Technical Communication, the peer-reviewed publication of the Society for Technical Communication, is soliciting article proposals for an upcoming special issue that examines the field and practice of content strategy.
Guest Editor: Rahel Anne Bailie, FH-Joanneum University, Austria
Special Issue Description
Content strategy sits in the intersection between communication, user experience, and content management. The first book on content strategy, published in 2003 by Ann Rockley, favored techniques to manage product content, while digital agencies focused on the creation and management of content for websites. Since then, the breadth of content strategy has broadened to encompass content across a number of audiences, channels, and media.
The field of content strategy has undergone significant changes. The emergence eerily parallels the nascent field of usability (and later, UX) in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when passionate practitioners began to determine best practices, processes, and naming conventions. The field of content strategy is undergoing those same growing pains. Without a professional organisation specifically dedicated to furthering and codifying the body of knowledge, content strategy has largely remained a community of practice. Several initiatives are being undertaken to further the practices and ensure that the framework is robust enough to ensure the rapid changes in the demands on content.
The aim of the issue is to place content strategy within the larger grid of professions that collaborate and sometimes overlap. In content strategy, the common denominator is the systematization of content. The specialties may range from marketing to product to social to entertainment content; creating a plan to ensure that the right content gets to the right audiences in the right context is what separates a content strategist from a technical communicator, content designer, copywriter, UX writer, and so on.
The scope of the issue would cover the basic theory behind content strategy and its connection to the adjacent professions such as management consulting, business analysis, user experience, content development, content management, omnichannel marketing, and global content. The issue would cover core processes and extended processes, both on the editorial and technical sides of content, as well as looking at issues such as governance and change management. The issue would also explore some of the ways that content strategy has evolved to encompass new additions to the multiple channels, such as strategies to accommodate semantic content, artificial intelligence, and Information 4.0 – a response to the demands on content from Germany's Industry 4.0 initiative. A look at how content strategy is being taught would round out the issue, as the breadth and depth of learning varies, from independent workshops to content strategy courses within other academic programs, to a full-fledged Content Strategy Master's degree program.
Proposals
This call asks respondents to address some of the following topics or other substantive areas related to content strategy:
- A theoretical framework for content strategy
- Defining and describing content strategy as the emergent field that it is
- Content strategy practices and processes
- Content strategy as an umbrella practice area, and its relationship to typical sub-strategies
- Skill sets and overlap: content development, content design, content engineering, and content strategy
- Developing a content strategy curriculum
- Components of a CS-BOK and its use in the field
- Scaling content strategy – comparative case study on content strategy for a small business vs. a large enterprise
Submission Guidelines
Send 250-300 word proposals by 15 February, 2018 to Rahel Anne Bailie (rahel.bailie@gmail.com).
All proposals should include
- The submitter's name, affiliation, and email address
- A provisional, descriptive title for the proposed article
- A summary of the topic/focus of the proposed article
- An explanation of how the proposed topic/focus connects to the theme of the issue
- An overview of the structure/organization of the proposed article (i.e. how the author will address the topic within the context of the proposed article)
Estimated Production Schedule
15 February, 2018 – Proposals due
15 April, 2018 – Decision on proposals sent to submitters
30 June, 2018 – Initial manuscripts due
30 October, 2018 – Manuscripts finalised
February 2019 – Publication