If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to learn more about content strategy, I’ve got a deal for you!

I’m presenting a 3-hour workshop as part of the Midwest UX Conference, in Columbus, OH. Content Strategy 101 will take you through the whats, the whys, and most importantly, the how-tos of content strategy on Thursday, May 31. The conference pass is an affordable $350 and the workshops are a steal at $50 each. I’m teaching in the morning, so pick up one of the other great topics that afternoon, as well. Register today while there’s still room….some of the workshops are close to selling out!

Creek Content is proud to sponsor the April 12 luncheon for the Nashville chapter of the American Marketing Association — and its speaker, Jonathan Byerly from Dell. Byerly is responsible for content strategy at Dell, and he gave a great presentation at Confab 2011. We are looking forward to his talk at NAMA next Thursday.

If you’re interested in learning more about content strategy, or in hearing how you can budget for and measure it, it’s not too late to sign up for the luncheon! We’d be glad to see you there.

Our post last week on some exciting upcoming resources in content strategy got us thinking about a topic we discuss fairly often here: What’s in the essential content strategy library?

We spend a lot of time educating ourselves and our clients on the latest tools and techniques that content strategy brings to projects. Because the holistic way of thinking about content strategy is still gaining traction in many quarters, many people we talk to would consider themselves learners instead of experts. And with the holidays around the corner, you might be working on your wish list.

So we’ll share our picks for the best resources on content strategy — both now and in 2012. And we’re going to send a full set of our content strategy library to one reader! Keep reading for the details….

Laura’s Picks:

• Content Strategy for the Web — Buy it now, or pre-order the 2nd edition coming in 2012! This is the book that defined the discipline of content strategy.
• Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works — The seminal classic on writing for the web. If Ginny Redish hasn’t taught you how to write yet, don’t miss the opportunity to learn from a master.
• The Elements of Content Strategy — Erin Kissane wrote this great how-to book earlier this year. Great companion to the Halvorson book.

Summer’s Picks:

• The Content Marketing Institute Blog was one of the first that I ever added to my RSS reader. Posts are written by leaders in the content marketing and strategy world — all people that I trust, many that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person. They stay on top of trends in the industry, offer case studies on best practices and let us all learn lessons from their mistakes, and provide a one-stop shop for resources.
• Content Rules by Anne Handley and C.C. Chapman is about much more than creating quality website content. This little book packs quite a punch and covers content formats such as ebooks, videos, podcasts and webinars. It’s an easy-to-read reference that has a little something for first-time content creators and veterans alike.

To get the library: 
In the comments below, share your favorite content strategy resource or tell us which book above you’re looking most forward to reading. We’ll randomly select one commenter on Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011, and send you the four books in the library. [Shipping free to any U.S. location; if you're not U.S.-based, we'll talk.]

Seems like every time we turn around, there’s even more exciting news about content strategy. This emerging discipline is making great strides in helping organizations better gather, manage and evaluate content to meet business goals — and more and more people are interested!

We wanted to point out two events this week that have us pretty geeked out.

Contents Magazine launches: We are looking forward to this new source of wisdom on content strategy, founded by Erin Kissane, Krista Stevens, Ethan Marcotte and Erik Westra. The site promises to focus on “content strategy, online publishing, and new-school editorial work.” We love it. The first issue is rolling out over the next few weeks, but they’ve already got some goodies posted on what the heck we all do, and what we call it.

Margot Bloomstein’s book hits Amazon: We can be a fairly cynical lot around here, but some of us turn downright fan-girl when we talk about Margot Bloomstein. She’s a smart thinker about content strategy and the theories behind what we do, so we can’t wait to read her content strategy book
coming out next spring.

And P.S., while you’re over at Amazon checking that out, you might as well go ahead and pre-order the second editions of two other great works that inform our field — also coming out in 2012:

• Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper’s Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy
• Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach’s Content Strategy for the Web

We don’t know about you, but we’re already feeling smarter in anticipation.

We’ve been in business here for nearly 3 years and we’ve gone by Creekmore Consulting that whole time — but we’ve been content strategists for even longer than that. And the more we thought about it, the more we thought 2 things:

• Content is central to what we do, and we want that to be clear.
• creekmoreconsulting.com is a damn long URL.

So we toyed with a lot of new ideas, and we discovered that many, many people out there are sitting on some really fantastic URLs for content strategy consultancies and doing nothing with them. [Get busy with those URLs or let them go, folks!]

And then last year at South by Southwest, we realized we wanted to set up a Twitter account for the business, and without thinking too hard about it, we named it @creekcontent. And we’ve used it a bit from time to time, and each time we did, we thought, Huh, Creek Content. That’s nice, and it’s pretty short. So we bought the URL, just in case.

The more we thought about it, the more sense that made. We have played with a lot of different names in the past few months, but none seemed to fit like Creek Content, and the longer we talked about it, the more it felt like home.

So from here on out, Creek Content is what we’ll be calling ourselves, and hope you will too.

In a related matter, we’re starting a monthly newsletter. Content strategy isn’t rocket science — we couldn’t teach you that in a monthly newsletter — but there are some specific tools and strategies to our discipline, and we’ve found that people like to learn more. So, we’re going to start sharing more.

Be sure to share your email with us so we can share our content strategy goodies with you.

We hope you’ll sign up to get a little slice of content strategy goodness delivered from us right to your inbox each month.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across this post by Olivier Blanchard at Brandbuilder.com, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind ever since. Yes, it is a bit dated (posted in October 2010), but that doesn’t change the fact that I took offense to this particular paragraph:

2010′s Social Media experts, especially those who came to their impressive expertise by way of writing blogs about writing blogs, will magically transform themselves into “Content Strategists” (a term stolen from either the SEO world or that of content fulfillment firms keen on the fact that “content strategy” sounds a lot sexier than “content fulfillment”). Though for some, the transformation will take place sometime between the hours of 4am and 9am (GMT) on 1 January 2011, the vast majority of the metamorphoses will take place based on Social Media conferences’ need for Content Strategy speakers. Expect a deeper ‘content strategy’ track at SxSW, and a rapid addition of ‘content strategy’ to most failing digital agencies’ service offerings.

Ever since I laid eyes on that portion of the article, I have been mentally arguing with Blanchard. Here are a few points I’d like to make about content strategy as I see it — not a buzzword or the latest fad, but a real mindset and toolkit:

1. Content strategy is actually a communications strategy. Perhaps if we think of the way we deal with content in terms of the way we communicate to our friends/readers/visitors, it’s easier to understand how it works. Most people don’t think about the usability of content on their website until it’s too late. Implementing a concrete strategy will make your content do what you want it to do. I’m going to steal a phrase of Ann Handley‘s that Laura quotes frequently, and point out that everyone is a publisher. If you have a blog, Facebook page, Twitter account or even an email address, you create content every day. Content strategy can make that content work to help you reach your business goals.
2. Content strategy is a system. Though content strategy can’t be explained or visualized in terms of a tangible item (for example, it’s not a pretty website that you can see and interact with), it is a system of its own. The term “content strategy” describes a system that nurtures and maximizes the capability of your content from the time it’s created until it becomes outdated or you remove it from your website.
3. Content strategy is measurable. Maybe this is too easy, but in my opinion, if you can measure results of a service, it is real. Measuring the ROI on a content strategy starts by identifying your goal. Do you want more readers? Focus on page views and the average time spent on your website. Are you trying to generate more leads? A good content strategy will increase the quality of your leads and shorten your sales cycle. Of course, this isn’t going to happen overnight. But if you give us some time to use content to reach your goals, we can make it happen.
4. Content strategy effects change. If you don’t believe me, just read how strategically placed content inspired me to quit smoking for good.