person is really useful. They're really saving me a lot of time. And they'll start to reach out to you more. So it is just relationship building. A lot of it.
Pamela: Yeah, that's awesome. If Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith can crash his own party. So so can we.. [Laughs]
Pamela: So I think that we've covered all the questions between the questions that were asked at your presentation. That was awesome. Coming from somebody who I work at Disney and content is so huge. I'm pairing that with my new knowledge of you act. Those are things that you really. It was awesome. So thank you so much. And I think maybe my gal has something else that I'm sure. But thank you so much. Thank you all for joining.
Miguel: Yeah. Thank you so much, Veronica. That was amazing. Thank you, Pamela. So I just wanted to plug our next event really quickly. We're going to have part two of this series and we're going to focus on UI design and we will share the official invite perhaps tomorrow or in the next couple of days, as well as the recording for this event, because I know I wasn't able to take all the notes in these 30, 45 minutes because there were so many great pieces of information here. So we'll figure out where this is going to live. The recording specifically and what message everybody who are RSVP’d? So it's for whatever reason, you wanna to connect it to us. You join us on Meetup and also follow us on Instagram. We'll also post the recording there or let you know where the recording will live. But thank you so much, Veronica. We super appreciate it. That was such an insightful talk. And I feel like I want to leave you a strategy and go right into content strategy now or become a UX writer. Or one, too. Thank you so much for that. That was really insightful.
Veronica: Thanks so much for having me and thanks for all of the really great questions. Those were great questions. Thanks, everyone.
Pamela: Absolutely. Thank you, everyone. Have a great night.
Miguel: Goodnight, everyone.