Content Strategy Toolkit, The: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right (Voices That Matter) 1st Edition

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.

A go to book for me.

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!

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."

I have read most of the available books on content strategy. I've enjoyed all of them and benefited from their advice when working on site redesigns and migrations. Yet, I still longed for a resource that more effectively combined practice information with the tools and tactics underlying the strategy.Meghan Casey's book is exactly what I needed. She explains each process step concisely but thoroughly. She suggests variations based on available time, budget, and resources. She then says "now download and use Tool X at [URL]." Where appropriate, she sometimes recommends that the same or slightly altered version of a tool be used again in a later step.I enjoyed Meaghan's conversational tone. Reading this book is like having a coach. Even if you have a zillion books on content strategy, I recommend that you add The Content Strategy Toolkit to your library.

The content in the "Content Strategy Toolkit" seems good. The physical "toolkit" itself (the book) is organized in a helter-skelter fashion, not because of the author, but the publisher printed the whole book aXX-backwards, topsy-turvy and upside-down. Pages are completely out of order, and using it is more like solving a 1000-piece puzzle than reading something helpful. It's obviously a digital print on demand, and whoever did the actual printing of this book should be fired and I should get a new book.

With a new content strategist job on the horizon, I wanted to make sure that I have an overview of all of the important elements of developing a content strategy. This book provides aspects of content strategy I've never even considered before. The associated tools are an added bonus as well. That said, the pages are so completely out of order that I ended up skimming the second half of the book. The book has a lot of value, but it's hard to get through jumping around so much--especially after spending almost $30 for a paperback.

The modern content world is filled with complexity across multiple management and technical disciplines.Meghan Casey cuts through all of this with straightforward language and a rock solid approach for developing a meaningful content strategy. It also sets the stage for more detailed efforts in content architecture and CMS systems.Highly recommend this as a starting point for this critical (and overlooked) component of digital strategy: It all about the Content!