The what: Creating the content strategy for my site
Structuring, planning, and maintaining your content is critical. Working as writer, content strategist, and developer helped me understand how to orchestrate between the three roles.
Determining personas
The first question of technical writing is who is the user? The users you identify inform and guide your content strategy. In my case, my users include:
- Potential employers.
- Technical writers — both experienced and new.
- Listeners (and potential listeners) of my podcast.
- Those who want to learn about static site generators (SSGs) and/or docs-as-code.
Content goals
- Highlight my skills to attract employers, and also as a thought experiment — what do I do with content strategy?
- Document my migration experience from WordPress to a static site generator through a series of blog posts .
- Highlight my podcast, as the old site really didn’t. I’m considering reviving the podcast so this was a priority.
- Get rid of legacy content.
- Ensure the site is accessible.
Blog release strategy
My strategy for documenting the conversion from WordPress to a static site generator (SSG) included:
- Write 10-20 blog posts about the process, including:
- Migration
- Strategy
- Infrastructure
- Build-out
- Frustrations
- Development
- Content creation and revision processes
- Takeaways
- Write four solid blog posts for the rollout.
- Put that content out on a regular cadence to keep content fresh and drive continuous engagement.
- Inspire tech writers to get more technical.
- Understand and explain how content is consumed programmatically.
- Show recruiters and employers that I was actively updating my site.