FOREWORD

When I decided to write Content Strategy for the Web in 2008, I knew with absolute certainty that I was not, in fact, a subject matter expert. I’d earned my undergraduate degree in theater, and my professional expertise lay primarily in making things up, depending what job I happened to have. Where did I get off thinking I could write a book about, well, anything?

What it came down to was this: I was a Web copywriter, and I was sick of the way people treated content as an afterthought. I wanted things to be different. And, ultimately, I had nothing to lose. No one knew who I was, so I had no literary reputation to uphold. Clearly no one cared about the topic, anyhow, so probably no one would read it. And it was with these extremely low expectations of myself that I began—and finished—the process of writing a book.

Then, just as one might hope, some people bought the book. Some conferences called and asked me to speak. And then, one morning I woke up to discover that, according to the Internet, I was suddenly a content strategy “subject matter expert,” “thought leader,” and “guru.”

And that was when the imposter complex set in.

The imposter complex manifests like this. The more people tell you how smart you are—the more you hear about how your book is changing projects and companies and careers—the more you are absolutely convinced that any minute now someone is going to point a finger at you and say, “Waaaait a minute. YOU’RE not an expert! You’re just someone who plays a content strategist on TV!” And then you will be exposed for the stupid, inexperienced jerk you are. Because clearly, you are not a subject matter expert. Only real experts write books. You should just stay home, eat toast, and keep quiet. You imposter.

In July of 2011, a relatively unknown content strategist named Sara Wachter-Boettcher posted the following statement to her brand-new blog: “I’m not a subject matter expert. But I play one on the Internet.” She then proceeded to publish post after post about multiple facets of content strategy: editorial, user experience design, and content management. Her writing was smart, sassy, practical, and accessible.

After a while, Sara started digging into topics I had no experience with but was regularly asked to speak about. Intelligent content. Adaptive content. Structured content. While I understood these topics in a general, surface-y way, I was secretly terrified by them. I am not a technical person. I don’t think in systems. I can’t create or analyze complex CMS processes. But when Sara began to write about these topics, there was something about the way she approached them that made me feel, well, smarter. Like I understood not only what she was talking about, but why I should care about it in the first place.

And that is what a subject matter expert does.

No matter where you are in your career, it’s not easy to step up and say, “This is what I think. This is what I value. Here is why I think you should value it, too, and here is how we can do better work together.” But if ever there were a time for content professionals to step up and share what they know—with each other, with their companies, and with clients—now is that time.

While we all continue to struggle with managing our website content, our other content problems are multiplying exponentially. Sara’s book provides us with accessible, practical information that helps us navigate the current complexities of multichannel content. Moreover, it offers important alternatives to planning and structuring content that empower us to move confidently into the future, rather than constantly trying to recover from the past.

Sara has made her mark as a thought leader not because she was born that way, but because she has taken an enormously complex, intimidating topic and made it accessible to practitioners of all stripes. Content Everywhere promises to be the new bible for content professionals who are committed to creating meaningful content that can, at last, be free.

—Kristina Halvorson
Founder, Brain Traffic and Confab Events
Author, Content Strategy for the Web