I’m stealing this content strategist’s blog content.

Yep. I copied and pasted an excerpt from the blog post Ten Years Later: The Discipline of Content Strategy by Kristina Halvorson (with links and attribution of course).

Honestly, reading her reflection of what she learned about content strategy and the feelings she expressed as she wrote the article, frankly, I couldn’t have said it better.

Her writing ten years ago reflects the frustration that so many content strategists feel. Frustrations they feel even now, when working with organizations (including agencies) that don’t always understand the value of managing content or providing content as a service. I’ve mentioned it before (see Why firms hedge on offering content strategy).

So I’m letting her say it here and strongly encourage you to go to her full post at Brain Traffic. Here’s the excerpt:

“What’s important, ultimately, is helping people understand that content decisions never happen in a vacuum.

A shared definition of content strategy is important because it helps lay the foundation for ongoing collaboration, which means better content and happier customers. And that’s worth a hug. Bring it in.

But what I definitely had going for me at the time was that I was really mad. I was mad about constantly getting called about website projects—projects that were almost done and nearly out of budget—and being asked to “just write the content.” I was mad that digital agencies always left it to the client to “do the content,” when the client clearly didn’t have the skills or capacity to manage it. I was mad that designers and IAs kept making beautiful boxes with placeholder copy, expecting that someone would magically make the “real” content work.

And most of all, I was mad that no one was listening to the people who had been yelling and pleading and bargaining about the importance of content since websites became a thing.”

Content strategy. Ten years later.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.