Carrie Hane: Content Strategy as a System – Episode 69

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Carrie Hane sees content strategy as a complex information ecosystem, not a simple stream of publications.

Looking at content strategy as a system helps her give her clients a more complete picture of how content works.

Carrie and I talked about:

• her recent decision to describe herself professionally by the activities she does instead of a job title or similar label
• her recent insight about the benefits of looking at content strategy as a system
• the problem of dealing with short-term thinking when content strategy is a long-term investment
• how the systems theory concepts of “stocks” and “flows” can provide a fuller picture of how content fits into an organization
• her hope that the idea of looking at content strategy as a system catches on and starts a conversation in the discipline
• how thinking about content strategy as a system can improve how agencies work with clients, and maybe even provide opportunities to deliver more and better service
• her ongoing efforts to learn about other domains and other disciplines and apply their insights to her work
• some of the fields of study that she thinks can make you a more well-rounded content strategist: statistics, psychology, marketing, relational databases, HTML, coding, design theory
• how studying a field like systems theory can help content strategists expand their thinking
• her frustration with folks who don’t comprehend and appreciate the scope of content strategy
• how content strategy is more of a practice than a discipline
• the differences between the domain model used in her book and other models (systems models, mental models, ontology models, etc.)
• how the domain model is a useful tool for capturing the language related to a project and how it helps clients see the broader impact of her work
• what matters to her: “making sure people see all the pieces and can connect the dots that matter”

Links to publications and people mentioned in the interview:

• Thinking in Systems: A Primer” by Donella Meadows
• You’re Never Going to Sell Content Strategy blog post
• Aaron Bradley‘s blog on knowledge graphs, linked data, and semantic technologies
• taxonomy expert Bob Kasenchak
• research paper on content maturity in associations with Hilary Marsh and Dina Lewis
• her upcoming talk at OmnichannelX

Carrie’s Bio

Carrie Hane is a creative problem solver and connector of people, processes, and technology. For more than 20 years, she’s been helping organizations transform to meet the ever-changing needs of the people they serve and take advantage of the latest technology.

She is the co-author of Designing Connected Content: Plan and Model Digital Products for Today and Tomorrow (New Riders, 2018), a handbook for a pioneering approach to sustainable digital publishing. Today, Carrie helps make health communication more accessible and relevant along with her colleagues and clients at Palladian Partners.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Northern Michigan University and a Master’s in International Affairs from The George Washington University. By far the most enlightening education she has received is being the mother of boys for over 17 years.

Follow Carrie:

• Twitter
• TanzenConsulting.com (blog)
• LinkedIn

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

Podcast Intro Transcript

The field of content strategy has a lot of moving parts. Some folks try to explain it with simple publishing flow models. Carrie Hane sees content strategy more like an information ecosystem than a stream of publications. By looking at the practice as a complex system she’s able to share with her clients a more complete picture of how content works. Carrie sees other benefits of looking at content strategy as a system, and she’s hoping to start a conversation about this among her fellow content strategists.

Interview Transcript

Larry:
Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 69 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I’m really happy today to have with us, Carrie Hane. Carrie is best known or I know her best as the co-author of the book, Designing Connected Content. But she recently updated how she talks about herself. I’m going to try to get this right. She’s a creative problem solver and connector of people, processes, and technologies. Did I get that right, Carrie?

Carrie:
Yep. That is what I’m saying these days.

Larry:
Tell the folks a little bit more about that because . . . I know that it’s not just a job description.

Carrie:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m trying to not define myself by my job and what I actually do because in our world, calling yourself a content strategist or an information architect or a designer or whatever, nobody knows what that means or it means something different to everyone. So by just saying what you do, it’s much clearer. So using all the things I know about UX and content strategy to apply to myself.

Larry:
Nice. I mean, I can’t think of a person I’ve had on this podcast who didn’t struggle with job titles and what to call themselves and how to describe it if their grandma asked what they did or something. So that’s good that you’re ahead of the game there. Well, we were talking a couple of weeks ago and which kind of led to this podcast episode.

Larry:
We were talking, one of the things that came up in our conversation was this notion of how everybody in the field of content strategy lately has been talking about systems and systems analysis of things. And it came up in that conversation. You were like, “Yeah.” So thinking about systems and applying that to content strategy is one thing. But what if we looked at content strategy as a system? I want to hear your thinking on that.

Carrie:
Yeah. I’ve been reading Donella Meadows Thinking in Systems books. It’s all in sharp focus for me as something that I’ve kind of had in the back of my head for a while. And in that conversation, so like, “Wait. No, that’s the problem.” Content strategy is a system. And so I took that and as I was preparing for a talk, I was like, “Okay, I’m going to describe this system and using my rudimentary knowledge of system diagramming.” Laid it out so that content was in the center. It was the stock in the center of the system.

Carrie:
And then all of these things are happening around it. You have the consumers and the producers and the environment, the events in the environment, not events like conferences, but COVID-19 or whatever is happening, climate change. There’s all of these things that affect people and what content they need, what content they use, what content they’re looking for.

Carrie:
And then that affects their actions and then that in turn affects revenue. There’s always a cost. And we forget that there’s a cost to content because you have to pay the people to produce it. Sometimes you actually buy content, if it’s syndicated or things like that. So here’s all of these things going on that affect each other. And that’s a system. And yet, so often we look at just the content and action, right?

Carrie:
People, not necessarily people like us, but the people who aren’t like us. The CEOs and the CMOs look at this and go, “Well, if we’re producing content, why aren’t people doing something?” When it’s like, “Well, maybe they don’t want it or maybe we don’t have the money to produce it or whatever.” And they’re missing so much of the system. And that leads to short-term thinking when content strategy is a long-term investment.

Larry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Hey, I want to go back to one thing. There’s a lot of lingo or like jargon specific to systems theory, and you use the word stock a minute to go, that content is the stock at the center of this. Can you talk a little bit more? So there’s this stock, there’s this and I got to say just as an aside, as I was preparing for this interview. I was like, “This is so visual.” This whole thing started with you sharing a picture with me and we can’t really do that in a podcast.

Larry:
But one of the things, so there’s this content is literally at the middle of this diagram you created and that’s what they call in content what you would call in systems theory a stock. Talk a little bit about stocks and some of the other terminology that you’re applying from Meadows book.

Carrie:
Yeah. So stocks are the thing that can be measured. The thing that can be sometimes literally weighted. Obviously, content can’t be weighed, but we can count how much content we have. We can count what types of content we have. So it’s the thing that can be measured. And that goes up and down so that stock changes. And the other main idea is flows. The stock has inflow and outflow. So more stock can come in by different means, stock can go out and then that changes the level of the stock or keeps it in balance if you have things to balance.

Carrie:
So those stocks and flows are the basic components of the system. And then there’s all different kinds of feedback loops. If content goes out, then action is going to drop. And then there’s a lot more to it that’s more scientific mathematical than I’ll ever be. But to me, it’s the diagram and the thinking about all the parts of the systems.

Carrie:
All the elements that are in it that affect each other is what’s interesting and most applicable to my work. And the work I’m doing is we’re trying to get people to think longer term broader and maps to business goals and map to serving people and fulfilling missions that you can’t do if you’re only focused on production of content.

Larry:
Right. And that kind of gets to one of the real insights that I took from that diagram you sent was that you can do an overlay kind of at the center of your diagram. And you’re going to present this at OmnichannelX I think, and this podcast will actually come out before then. So I’ll put a link in there if folks want to see your presentation, still time to register for the conference. But you had in the very center of that was this sort of what I think most people think of when they think of content is like this basic publishing model.

Larry:
It kind of goes you have an idea, you write it, you edit it, you vet it with subject matter experts, whatever you do to it, you publish it and it sends out to the world. It’s kind of this linear thing, it has a start it has a finish. And you can do an overlay on your chart that shows just that part. But then if you look at the rest of it you’re like, “Whoa, there’s all this stuff going on.” Tell me and it sounds like that insight is going to help you communicate better with the folks you interact with as you’re representing your content. Is that?

Carrie:
Yeah, I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to use it. It’s new.

Larry:
It’s a brand new idea, no problem.

Carrie:
No, it is new but more people are talking about systems, as you said. And I hope that this introduction of this idea, and this is just one, literally one slide on the presentation. So it’s just one part of it. But I mean, my whole talk is about connections. And so it talks about how everything fits together. So I hope it’s to start up a conversation with other smart people who know what’s going on, see things a little bit differently and can get us to that.

Carrie:
I don’t know if it’s a leveling up that needs to happen in the content strategy world or reaching out maybe, so that we’re not just so focused on trying to get people to understand what we do. And understand instead help them understand what it is we can do for them. And I think that fundamentally is something that needs to change in our community, because we’re not going to convince people.

Carrie:
I wrote and I honestly, and I have to remind myself, too. It’s not ingrained in me either sometimes. I wrote five years ago a blog post called You’re Never Going to Sell Content Strategy. And I seriously have to keep pointing myself to that.

Larry:
Keep reminding. Because what you just said reminds me, I have a dear friend, who’s a government administrator, pretty high level county administrator. And she said this thing recently is, “As soon as you start explaining yourself, you’ve lost.” And we’re kind of in that position as a discipline. But so back to the system thing. Another thing that occurred to me since we last talked, it seems like going from that kind of linear production model of content, just sort of a very overly simplified model of content operations is just like a publishing thing to this more holistic systems approach.

Larry:
I’ve been going to school a lot lately on UX and the kind of the history of that discipline because I’m hoping we can learn from them and advance ourselves further. But anyhow, one of the things, one of the key insights I think that that led to that was the emergence of agile methodologies in the tech development world.

Larry:
And that going from the old waterfall model of this your grand plan, a bunch of work, you have some polishing and then a launch, to this more iterative and agile thing. Is there a relationship? Is there something analogous to that kind of shift going on in what you hope to see from this old model of how people see content to a more systems approach?

Carrie:
I don’t think so, actually. I think that. . . I don’t think agile is any more holistic than waterfall. It’s just a different approach.

Carrie:
When it works, I guess it works. I don’t know. I haven’t really seen it work all that effectively myself, but yeah. I think that the systems approach is thinking beyond that project. I think still with agile methodology, you’re still thinking about a project and you’re not thinking about how that project fits in to other projects and to the things that are there going on outside of the organization or the client if you’re a consultant.

Carrie:
So for instance, recently I was talking with a team who had recently discovered systems thinking and I was like, “Yay! Good for you.” And they presented this idea and how they worked with a client and someone else that was on a different project, part of this bigger UX team was like, “Oh, wow. If we had only done that in our work with this other client, it would have gone so much better.”

Carrie:
Because we wouldn’t have just been looking at one website or one task on one website. We would have looked at the whole customer journey and saw where this fit in. And not only would that project have gone better because they would have had better context for what that project was doing. But as a consultant, they probably could have upsold to client on, “Well, we could also do this and we’re going to do this over here, but you still got this stuff over here that isn’t going to do what you need it to do.”

Carrie:
And I mean, you can use that as a consultant or not. A consultant in-house people can do that too and start helping people connect all the dots. Right? That’s how I describe myself and that’s just natural to me to connect all the dots. And we have to do that for people, people like us do that naturally and so we think everybody else can do it, but they can’t. And we have to do it for them.

Larry:
So that’s why you’re so excited about discovering this and going like, “Wow, okay. I have a tool here that can show how …” Well, I guess to jump ahead from that idea that you probably are you seeing as you study systems theory like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been doing it this way the whole time. Now I have some lingo to describe it or some additional concepts that can help me stitch it together even better.” Is that what’s happening now or?

Carrie:
I think so. I think I’ve recently discovered that there’s all these other fields that have already figured out so much of what we, what I’ve been trying to figure out my whole career for the last 20 years, because I didn’t start in interactive design or content strategy back in when I was in school. We didn’t have that one, I guess. Interactive design existed for a select few people. It was just a long time ago.

Carrie:
So bringing things from other disciplines just makes me realize how much we keep trying to reinvent everything. So the systems theory I think is catching on in the broader field too. I think people are looking as we get into this – big data and all of these giant information. I don’t even know what to call them, piles of mess. This chaos that we’ve created with information across the internet is, people are looking for ways to tackle that. And they’re turning to things like systems thinking. This is not new. This is from what? The 50s or 60s, and it’s from business.

Carrie:
So there’s people that have been doing this and more people are applying that. And so I’ve kind of always done that. I’ve always had a broad range of interests. So I’m excited lately to see how to learn about other domains and other disciplines and how I can apply that to my work instead of going I don’t want to say I know everything about content strategy because no one knows everything about anything, but I’ve been doing this long enough I know. I know all the basics and I know where to go to exactly who to go to or where to go to get more deep information about something. So it’s exciting to learn about these other fields and to have that.

Larry:
Yeah, for folks who don’t want to spend 20 years to get to where you are, can you jumpstart the newer kids on the journey? Are there particular disciplines or approaches or things you’ve discovered that you said, “God, I wish I’d known this 20 years ago?”

Carrie:
So a few things, because I’ve been talking about this as my oldest prepares to look at colleges and what he studies to make himself a more well-rounded person, as well as my nieces and nephews I’ve been having these conversations. One thing I wish I had studied and then remembered is statistics, math. I was learning about Knowledge Graphs recently and I was reading and trying to find the right pieces of content, having someone, Aaron Bradley writes a lot about that.

Carrie:
Bob, big, long last name that starts with a K that I can pronounce when I see it. [ Bob Kasenchak ]

Larry:
If you send me that, I’ll put it in the show notes.

Carrie:
Yeah. So there’s people out there that are making it easier to understand, but I’m like, “I’m still not getting this.” And so I’m like, “Boy, I wish I remembered algebra two.” So I think there’s things that we’d never thought we would apply. So I wish I had statistics because all this data that we have now, most people are going to need to use statistics and certainly people in the content field. You need to understand how data interacts with each other and tells a story.

Carrie:
So statistics are one. I wish I gone beyond psych 101. Psychology, human psychology and sociology behavior change, all of that stuff we’re doing that all the time. It’s part and parcel and if you don’t understand the basics of that, it’s hard. I wish I knew a little bit more about marketing. I would not have wanted to go into marketing, but I think there are some principles in marketing and communications, and they’re not the same. But I wish I knew a little bit more about their principles to apply and have better conversations with those folks.

Carrie:
I have learned about relational databases. So learning just that structure that, again, that’s the natural part for me, the database and this data structure make sense to me. But understanding HTML and just that coding, just to understand that, to understand what’s delivering our content. It’s all code. And being able to have those conversations. Design theory.

Larry:
That’s a long list.

Carrie:
I can keep going on. I mean, content strategy and user experience generally is a multidisciplinary field. It’s kind of a little bit of everything all tied in, which is what appeals to me because I would get bored just doing one thing all the time.

Larry:
Yep. That’s why I never got an advanced degree – it’s like, they want you to focus and I’m like, “No, I’m a generalist and eclectically curious guy.” You just take your degree and yeah. Yeah. I’m wondering, so with all of that and layering the system stuff on top of that.

Larry:
Are there implications do you think for the practice of content strategy if we can get this understanding of systems theory kind of more ensconced, both in understanding the discipline and in the practice of the discipline?

Carrie:
I think it goes back to that it’s expansive and it helps us get out of our own heads again and trying to keep that. I had a LinkedIn conversation recently when I was just getting frustrated that people who claim to know content strategy are like, they don’t really get it. They get just a piece of it, not the breadth of it. and so I’m like, “What is this going to take?” And so there was some interesting conversation, some interesting comments and some discussion back and forth. And one person said, “I don’t consider content strategy a discipline. I consider it a practice.”

Carrie:
And that made me think I haven’t replied to that because she said, “Ultimately, it’s publishing. Publishing is the discipline” and the practice of content strategy goes beyond the traditional publishing model to incorporate the business. There’s all of those other disciplines, right?, that feed into the practice of content strategy. So I think that made sense to me that we can practice content strategy.

Carrie:
And in fact, research that I did with Hilary Marsh and Dina Lewis a couple of years ago, as we were writing the report, that’s what we kept referring that to is the content strategy practice. You’re setting up a practice. Not only just like a lawyer or a doctor, you have a practice, but you’re constantly practicing. We’re always learning something new. We never do the same thing twice.

Larry:
That’s interesting too, because once you articulate it as a practice, you think of those doctors and lawyers, they have sort of standards of practice. And sort of like we probably have those in our head and we all have our ideas of the best ways to do stuff and sort of maybe self-imposed standards.

Larry:
I mean, there are associations that concern themselves with content strategy, but there’s not a body that says, “Here are the standards of practice.” What would you if you just had to outline that off the top of your head, what do you think some of those standards might be that we should aspire to?

Carrie:
Gosh, well, you’re putting me on the spot, Larry.

Larry:
Yeah, no, I know. I just realized what a horrible, unfair question that is. Hey, let’s maybe circle back to that, but I wanted to ask you one other question too. Because it’s just – my little brain – it seemed like as I was preparing for the interview, you first came to my attention. I mean, I’ve known about you, followed you for a long time. But when I read Designing Connected Content, I just so appreciated that domain model approach to things.

Larry:
And that’s sort of like a static snapshot of a domain of here are the entities, here how’s they relate to one another. Here’s the attributes of each entity. So this is a handy way to articulate the system we’re working in. But a systems model is more about it, am I correct in thinking that a systems model is a more dynamic look at that at a similar terrain or have you given that much thought?

Carrie:
I haven’t really given it much thought, but now that you mentioned it, yeah. It’s a systems model. I mean, it’s inherently dynamic. A system is dynamic. A system is not static. And people have said with the domain model, “Isn’t that a mental model?” So there’s these minute differences between a domain model and a mental model and an ontology model. Systems model is quite a bit different or a data model. So there’s all these different models that are very similar. Use what makes sense to you. But the domain model, what I have found that does is it just opens up all of this, I keep saying that. So much opens up when you look at, “Oh, what domain am I working in?”

Carrie:
I’m not creating a banking app. I’m working within the domain of thinking and that is set. So you can change how you can change your customer service. You can change how you do it, but you can’t fundamentally one bank like there’s no reason to change the language. Someone mentioned this recently, there’s withdrawals and deposits. Why change that language? It’s existed for a really long time and that’s part of everyone’s mental model.

Carrie:
So there are certain things we don’t need to change. We just need to work within and figure out how we can work within that. But seeing that just whenever I’ve done a domain model with clients, it’s opened up new possibilities for them because they suddenly see we’re not just creating a website. We’re establishing a brand and our brand does this for people. And it’s about that domain and what it does for people.

Carrie:
So it’s a process at least as much, if not more than the actual diagram because you’re going to do it collaboratively, you should be. Otherwise, it’s kind of useless because it’s the process. It’s getting people to start talking about what they do and what matters to them, and they’re subject matter experts in something. And they get excited to talk about that. Just like I’m excited now.

Larry:
Exactly. Yeah. Hey Carrie, I can’t believe it. We’re already coming close to time. I always like to give my guests before we wrap up. We’ve got a few more minutes, but I want to make sure before we wrap up, is there anything last? Anything that’s come up during this conversation that you want to elaborate on or just something that’s on your mind about content strategy or information architecture or domain modeling or systems or anything?

Carrie:
Yeah. It’s interesting just that the way you phrase that brought something up. I was on a panel at about the future. I think it was about the future of IA at World IA Day in February right before we started not having events. So we got to see all collect in-person in Washington, D.C. And we were talking about roles and titles. And so it was similar to this like, “Oh, I don’t. Call me whatever you want. I’m still going to do this organizing and classification of information.”

Carrie:
And at that point I was like, “You know what? Maybe I will call myself an information architect because that might make sense to people.” They know what information is, they know what an architect is, or at least have a general idea. And sometimes it’s that light bulb like, “Oh, yeah, you got to put information together like a house or a building.”

Carrie:
And I also use that analogy. I mean, I think we all do is the house analogy or building analogy, and all the different things that need to happen to do that especially a building. A house is much simpler than a giant office building or a skyscraper or a hotel. So yeah. There’s so much that, yeah and that’s probably the reason I just stopped calling myself a content strategist except for to a few people where I have to fit in to their mental model. But just open things up and do what matters to me. And that’s making sure people see all the pieces and can connect the dots that matter.

Larry:
Nice. That’s perfect. That’s exactly what you’re about. You’re walking the walk and yeah. Hey Carrie, what’s the best way for people to stay in touch with you to follow you on social media or if they wanted to connect, what’s the best way for people to connect with you?

Carrie:
Yeah. So I’m always on Twitter, even though I mean to not be sometimes, and I’m @carriehd and they can also find me, I’m transitioning from consulting on my own to a full-time job, but I will eventually get back to blogging at tanzenconsulting.com and my blog will always be there and it will have whatever basic information is there or talks that I have coming up.

Carrie:
So those are the two places. People are free to follow me on LinkedIn. I don’t generally connect with people I haven’t had some sort of connection, real life connection with, but they can follow me to to see what’s going on and what I’m sharing and thinking.

Larry:
Great. Cool. Thanks so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

Carrie:
Yeah. Well, thanks for suggesting this. This was fun.