May 9, 2012
by Andrew
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Bing’s Duane Forrester spoke at SEMpdx’s Member Appreciation event last night. Forrester has a rich background as a webmaster and SEO project manager for all kinds of big brands and companies and is the author of a few books on creating valuable web and search content.
He gave the group some insights as to how social is “poking at search.” I much more enjoyed the emphasis that he placed upon provisioning resources for great content that “does the right thing for the user.”
April 12, 2012
by Andrew
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Big businesses want great web content that can drive leads, tackle business challenges, and build their brand. They want internal content that boosts communication and smoothing out workflow, without any kinks or obstacles.
Small businesses want these things too! These stories seem a little harder to come by though unless you dig hard. It could also be because small businesses aren’t necessarily looking for content strategists. For those of us who enjoy the discipline and are a part of in-house teams, there are always opportunities to demonstrate the strengths and merits of practicing great content strategy.
Here’s a short story about the application of content strategy to small business problem solving. The principles of our growing discipline helps form foundations for the creation, maintenance, and care for lasting, beneficial web content, even in a small business environment.
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March 30, 2012
by Andrew
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The Content Strategy PDX crew had Kristina Halvorson, CEO of Brain Traffic, over for a “fireside chat” tonight here in Portland. The Cleaners at the Ace Hotel, an event space in Downtown Portland, was packed with content strategists, web developers, user experience designers, and other kindred professions, sipping on beer and wine while listening to Halvorson talk shop.
(I’m really good at goofy photos.)
“Our content sucks because no one’s taking care of it,” Halvorson said, imitating a client, stakeholder, peer, colleague– someone who we’ve all probably had a conversation with about the state of content on the web.
Fortunately, there are talks all over the world, just like the one here in Portland tonight, about how to bridge different web practices together on a mission for better content.
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March 23, 2012
by Andrew
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Aaron James Draplin, of Draplin Design Co., spoke at this month’s Creative Mornings PDX. I’m glad that I was able to get a ticket to the second showing because the man’s got a lot of interesting things to say.
He presented his 50-point plan to “ruin yer careers,” but much more like 50 reasons to enjoy what’s going on and just be true to ourselves and everyone around us. You know, the stuff that’s easy forgotten as we’re all busy working on things here and there.
Draplin is a believer in hard work, getting dirty, experiencing the wilderness (whatever that may be in 2012), and just being thankful for everything around us as professionals, makers, doers, creatives, whomever we are. Here are the points that stuck to me the most.
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