There’s a lot of drum-beating going on about content strategy these days—some of it good, some of it just noisy. It can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, I’m going to talk about some of the wheat: The good parts of the content strategy trend.

For background on what content strategy is, check out this or this or this or this.

A Content-Driven Design Process

One of the biggest and best side effects of content strategy’s activism is that it’s encouraging agencies to reorder their design process. It’s no longer: discovery, information architecture, design, templates and development.

Instead, we’re doing: content strategy, information architecture, web writing, content production, design, templates and development—or some version of this.

The important thing is, we’re starting to think about content, early on.

From a designer’s perspective, this means we no longer begin projects by evaluating the design of a site; we start by evaluating what’s on it. Text, videos, etc. Do they make sense? Do they achieve the intended effect? Are they interesting?

If the need for content-driven design seems obvious to you, it might be because of the content strategy hoopla. It wasn’t so obvious five years ago.

Less Crap

Economizing, reducing unnecessary words, and having a plan for maintaining content over the long haul are core tenets of content strategy. So, another side effect of CS activism is that we’re starting to remove crap from our websites.

As agencies and clients adopt CS-like practices, many websites will shrink, because we’ll be designing around less stuff. And eventually, websites with hundreds of randomly-tacked-on pages will become far less common, as clients implement their own editorial calendars, content audits, etc.

A New Breed of Web Design Agency

I also suspect that content strategy (among other things going on right now, such as new publishing) is going to nudge different types of folks into the industry.

Agencies will start employing writers, strategists and big-picture thinkers either full time or on contract. And the stereotype of a “copywriter” who “doesn’t get the web” will evolve: More writers will understand design and technology. And more designers and developers will understand writing and content-driven design.

Discipline Kissing

It would be silly to think that every agency is going to upend its process in the name of content strategy. For most agencies, I smell a rapprochement, not a revolution: IAs, designers and art directors will learn or enhance their content strategy skills.

As it stands, the boundaries between IA, web strategy and content strategy are porous. They will become more porous later.

So, disciplines: kiss.

But Let’s Be Clear

Content Strategy certainly has buzzword qualities—like anything else, it can be turned into snake oil. But it’s not just a buzzword. Used intelligently, it’s just a smart way to create good websites. If you want, you can dispense with the term altogether:

Call it whatever you want, Ms. Kristina Halvorson once said, just make sure somebody’s doing it.