And just because Google juices still keep flowing here to this blog, here’s another fun link; my flavors.me site is handy little aggregator of what I’m up to nowadays. Updated daily! (now with more Julie)

First: Kristina Halvorson, author of Content Strategy for the Web, will kick off the first-ever Phoenix content strategy meetup with cocktails, conversation and a casual Q-and-A. We’ve got a fledgling community, and this is a great way to get people interested and energized. The event is free, but RSVP today

Second, Phoenix is hosting the 11th-annual Information Architecture Summit, and a bunch of content strategists will be in town. Thus, it’s another great chance to meet informally and talk about that most important of business assets: content. If you’re up drinks, let me know!

P.S. If you have no idea what I mean when I say content strategy, check out the background knol on the subject. Why is it so important? Well, if you build Web sites, have a Web site or write for Web sites, and you’re sick and tired of disorganized, headache-inducing content, you need to learn about content strategy. And if you what you read strikes a nerve, join us for more.

Who? Me, talking to a bunch of cool, local copyrighters

What? ’Bout style guides

When? at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 16

Where? at the offices of Terralever in Tempe

The prompt was on what are the consequences of being able to freely post information using text and a variety of other media as an individual or as a representative of an organization…”Does it matter where you post? Should you able to control who sees what?”

My response (scattered as it is):
Publishing has been transformed through Web 2.0, in a way that reimagines what was traditionally a closed process. The audience are now co-publishers, as we blog, tweet and Facebook our reactions to what we read elsewhere. I’m noncommittal about whether these consequences are positive or negative.

The effect of opening up the market like this to millions of producer-consumers means that yes, there will be a lot more noise and a lot of it will be crass and popular and really worthless, the long tail, if you will. There’s a niche for every topic out there, and while not always the sites with most hits, highly intelligent conversations are going on.

What we have is more people getting together who are willing to collaborate and willing to share ideas back and forth. And an unprecedented level of creative remixing, which strains at the intellectual property laws which predate this revolution.

Citing your sources, i.e. the link economy, is even more important in today’s networked social environment (whether as a traditional news provider or an average person). If you try to pass of a lie as truth or somebody else’s work as your own, you will inevitably be found out. Information can travel very quickly, and while there is the risk of falsehoods spreading that Chris Heuer talked about (Safko, 17), I agree with his idea that being able to share ideas in progress is only a good thing. What he refers to as self-correcting blogging. What Jeff Jarvis calls process journalism.

All of this is great, but what about the consequences for people concerned about privacy? What about companies concerned about their brand image?

For the first, historically individuals who speak in the “public arena” waive their right to privacy, and that extends to online contexts. People should learn how to tweak controls in social networks so that they can share what they want about themselves and about their thoughts with only a limited group of acquaintances. [I'm not sure where I fall on privacy, but the post Two ways of looking at the future of privacy, from VentureBeat, does a good job of explaining the arguments out there.]

For the second, companies, candidates and the like should realize that they no longer control the message. Unfavorable news may get out there. There is more transparency than ever, so more responsible behavior than ever is needed. Their recourse for quelling negative published material is to engage directly and counter with their own version of the story. (Individuals should, however, be wary with what they post about their employer, as speech is not protected in private companies.)

Q: Will companies create new departments of social media communicators?

They already are…shifting people and resources away from marketing and PR as these departments reassess the brand landscape evolve. Just look to Pepsi, which announced it would not run a Super Bowl commercial this year, in favor of community-directed investing and increased online advertising.

Throughout 2010, I’ll continue to maintain a running list of good movies in the right-hand column of this blog. And since I’m part of what Wired calls “the cult of the somewhat delayed,” (via Kottke) I plan to be seeing a lot of 2009 and 2008 releases during 2010. I’ll  start with Roger Ebert’s picks for best picture of 2009 (I haven’t seen any of the 10 mainstream or 10 independent titles listed), best ’09 animated films (I’ve seen 3/10), best ’09 foreign films (1/15), <EDIT> (I left this link off) best ’09 documentaries (0/10)</EDIT> and best films of the decade (12/20), because I like his approach to lists, recognizing that it’s a subjective process and that the “top 10″ is an arbitrary number, and his blog gets good comments. Maybe I’ll start doing some reviews or ratings here too.

If you are into movies and want to connect with them through filmophile social networks, you can find me on Netflix Friends or The Auteurs.

American Teen
Paris, Je T’aime
Saints & Soldiers
Revolutionary Road
Blindness
I Served the King of England
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Helvetica
Synecdoche, New York
Rachel Getting Married
The Wackness
The Big Lebowski
American Beauty
Slumdog Millionaire
Pan’s Labyrinth
Punch-Drunk Love
Wit
Being John Malkovich
Delicatessen
Rushmore
Milk
Sita Sings the Blues
Frozen River
Divided We Fall
My Wife Is An Actress
Much Ado about Nothing
Coraline
Funny People
Waltz with Bashir
Tokyo! (but only Gondry’s Interior Design and Bong’s Shaking Tokyo, not Carax’s Merde. Fast-foward.)
Objectified
Nursery University
Rudo y Cursi
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead
Young@Heart
Sólo con tu pareja
The Informant!
Paris 36
The Class
Closer
High Fidelity
Doubt
2 Days in Paris
This is England
Henry Fool
Un Secret

Considering Erin Scime’s recent superb article on the content-strategist-as-curator, I am trying to do just that: showcase the best around a theme. An upcoming post will be social media-themed links. Today, enjoy the theme of informative content strategy graphics:

1. The Velocity B2B Marketing Tube Map by Doug Kessler. I could rename this a content map.
2. The Big Picture: End-to-End Content Strategy by Shelly Bowen. Love your in-the-moment illustration!
3. Web Site Migration, Implementation, or Redesign in Five Steps by David Hobbs. Really comprehensive yet simple break-down of that process.
4. The Three Spheres of Web Strategy –Updated for 2009 by Jeremiah Owyang. Balancing business, community and technology.
5. Common questions from the content creator by Richard Ingram. What a cool graphic for a hot topic.
6. Time & Our Focus on Content by Colleen Jones. Not gonna lie. Kind of hurts my head. ; ) But important to recognize.
7. Jobs in the Interactive Media sector by Skillset. Two graphics: what’s your take on related professions and experience around content strategy?
8. Updated: Web Content Cogs, latest graphic by Richard Ingram. He just keeps coming up with good ones. (See his past Flickr uploads.)

Please, if you have any other good content strategy graphics to add, let me know! And I look forward to publishing more themed link lists, more regularly.

The Discipline of Content Strategy

1. A Content Strategy Primer, by Rahel Bailie
2. The Value of Content, Part 1: Adam Smith never expected this, by Melissa Rach
3. Content Strategy for the Web Professional, by Jonathan Kahn

Social Media Strategy

4. Avoiding web white elephants [assessing time, team, budget, and heart for an effective social media presence], by Richard Ingram
5. Social Media Outsourcing Can Be Risky, by Jakob Nielsen

Metadata

6. Metadata: Defined, by Rachel Lovinger
7. Are you my Elvis? on the NYT digital index, by Rachel Lovinger
8. Where to put the keywords, by Jesper Åström

Content Marketing

9. Content First: Step One in Web Marketing, by Rick Allen

Big-picture Changes

10. The Changing Face of Communication according to IBM, by Joe Pulizzi
11. The end of aggregation? by Jevon MacDonald

Other recent activity of note on content strategy sites:

• Born: the STC Content Strategy SIG (special interest group)
• Unveiled: companion site for Kristina Halvorson’s “Content Strategy for the Web”
• Updated: the Content Strategy Knol

This is the fourth in an ongoing series of content strategy link round-ups. From most recent to least, see part 3, part 2, and 1. Thanks for stopping by!

The short answer is, different people have different definitions for style guides. Here’s what I’ve seen:

Broad and Narrow Definitions

To some people, a style guide can mean a comprehensive listing of standards for your Web project, encompassing everything from structure to design to graphics to W3C standards to word choice (a la the Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton).

To others, the style guide means a document that is more content-specific and unique to your project, focusing on editorial style. For those of us with a word background, we would probably think to printed counterparts like the Chicago Manual of Style, the AP Stylebook and Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, to name a few. The style guide in this mold deals with spelling, punctuation, word choice and even SEO issues.

Writing a Style Guide

I’ll elaborate on the second definition, which I use because, in practice, I find it is easier to distinguish between a general design/development/content checklist and a project-specific, editorial-focused style guide.

A style guide is an internal resource that can also be shared with the client and any content collaborators. Its purpose is to foster consistency and effective communication, making editing easier on you and ultimately making your content easier for readers to understand.

What do you put in?

Your style guide entries should write certain things in stone, for example, the company name and trademarks. It can also include frequently used words that you always have to look up because of tricky hyphenation, or some other reason. No style guide is exhaustive, which is why you should specify a back-up source, such as the AP Stylebook and a specific dictionary.

The difference between print style guides and Web style guides is that the latter have to take into account the interactive nature of the medium, usability research and Web writing conventions. Links and lists are two specific areas where print and the Web differ greatly.

Often overlooked, one of the most important part of the style guide is guidelines (and examples!) of the project’s voice and messages. I love the idea of including a project-specific word bank (hat-tip Brain Traffic…see “5 Tips” link below).

Who writes it?

Writing a style guide should involve whoever is making decisions about content for a given project, including content strategists, copywriters, editors, proofreaders and the client.

Examples

Here are some real-life entries from a university style guide I update:

• course work Two words. (Merriam-Webster)
• curriculum vitae Plural is curricula vitae. (Merriam-Webster)
• GPA Uppercase without periods, and use only initials in all references. Include the hundredths place.
• URLs URLs should not stand alone, but be linked from copy by words that relate to the link subject. Do not link from “click here.”

This style guide also contains a long section dedicated to lexical style, with discussion and examples of the university voice and messaging.

A related document I work off of is a site redesign checklist. It specifies 128 actions dealing with content, design and development that must be completed before, during and after launch, under the following categories:

• Introductory Process
• Pre-usability Testing
• Initial Content Review
• Technical Audit and Development Site
• Design
• Structure and Navigation
• Content Migration
• Photography, Images and Multimedia
• Site Review, Testing and Finalizing

Revising and Using a Style Guide

In my opinion, a style guide should be open to revision as the project evolves. The style guide revision process doesn’t have to be overly formal, but it’s essential to:

1. Keep track of your style questions.
2. Discuss them with your content colleagues.
3. Come to a consensus (whether the result is black-and-white rule or just a guideline).
4. Keep your style guide up-to-date.

Elizabeth Saloka wrote the helpful 5 Tips for Working with a Style Guide. She warns against deviating from your style guide mid-project, and I agree: consider where you in the publication process and whether you can implement the change now or whether you should hold off until the next content roll-out.

Questions

Provocatively, Jeffrey MacIntyre recently proposed a radical “reboot” of the style guide, framing it as a “living, breathing process document.” In his presentation on the elements of editorial strategy (see slide 24), he proposed the style guide take on a more “show bible” aspect (referring to the world of TV production), and that it be a training document, with publishing walkthroughs for each content module.

I tend to think that this documentation is vital for any Web site with regular publication of new content, but that perhaps it’s outside the province of the style guide. However, if it isn’t included in style guides, is there a good chance the publication process part gets overlooked?

To all others who have written or worked with style guides, do you think the style guide is the place for publication processes? How much do you see the style guide as set in stone vs. living and breathing? And what other questions or issues have come up in working with a Web style guide?

It’s about an hour long and I encourage you to watch the whole thing if you work on the website for a university or school or even a corporation (there are similar communication pitfalls at all types of large organizations, after all…speaking of which, Paul has previously written about 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites). I can’t stress how clear and helpful this presentation is. As a teaser, here are the headlines of each topic, but you must watch it for an explanation and more importantly, a solution:

10. A CMS is not a silver bullet.
9. Social media is hard.
8. Users don’t care about organizational structure.
7. If you try to appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody.
6. Your site is bloated and out of date.
5. Too many techies and marketeers!
4. Great content needs central control.
3. A lack of direction/focus
2. Course finders suck.
1. Politics are killing your site.

Right now, I’m particularly interested in #9 and the topic of social media for higher ed, as we are actively planning for long-term social media strategy. More on what I’ve learned about that soon. (And as for #5, I happen to work for a university and wouldn’t characterize any of my colleagues as clueless techies and marketeers. They are the saintly opposite; they get it.)

1. Are You Sure Your Content Marketing Strategy Is a Good Fit? by Sonia Simone
2. Transcribing the spoken word, by Richard Ingram
3. The four kinds of non-catastrophic breaking news, and why social media aren’t changing them, by Michael Andersen
4. The True Shortcut to Valuable Content, by Shelly Bowen
5. The Fallacy Of The Link Economy, by Arnon Mishkin
6. Design and Content in Customer Service Excellence, by Colleen Jones
7. How to create metaphors that enhance user experience, by Gabriel Smy
8. The Case for Content Strategy—Motown Style, by Margot Bloomstein
9. 10 things every business person should know about content strategy, slideshare by Melissa Rach
10. The Next Big Headache for Digital Publishers, by Jeff MacIntyre
11. How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog, by Celine Rogue
12. B-to-b marketers connect with social media, by Rob Crumpler
13. For content problems, technology is not the thing, by Kristina Halvorson
14. No Chief Web Officer Required, by Lisa Welchman
15. Social Tagging – Questions Answered on Correction Tools and Vendors, by Stephanie Lemieux
16. Why PDFs are Bad for the Web and How to Make Them Better, by Rick Allen
17. They’ll help them find you: [content strategy in the public search arena], by Richard Ingram
18. 6 Reasons You Need Content Strategy, by Erin Scime
19. Back-end designs and the CMS cycle of disillusionment, by Adriaan Bloem
20. PDF: Story Listening through Social Media, by Story Worldwide

If you’re talking about #contentstrategy on Twitter, you can find me @julieespinosa.