Held at the IET, London this month over the two days key issues around content strategy and Information Architecture were covered. As CMS specialists, Fusionworkshop wanted to learn about some of the issues facing our customers i.e. authors and CMS users.

Key observations are that Content Strategists...

• Don’t feel in control of the tools required to do their job, the CMS
• Want early involvement in decision-making and contribute to solving recurring project issues
• Fear mobile and lack guidance on how to be platform agnostic
• Need more recognition for their discipline in its own right

Keynote speeches

First day included keynotes from Gerry McGovern “Manage the tasks, not the content” and Karen McGrane “The way forward: what’s next for content strategy”.

Gerry McGovern pointed out that websites exist to deliver a message based on “top tasks” - the content should be on message and tightly focused on those tasks or business goals.

Karen McGrane highlighted the issues that are currently being faced by content strategists today and also what’s coming in the near future. The man points are that for many organisations using in house teams to deliver CMS and page based systems there is a rapidly move towards the 'splinternet' through fragmented content management, fragmented organization structure and fragmented devices and platforms. The main point being was that CMS is 'the software that UX forgot'.

How can we help

Fusionworkshop can help make sense of this by...

• Carrying out content audit and content strategy prior to engaging in a re-platform / re-design project
• Ensuring Content Strategy is included in the UCD process
• Using an object-based CMS (such as Sitecore or Alterian)
• Using a multi discipline project team in an agile manner to allow Content Strategists to design content as the site evolves
• Considering the author/editor as a customer (via personas, use cases)