A Day in the Life of a Web Site Content Strategist  

     There are two things that I know for sure about working as a Web site content strategist:

• No two days are the same.
• You will rarely get into a rut.

     The problems to be solved and challenges to overcome will be different for every project. You will not be spending many days behind a computer all day long. Sure, there will be a few dull days here and there, but Web content strategy is an interactive job and you function as part of a team. So there will be lots of meetings for planning, creating strategy, and problem solving.

     So here are a few of the kinds of things you might be doing in a day on the job as a Web content strategist:

• Design reviews for a future project that is still in planning and meet with the designers and information architects to learn about a new project that needs your editorial input.
  
• Write content for a project that is currently in production. This is a project with a deadline, so you would have certain writing and editing tasks assigned to you to perform.
  
• Track writing work to be done by others for another project on which you are working. In this project, some of the writing is to be done by the client's marketing department. You have given the content authors in the marketing department a list of exactly what needs to be written and a schedule of when things are due. One of your tasks is to track their work and make sure they are on schedule.
  
• Attend problem-solving meetings. Clients just added new requirements for another project your team is working on. Now they also want all the content to be translated into Spanish. You meet with the rest of the team to figure out what the new content development process will be and how long this will take. You come up with an estimate to take back to the client. Doing the translations in the current project will add a significant amount of time and delay the product launch. You recommendation is to perform this work as a phase-two project to be started as soon as the current project launches.
  
• Edit the work of others as newly-written Web content comes to you in the Web content management system. You have a number of copy writing contractors working on several projects. One of your tasks is to edit their work to make sure your editorial style guide is followed.

     This is just a small list of possible things you might be called upon to do, but you can see the tasks are varied and interesting.

Does This Sound Interesting to You?

     I know a lot of these ideas may be new to you if you have not worked a lot on the Web. The most important ideas to take away from this section are that Web site content strategist is a real job, it pays well, and it's not rocket science. You do not have to be a programmer or know HTML.

     If you are interested in planning writing projects, you enjoy thinking about how to best help the client communicate with the reader, and you like working on the Web, then read on. I hope to open up a whole new career field for you.