The beginnings of a content strategy

For some time now i have been thinking that we need to create a content strategy. As an idea it was reinforced by a post i read a while ago by Tim Davies relating to his post  “6 things thinks I learnt from BarCampUKGovWeb“  which stated as point 5:

We need to be thinking about content strategies, not web strategies.
Citizens want information. Government wants to get content to citizens. Websites are only one platform. And platforms are just a small part of the process.

It made even more sense to me today as i attended a demo of “BEA Aqualogic“, i’m not recommending this as such but the demo struck a few chords with me in relation to content strategies.

I started to think about these questions and started to build a basic framework for what a content strategy might look like here.  (If anyone has created or published one, i would welcome a look)

Basic questions

1. Where does content/knowledge come from and who contributes to the creation process.
   • customer services
   • residents themselves
   • staff
   • business applications
   • partners
2. What are the types of content (these are often layered or combined to create meaningful chunks of information for people)
   • text
   • picture
   • photo
   • link
   • video
   • audio
   • document
   • maps
3. How do we manage the content
   • what software we use to create it
   • what systems we hold the content in
   • what level of access/authentication should it have
   • retention and review policies
   • accessibility of content
4. How do we publish and present this content
   • web
   • mobile
   • pda
   • print
   • mash-ups
   • ditv
   • socially (we share it out)

It will be important to get this strategy reflected in other strategies such as customer data strategy, information management strategy, access strategy, communications strategy, i also think it will be important to shift the focus of a web strategy to services and online take-up. Perhaps reflecting organisational challenges through intranet as well, although for me this is “desktop 2.0″

But my journey is just beginning in this area and i  will continue my thought process.