Content Is The Web - Web writing and content strategy

I’m an SEO cynic. Here’s why.

Post author By Max Johns
Post date November 13, 2019

When you’re a content strategist you spend a lot of time explaining what you’re not. No, I’m not an editor, nor a copywriter. Not a marketer. Not a project manager either. And I’m definitely not an SEO guy.

I take a long view of search engine optimisation, and am more than happy to leave the details to people who know more than me. Sometimes though, I get the feeling that those details are taken way more seriously than they should be. This post is my attempt to explain myself (and not make too many enemies in the process).

Tags SEO

Content strategy

Tinkering with ideas about excellence

Post author By Max Johns
Post date November 5, 2019

I’ve been doing a bit of internal blogging at work. It’s been fun. I asked what people might want to read, and someone asked me about creating a culture of excellence in a content marketing team. Not my usual wheelhouse, but it got me thinking. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

Tags content marketing, excellence, team dynamics

Content strategy Governance and workflow

A working definition of content governance

Post author By Max Johns
Post date October 23, 2019

I have a new job, working remotely as the Director of Content for a fast-growing tech company (SaaS, basically). I’ve come in as the workforce is clicking up somewhere between 100 and 200. This is the size where organisations outgrow workable informality. Meanwhile, as a remote team member, I’m experimenting with internal blog posts as a form of working out loud. This is the first such post that I’ve modified for Content is the Web. It started when I was asked some quite general questions about content governance. It’s a recognised weakness (because informality hasn’t been an issue yet), and it’s more or less my responsibility now. Like any good content strategist though, I ain’t touching any problem until I’ve defined the shit out of it.

Making corporate web

If you’re investing in brand discovery, you’d better be paying for something that makes life easier for content teams

Post author By Max Johns
Post date September 28, 2019

Discovering and defining your organisation’s brand is hard. It requires introspection and optimism – which large organisations often don’t have in abundance. But get it right and you enable easier collaboration. You devolve decision-making, and you see better outputs (like, say, websites).

Let me set the scene. A senior manager proclaims that “we’re excited to announce that we’re about to spend months and months redefining our brand. Even better, we want your input!”

Widespread cynicism, angst and dread follow.

Tags Brand

Thinkers, makers, and doers

When someone asks a simple question about “agile”, and you try not to write a book in response

Post author By Max Johns
Post date August 1, 2018

From: Wife (work)
To: Me (personal)
Subject: What’s your opinion on Agile?

[Blank email]

From: Me (trying to not open multiple boxes of Pandora, clean multiple Aegean stables, or attempt solutions to multiple enigmas wrapped in mysteries)
To: Wife (work, which by the way is nothing to do with software or web or anything like that)
Subject: Re: What’s your opinion on Agile?

Tags agile

Uncategorized

Content Strategy, Simplified, is dead. Long live simplified content strategy.

Post author By Max Johns
Post date November 9, 2017

I’m interrupting an extended period of not blogging to quickly write about Content Strategy, Simplified. That’s the name of a little consultancy I set up last year. I kind of hoped at the time that it would one day become a medium-sized consultancy. It didn’t, but that’s okay.

Better than okay, in truth.

Tags simplification