Alan Brandon

I just viewed a great presentation by Melissa Rach called “10 things every business person should know about content strategy”. Whether you’re in the content creation biz or not, this is an excellent introduction to how you should be thinking about your content (if you’re not already).

Here are the “10 things” highlighted in the presentation:

1. Treat content like a critical business asset.
2. Content needs dedicated oversight.
3. It’s never too early to think about content.
4. Understand your content’s environment.
5. Document your content ecosystem.
6. Don’t underestimate the content creation effort.
7. Ask why. Start small.
8. Assemble the content team before the work begins.
9. Content needs care and feeding.
10. Be prepared for change.

There’s a lot of good stuff in Rach’s presentation. She works at Brain Traffic, where president Kristina Halvorson has written the book called Content Strategy for the Web. I plan to check out the book soon and will report my impressions here in the future.

(via justwriteclick)

A few weeks ago I wrote an article for Gizmag about Kodak’s new ultra-compact HD camcorder called the Zi8. It’s a neat little shooter for sure, but I was also struck by how crowded the market for these pocket-size video recorders is getting. Besides Kodak there’s Pure Digital (who pretty much started the genre with its Flip), Samsung, DigiLife, and Creative Labs among others. Not to mention the increasing quality of the video capabilities of cell phones and iPods.

Casual videos are everywhere, and their use in technical communications is exploding. You don’t have to look far (YouTube) to find examples of unboxing and how-to videos for nearly any time of product. Some of these videos are professionally produced by a product’s manufacturer. Others are created by fans or other third parties.

As video production continues to get cheaper, and as the quality of cheap video continues to get better, look for more technical communication to be delivered this way.