Frequently Asked Questions
These common questions and their short answers are taken from Natalie Dunbar’s book From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Practice. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.
- What do you mean by “From Solo to Scaled?”
This book is meant to help you build or augment content strategy practices of various sizes. You’ll benefit from the approaches in this book if you’re the lone content person in your business (a solo practitioner), or the manager of a small to medium-sized content team looking to grow or scale your operations to meet an increase in demand. Chapters 1 through 5 teach you the steps for building practices of any size. You’ll learn how to maintain the core of your practice in Chapter 6 (also appropriate for practices of varying sizes). Subsequent chapters (Chapter 6–9) focus on sustainability and scaling for when you know you’re ready to grow. - Will this book teach me what content strategy is and how to do it?
No. But Chapter 1 includes a list of resources that you can use to learn more about the what and how of content strategy. With that said, this book is written from the point of view of building a content strategy practice that has a UX focus, or one that may be part of a larger DesignOps organization. - What definitions of content strategy are you using to base the practice-building methodologies and approaches that you reference in this book?
There are many definitions of what content strategy is and is not. The sample Content Strategy Community of Practice Charter in Chapter 2 includes these operating definitions from Kristina Halvor- son’s Brain Traffic blog:Content strategy guides the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.
Content strategy means getting the right content to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
Content strategy is an integrated set of user-centered, goal- driven choices about content throughout its lifecycle.
While the blueprint included in this book could apply to building a variety of practice types, the focus here is specifically about establishing user experience-focused content strategy practices.
- What are some key milestones in the practice-building process? Or to put it another way, when will I know I’m succeeding?
How you define key milestones that lead to success depends in large part on what kind of organization you’re building your practice in and when it’s appropriate for you to engage leadership. You’ll learn more about this in Chapter 9. - I’m not a content strategist, but I really think my agency or business needs to invest in building a practice. Can this book help me make the case with my managers or leaders?
Absolutely! Anyone who is a champion of content strategy will find this book useful. Walk through the practice blueprint in Chapter 1 to understand what it takes to break ground. Then decide if you’re the right person to do so. If that’s not you, you’ll need to do a bit of legwork to find the content champions among you. When you do, hand them this book. Give them time to sit with it, and if you can, pledge your support in every stage of the process where appropriate. It may take some time—and for the person or persons tasked with building, the road may be a bit lonely. Follow the blueprint and even if you have to revisit or repeat a few steps, you’ll find success.
