Content Strategy Toolkit, The: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right (Voices That Matter)

I love this book - there are many out there and I have not tried them - I followed the reviews - got this and this is all I need! It fits the bill. Every base is covered here from getting stakeholder buy in, lots of practical project management support, on-going maintenance - and the bit on analytics is fantastic - as well as thorough systematic support on how to audit, review and craft content strategies. There are links to other sites too that are really helpful - if you have a question you usually find it is answered in the next paragraph you read! The sheer amount of information and the accompanying templates are fantastic - so much help is there for you it is amazing - I just wish now I were designing a big website as I could do it really well with this! You need to watch out - don’t try to do all the things - The author herself is not proposing you do absolutely everything - or it will be death by form & committee. But you can very easily pick and adapt what is relevant to your situation. While directed a lot at content strategy for organisational web design and management this is very flexible. I use it with students and have crafted really useful set of stages and guidelines for publishing material from it (in print and digital forms) as well as for event marketing - showing how flexible it can be. I recommend the students get it as it will be a guide continuing well into their professional careers as content developers, designers and strategists.

This book has been sat on my shelf for a few months as I was intending to read it to increase my knowledge in content strategy, having worked in a content design role. Having accidentally found myself putting together a plan for a client with a view to developing a content strategy, I reached for this and it has saved my bacon. It is so well structured and helpful that I was able to skim through and easily skim through to form an initial proposal before going back to read more detail to flesh it out and propose a timescale/more detailed plan. There are lots of downloadable resources, suggested activities and as a bonus it is all so relatable and easy to read. I highly recommend it for anyone looking at developing their business' content, or that of a client. I will be reusing to form a plan for my own site soon!

First, the very good news: the pagination is OK, so at least this issue seem to be solved for the current copies. Another good thing is the actual content of the book: it’s clear, practical, and I’ve personally seen it used by big charities in the UK to advance their content strategy. The only thing that lets me down is the quality of the physical book itself: the pages are so thin that I’m afraid of tearing them every time I browse the book, and the quality of the print is just not right. They say “printed and bound in the USA”, but it dies look like one of those cheap print on demand books. Anyway, a great book if you’re really into content strategy.

Alongside my work in looking at strategy through a data-centric lens I have also taken on a content strategy role on a project. This isn’t about: Coming up with a few social ideas Editorial direction But a much wider approach that takes a systems approach to content. What it is, where should it be and how it should be refreshed. With this in in mind I can thoroughly recommend The Content Strategy Toolkit: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right by Meghan Casey. Meghan also provides a set of downloadable template to make your life even easier. I found the book relatively easy to digest but still have it about as a reference book on my current project.

This book appears to contain a lot of useful information, however its production has rendered it unusable. The page order is completely random and it is impossible to follow or understand. This is a real shame for the author who undoubtedly knows her stuff - ironically her publishers could benefit from a few content lessons of their own.

I'd recommend this to anyone tasked with creating a content strategy. There are a great deal of helpful resources to download.

Well written book would recommend

Having recently started working in the field of Content Strategy, I have found this book invaluable. It's very well organised and easy to follow - it's helped me gain a great "Bigger picture" grounding. I found the templates available to download helpful, and the "What Problems to Look" for sections even more so (as being new in the field, the 'pre-emptive' is always useful - learning from real-world issues that I may not have dealt with yet). I would recommend this book (and have) to anyone wanting to gain a better understanding of Content Strategy. The fact that Meghan is a 'real world' practitioner makes a huge difference - I follow her on Twitter now too (@meghscase).

A must for every content strategist!

Meghan Casey's The Content Strategy Toolkit delivers what it promises: a well-structured, content-rich set of tools for content strategy practitioners both novice and advanced. I appreciate the practicality of this book. The author organizes her thoughts into a linear, logical flow, communicated in useful bullet-points, making it easy to browse and read. Casey packs her book with a workshop full of well-crafted and useful content strategy tools, including a stakeholder matrix, project kick-off email, project team matrix, session plan and even a sample agenda. In addition to these many tools, Casey offers clear directions for mapping out stakeholders processes, artifacts and deliverables; project management guidance, including timeline, material, reporting and rhythms and a strong overview of the content inventory, auditing, and mapping process. Casey also pays close attention to the stakeholder interview process, including questions and documentation review process notes. These notes culminate in building a discovery inside workbook incorporating best practices from UX design, market research, and general business consulting. While this may seem like an overwhelming amount of material to keep under control, Casey does a good job of aligning all the parts into a strategic framework that ties everything together, from the beginning of the process through the resulting outputs and actions. Casey offers a nod to Sara Wachter-Boettcher’s book Content Everywhere in her overview of structured content and entering content into the CMS. Her content types and components tend to be large, chunky, and high-level -- so it's at this level a high level introduction to modelling. The book does have a tendency to focus on personal and in-person outputs and processes involving sticky notes and whiteboards best suited for traditional and co-located teams, and not much guidance is offered on how to apply the same processes in distributed environments. It may be that content strategy is a full-contact sport, but the nature of business is increasingly distributed, and content strategists should be prepared to embrace various kinds of collaboration. As a content engineer, I also would have appreciated seeing more about content modeling. Casey does reference Rachel Lovinger’s article on the A List Apart website, but largely breezes over structured content and content modeling. Content strategists should embrace and understand content modeling as a core competency, even though content engineers should ultimately own and maintain the content model in collaboration with IT and development stakeholders. The content strategists who are equipped to natively understand and be able to contribute to content models will do their clients great service by contributing to content reuse structure. Casey wraps up her book with a very helpful outline of content governance, editorial management, and other content maintenance topics. She also provides a list of all the tools used in the book, though I wish she had also included additional references to third-party materials and resources for students. All in all, I give The Content Strategy Toolkit: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right five stars, because I believe it to be a practical, essential part of a content strategy bookshelf, and a strong orientation to anybody getting into the field. For other content strategy tools and templates, you might also check out the freely available tools from the Content Strategy Alliance. Those tools are helpful, but the context provided by Meghan Casey’s book is invaluable for any student of content strategy.

All pages of the book are in wrong order. After page 8 comes page 19, etc. Hard to read, waste of money.

PRELUDE: It ‘speaks volumes’ for the author that she responded overnight to a warning that printer had botched page ordering in Fall 2021. GOOD NEWS: My later-printerd copy (purchased via Amazon 2/2022) was perfect - and up to the usual beautiful New Riders products. [Buyers might be *wary* of ordering *used* copies - some of which could be among those late-2021 copies - and require returning to publisher.] As for the Ms. Casey’s product: it's a delight, as one might expect from the consistently high rating it gets among Content Management bestsellers. FWIW: I acquired CST for my work as a social psychologist who’s pre-occupied with how regular folks acquire, manage, and deploy information (aka content), as well as how I.T./Social Media people might best support the front-line users. I am finding Casey’s comprehensive presentation to be a great 'meta-' resource: invaluable as I "strategize about content strategy." I look forward to a follow-up volume in a few years that will share how the industry is evolving/disrupting and what new dynamics Casey and her team discover about "People and Their Content."

While this book did not necessarily contain the specific information I was looking for, it gave me plenty of great ideas for content management. Also appreciated knowing I am not alone in my quest for the perfect content strategy - people are even writing books about it!