Meet Rahel Anne Bailie, Content Strategist

August 2016

We interviewed Rahel Anne Bailie via email, so that you get to know more about this content strategy powerhouse. TechCommNZ members, meet Rahel.

And don't forget that the early-bird rate for Rahel's workshops in Wellington, Christchurch, and Auckland this October finishes on 19 August. Book your tickets today – numbers are limited.

Rahel, you're well known internationally as an expert in content strategy. What got you interested in this field in the first place?

My interest in content strategy started long before there was a profession called content strategy, and at the very beginning of content management systems. My interest was in efficiency, because it bored me to tears to do the same stuff over and over again. From 1997 to 2001, I worked in high-tech, documenting telecommunication protocols and switches and routers, the really geeky stuff. When you work as the sole remote technical communicator on a team of 80, or the sole remote team member on a distributed team across 3 continents, you can imagine the amount of manual processing to keep content coordinated.

In one job, I had a manager who had no imagination whatsoever, and I was very frustrated with the lack of progress on streamlining operations. My Friday mornings were reserved for the week's paper filing, to meet ISO standards, and then the files got sent by courier to Los Angeles. A little bit of probing uncovered a core problem: the stakeholders and internal clients who needed to have access to that information had no idea that it even existed, so they were getting their own metrics by such advanced means as counting files in the "Final" folder. The whole ISO exercise ended up being self-referential, and did no one any good.

When the company opened an office in Bangalore, I remember thinking: and now couriering things around 3 countries? That's insane! I went to the Director of Professional Services, my internal client, and told him what I wanted to do, and his response was: oh, you want me to build you a content management system. I had to admit I had no idea what that even meant, but shortly afterwards, I saw a custom-developed one in action, and I fell in love with the idea of systematising the production of content to avoid all of the rework and wasted talent. Of course, I got in trouble with my own manager over that, who thought that content management was reducing technical communicators to mere proofreaders.

It was at that point that a career counsellor said that I was working way below my level, and I should strike out on my own as a consultant. That was the pivotal moment, because I was now being paid to analyse and strategise about the very things that I used to get in trouble over!

Has there been a specific CS project related to technical communication that you particularly enjoyed? What were the major achievements, and what made it enjoyable?

I wish I could say there was a single project, but in reality, there are aspects of each of my projects that I love, and other bits that I'm not so crazy about.

There was one project, though, that sticks out in my mind because there was the potential to improve the software product itself by leaps and bounds. The company was losing market share to their major competitor - and I happened to know that the competitor invested heavily in UX and content - and they redid the software from top to bottom. I developed a pretty sophisticated strategy that handled all of the complexities of where the content started and was stored, where it was edited, how it was delivered into the software interface, the customer-facing knowledge base, the help files, and shared with training and the support call centre.

It never did get implemented because it was blocked by a short-sighted engineering executive. Later I saw that they could only use a quarter of the features that the UX group developed, and they still haven't gained back their market share from their competitor, whose product is vastly superior. So in that sense it was frustrating.

The enjoyable part for me is always the discovery phase. I've worked with so many organisations over so many years – I've worked in manufacturing, distribution, retail, wholesale, services, software, B2C, B2B, and not-for-profit and government, as well – that when I'm listening to people describe their content problems, I see behind the surface symptoms to the core of the problem. Getting to those "aha" moments and then doing some digging to figure out what would be the best options to suggest to ease the content production pain and get some content gain is always extremely satisfying. And it's more satisfying when management "gets it" and puts their money where their mouth is, so to speak, to implement it.

What do you think are the major opportunities for technical communicators wanting to get more involved in content strategy?

Technical communicators have a distinct advantage when it comes to content strategy, particularly what Ann Rockley would call a "back end" content strategy. Technical communicators have used power editing tools and worked with developers on agile projects, and so on, and the knowledge that is gained through that experience is powerful. It's always shocking to me how little knowledge the average non-tech writer (marketing communicators, PR or brand writers, for example) has when it comes to even the basics, like how to use styles in MS Word.

Technical communicators have a variety of mental models for how to produce content, how to manage and deliver it, and so on, and all the ways that content production can be made more effective and where it can go off the rails. That is the breadth of experience you need to do effective content strategy - and then it doesn't matter if you are doing it for marketing content, product content, or technical content. Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute wrote an insightful article about how content marketers strategise over what gets written and why, and then content strategists figure out how best to do that, and make the whole system scalable.

http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/10/cont...

What sort of challenges do we face?

I could answer that question in two ways: what challenges do content strategists face, or what challenges do technical communicators face during the transition to content strategy? I'll give each of those questions a brief answer.

Content strategists face a couple of challenges which are endemic across all industries, because they are to do with human nature. The biggest challenge is getting the client to take content seriously. Even the "content is king" organisations will hem and haw when it comes down to actually spending the time and money to get their content into shape. Tell them they need a bunch of agile teams, and they're on it, but tell them they need a bunch of content teams and watch what happens. So getting clients to understand the value of content to the brand is a challenge.

The second, related challenge is getting in front of the right people and speaking the right language.You need to be able to articulate content problems as business problems, and use management jargon in a way that the problem and the solution resonates with the executive sponsors. It's a whole different language and a whole different way of thinking about content.

Technical communicators wanting to become content strategists face a couple of unique challenges. First of all, a content strategy has to take into account all of the content that is within a project, and that's often a cross-over with the focus on marketing content. That means learning how web content management systems work (tip: they all work on the same general principles, so learn a couple of the big ones and you can generalise how the rest of them work).

It means understanding that though you know how specialised tools work doesn't necessarily mean that the company wants to adopt them, even if it would save them time and money. Also, technical communicators have often developed implicit content strategies as part of their regular jobs, and the company has come to expect that higher-level analysis and strategy to happen without making it explicit. That means educating the company about what content strategies entail, and making those strategies cross-functional and cross-silo efforts.

What do you like to do to unwind?

Hmmm, I had to think about that question a bit. I guess I'm pretty wrapped up in my work, between developing the content strategy practice for Scroll, doing client work, speaking at conferences, teaching in the CS Master's Program in Austria, writing articles, and working on my book. I read a lot, of course, though some of that ends up being business reading - keeping up the profession.

When my work schedule doesn't interfere, I do like to dance. I take salsa lessons and sometimes go to these early morning raves called Morning Gloryville. It's a great way to energise yourself for the day. I love to travel, and my partner and I try to get away a couple of weekends a a month. Having moved to the UK a couple of years ago, I am thrilled at the proximity of other countries and cultures, and I'm determined to experience as many of them as I can. I'm also a bit of a Scrabble addict, and I always have a couple of games on the go. I have one long-time opponent that I play daily; I think it keeps my neural networks carving new paths. I keep thinking I will research my family tree, but that may have to wait until I retire!