Hilary Marsh: Digital Councils for Better Content Strategy – Episode 194

Hilary Marsh Organizations of all types and sizes struggle with presenting their content so that it both makes sense to readers and aligns with the organization's intentions. Hilary Marsh introduced the concept of the "digital council" to address this issue. Councils can take many forms, depending on the nature of the organization, but the intent always is to glue back together content that has been disconnected by organizational silos. We talked about: her background as a content strategy practitioner and community builder the focus of her practice on professional-association industry her assertion that "content is the way our work is manifested in the world" the urgent challenge of aligning an organization's content when it's created and shared by a variety of people and roles the three kinds of "glue" she sees that can reconnect disconnected content: taxonomy internal communications groups of people who come together to make decisions how content strategy is like conducting an orchestration her inclusion of content people at all levels in an organization in content strategy the framework she uses to help organization prioritize content initiatives how she sorts out the work of subject matter experts versus the work of content practitioners the role of internal communications in her content strategy work the quizzical looks she gets when she talks about content strategy as an HR practice the enduring value of an association content research study that she conducted several years ago with Carrie Hane and Dina Lewis the many ways in which a digital council can manifest in an organization Hilary's bio Hilary Marsh is president and chief strategist of Content Company, a content and digital strategy consultancy. She helps content-rich organizations get better results from their content by improving their practices (and their people, processes, and cultures). Content Company’s clients include Allstate, American Bar Association, American College of Cardiology, American Medical Association, Estée Lauder, Endocrine Society, Fulbright Teachers Exchange, Institute of Food Technologists, Intuit, NORC at the University of Chicago, Syracuse University, and Walgreens. Hilary has been a leading content strategy practitioner, mentor, and professor since 1999. She has taught at Kent State University, the University of Strasbourg, Society for Technical Communications, and University of Applied Sciences FH Joanneum in Graz, Austria. She also offers a public online content strategy course at Firehead training. Hilary has been published, quoted, and her work cited in major industry publications including Content Strategy for the Web, Content Strategy at Work, and reports from Prophet/Altimeter, and she is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences including Confab, the IA Conference, Lavacon, and the STC Summit, as well as numerous global meetups. Hilary is a co-author of a major study about content strategy adoption and maturity in associations. She leads the 1,700-member international content strategy community at content-strategy.com. Connect with Hilary online LinkedIn Twitter hilary at contentcompany dot biz Content-Strategy.com community Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/5vLIkn7K9WI Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 194. Even the smallest organization has several different people and business units communicating with its customers and members. Orchestrating a modern organization's content so that it makes sense to everyone who reads it and that it aligns to the organization's intent is an urgent challenge. Hilary Marsh introduced the idea of "content councils" to address this issue, to glue back together content disconnected by organizational silos. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone.