71.3 August 2024

The How-to of Content Strategy: Teaching, Training, and Application

Guest Editorial

Guiseppe Getto and Suzan Flanagan

Welcome to the special issue of Technical Communication on “The How-to of Content Strategy: Teaching, Training, and Application. When we proposed this special issue, we wanted to get a selection of articles that delved into how technical communication faculty can teach and train the next generation of content strategists. We got not only this but also several interesting articles on the application of content strategy in our field, thus shifting our focus slightly to include issues of application along with those of teaching and training.

Considering what content strategy teaching, training, and application means to the field of technical communication is a complex question. From past work in this area, we know that content strategists are people who primarily manage content across channels rather than develop technical documentation (Andersen, 2015). We also know a great deal about the workflows and skills associated with content strategy, as many technical communication researchers have contributed scholarship in this area (Albers, 2012; Albers & Mazur, 2003; Andersen & Batova, 2015; Batova, 2018; Batova & Andersen, 2015, 2016; Getto, Flanagan, & Labriola, 2023; Getto & Labriola, 2016; Pullman & Gu, 2008; Walwema, Sarat-St. Peter, & Chong, 2019). The field even has its first edited collection devoted to content management, an important subset of content strategy (Bridgeford, 2020), its first edited collection on the intersections of technical communication and content strategy (Getto, Labriola, & Ruszkiewicz, 2019), and its first textbook on content strategy (Getto, Labriola, & Ruszkiewicz, 2023).

And, of course, this research work wouldn’t be possible without the scores of practitioners wrestling with these issues on a daily basis. Particularly, we are indebted to thought leaders at the intersections of technical communication and content strategy such as Scott Abel, Ann Rockley, Charles Cooper, Rahel Bailie, JoAnn Hackos, and many others (Bailie, 2019; Hackos, 2006; Rockley & Cooper, 2012; Rockley, Cooper, & Abel, 2015). These pioneers of content strategy within technical communication were the first to see the two fields as inherently interrelated. They’ve had a large impact on the practitioner’s view of technical content, including how to manage it, how to publish it, how to deliver it, and how to govern it. Their work is mostly focused on questions of application as most of them have served as consultants for scores of organizations.

Readers can review the above books and articles if they want to learn more about what content strategy means for our field. From work like the above, we know that technical communicators are now responsible for things that were previously left to someone else, including

  • Auditing technical content.
  • Selecting and applying tools that will help them create and maintain effective documentation.
  • Managing content within content management systems (CMSs) and component-based content management systems (CCMSs).
  • Reusing content across channels more than ever before.
  • Using analytics to understand how their audiences are using their content (or if they are).
  • Building content models (or reusable frameworks) for content across channels.

Missing from much of this conversation is how we teach, train, and apply content strategy in our field. What binds the current special issue is the acknowledgment that content strategy is not going anywhere. In fact, it’s becoming an increasingly important part of the lives of technical communication practitioners, many of whom are being asked to do tasks like those described above. This means that future technical communicators, including technical communication students and early career professionals, will most likely have to do these tasks, too. As a field, this shift leaves us with a lot of questions, such as

  • How can early career professionals learn about content strategy?
  • How can senior technical communicators train junior colleagues in content strategy?
  • How can faculty train students in content strategy?
  • How can teachers and trainers encourage learners to develop leadership skills in the area of content strategy?
  • How can technical communication practitioners and technical communication faculty deal with the ever-increasing importance of algorithms in the ways users consume content?
  • How can technical communicators begin to grapple with the impact of AI on the development of technical content?

Now that we know that content strategy is here to stay, we need to understand the following: (1) How can we teach people about content strategy within academic technical communication programs? (2) How can we train existing technical communicators in content strategy skills that they need? and (3) How can we apply content strategy skills within technical communication? The authors in this special issue deal with these three overlapping areas in innovative, inspiring ways. Like those before them, they have waded into the turbulent waters of content strategy and come out the other side with some insights for the rest of us.

First, Elisabeth Kramer-Simpson presents a valuable article, “Content Auditing: Two Cases of Students Developing Auditing Criteria.” Kramer-Simpson investigates best practices for teaching content auditing in two graduate classes tasked with auditing website content. Very little attention has been paid to content auditing in technical communication, much less to teaching it. Kramer-Simpson lays out a clear case for the challenges and opportunities of this important method for assessing and improving content.

Next, Kim Sydow Campbell, Ryan K. Boettger, and Val Swisher discuss the topic of content strategy leadership in “Challenges in Developing Technical Communication Leaders in Client-Based, Content Strategy Projects: A Teaching Case.” Specifically, they examine challenges in developing technical communication students as organizational leaders through their analysis of a graduate course incorporating a client project. It is an open secret in the practitioner world that content strategy requires leadership to be successful. By introducing this important facet, the authors add an essential layer to the content strategy conversation while also providing a case study on how to teach content strategy leadership.

In his article, “SEO as Audience Analysis: Accounting for Algorithms in Content Strategy,” Daniel Hocutt takes on the topic of algorithms and how they serve as a major, non-human audience for web-based content. Hocutt provides considerations for how content strategists can overlay data with their SEO strategies to better understand how successfully their strategies meet human and algorithmic audience expectations. This how-to component of content strategy can be deployed by researchers and practitioners alike in the classroom or in their own content.

Taking on a topic that will be of increasing importance to our field, Gustav Verhulsdonck, Jennifer Weible, Danielle Mollie Stambler, Tharon Howard, and Jason Tham discuss “Incorporating Human Judgment into AI-Assisted Content Development: An Exploratory Collective Case Study of a Heuristic for Evaluating AI-Generated Content.” The authors make a powerful argument that human judgment is also needed when consulting AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT. For example, their findings indicate that ChatGPT is generally good at writing individual topics but performs less well when creating step-by-step task instructions. As technical communicators seek to utilize AI in their content generation and strategy, it will be important to recognize what these tools are good at and what they lack. This will also be the case as we introduce such tools to the classroom.

Finally, in “Understanding the Hidden User for Content Strategy,” Nupoor Ranade explores how technical communicators are utilizing content in order to further an organization’s goals. She argues that organizations need to be more purposeful about analyzing users’ interactions with content in order to design infrastructures that support these interactions. This deep analysis carries with it important how-to considerations as researchers seek to understand how technical communicators use content in an era when advanced tools are becoming the norm. This kind of thinking should also inform our approach to teaching content strategy as the newest generation of technical communicators will no doubt utilize a wide variety of tools and workflows to deploy content.

Overall, we are eager to share these articles with the Technical Communication audience as we feel they are important pieces of the broader content strategy puzzle. Besides introducing new pedagogical considerations, these articles also challenge our current models for how technical communicators produce and deploy content. With tools such as AI on the horizon, the pace with which content workflows change will be reaching a fever pitch. Academics will need to pay close attention to the practitioner world if we want to keep up.

From a research standpoint, there are still many questions left unexplored regarding how content strategy is impacting our field. We still don’t have a good model for what types of workflows students will face when they leave our classrooms to become content-focused professionals such as technical writers, technical editors, documentation managers, content developers, and content strategists. We also don’t have a good handle on what types of tools they will need to utilize when performing their daily work tasks. Research that looks at these issues could push our pedagogies and approaches years ahead of their current state. In an era of increasing technology and complexity, we owe it to our students and colleagues to keep abreast of developments in content strategy as they will continue to impact the role of the technical communicator, a role that changes every time a new challenge emerges.

References

Albers, M. (2012). Human-information interaction and technical communication: Concepts and frameworks. IGI Global.

Albers, M., & Mazur, M. (Eds.). (2003). Content and complexity: Information design in technical Communication. Routledge.

Andersen, R. (2015). The emergence of content strategy work and recommended resources. Communication Design Quarterly, 2(4), 6–13.

Andersen, R., & Batova, T. (2015). The current state of component content management: An integrative literature review. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 58(3), 247–270.

Bailie, R. (Ed.). (2019). Content strategy in technical communication. Technical Communication, 66(2), 121–199.

Batova, T. (2018). Negotiating multilingual quality in component content-management environments. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 61(1), 77–100.

Batova, T., & Andersen, R. (Eds.). (2015). Transactions on Professional Communication, 58(3), 241–347.

Batova, T., & Andersen, R. (Eds.). (2016). Transactions on Professional Communication, 59(1), 1–67.

Bridgeford, T. (Ed.). (2020). Teaching content management in technical and professional communication. Routledge.

Flanagan, S., Getto, G., & Ruszkiewicz, S. (2022). What content strategists do and earn: Findings from an exploratory survey of content strategy professionals. In Proceedings of the 40th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC ’22), pp. 15–23.

Getto, G., Flanagan, S., & Labriola, J. (Eds.) (2023). The people, practices, and technologies central to content strategy. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 53(4), 279–397.

Getto, G., Labriola, J., & Ruszkiewicz, S. (Eds.). (2019). Content strategy in technical communication. Routledge.

Getto, G., Labriola, J., & Ruszkiewicz, S. (2023). Content strategy: A how-to guide. Routledge.

Getto, G., & Labriola, J. (2016). iFixit myself: User-generated content strategy in “the free repair guide for everything.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 59(1), 37–55.

Hackos, J. (2006). Information development: Managing your documentation projects, portfolio, and people. Wiley.

Pullman, G., & Gu, B. (Eds.). (2008). Technical Communication Quarterly, 17(1), 1–148.

Rockley, A., Cooper, C., & Abel, S. (2015). Intelligent content: A primer. XML Press.

Rockley, A., & Cooper, C. (2012). Managing enterprise content: A unified content strategy (2nd ed.). New Riders.

Walwelma, J., Sarat-St. Peter, H., & Chong, F. (Eds.). (2019). IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 62(4), 315–407.

About the Guest Editors

Dr. Guiseppe Getto is an Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Director of the M.S. in Technical Communication Management housed within the School of Engineering at Mercer University (https://bit.ly/3qPGLfB). His research focuses on utilizing user experience (UX) design, content strategy, and other participatory research methods to help people improve their communities and organizations. He has published two books, Content Strategy in Technical Communication and Content Strategy: A How-to Guide, with Routledge. The findings of his research have been published in peer-reviewed journals such as IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Technical Communication, Computers and Composition, Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization, Communication Design Quarterly, and Reflections, as well as proceedings for the International Professional Communication conference (ProComm). He has consulted and formed research and service-learning partnerships with many non-profits and businesses, from technical writing firms to homeless shelters to startups. Read more about him at http://guiseppegetto.com.

Dr. Suzan Flanagan is an Assistant Professor at Utah Valley University where she teaches technical communication, editing, and collaborative communication. Her research focuses on technical and professional communication at the intersections of editorial processes, content strategy, and user experience (UX). She co-edited Editing in the Modern Classroom (Routledge, 2019) and two special issues on content strategy. She serves as a faculty advisor for the student journal, Warp & Weave, which publishes speculative fiction. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Technical Communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Communication Design Quarterly, International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development, and in various conference proceedings.