Foreword

The Rapid rise of Content Strategy at Facebook and Beyond

At Facebook, employees are empowered to be bold in the name of innovation. “Move Fast and Break Things,” “What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?” and “Done Is Better Than Perfect” are a few of the mottos pasted on the walls at Facebook headquarters.

Back in 2009, Facebook content was getting “done,” but it was far from perfect. Engineers, designers and product managers were writing most of the copy. If you had a keyboard, you were a copywriter. If you could commit code, you were a publisher. And there was a lot of content: menus, navigation text, product tours, multi-step forms, nomenclature, in-product education, help pages, blog posts, and much more. Less-than-perfect content meant confused and frustrated users, and it was taking its toll on the brand.

The Facebook Design and User Experience team decided it was time to create a new role within the department. They called it “content strategist.”

Just a few weeks before the job posting went up, the first edition of Content Strategy for the Web was published. Soon after, the Facebook team contacted author Kristina Halvorson for advice about the position, and she graciously offered suggestions about what to say in the posting and where to look for candidates. She also helped get the word out.

I’d been working as a content strategist at eBay for several years when I spotted Kristina’s reference to the job posting. I tucked my already well-worn copy of Kristina’s book under my arm and headed off to interview at Facebook. They hired me.

Soon after I started at Facebook, I discovered that most of my new coworkers thought “content strategist” was a highfalutin term for “copy editor.” They filled my inbox with questions like, “Is there a better word for this?” and “Should the period go inside or outside the quotation mark?” I even had an engineer free-type my rough copy ideas directly into the code for the live site. Thrilling, yes, but not exactly the methodical, holistic process I was hoping for.

I needed to find a way to introduce real content strategy into a system that was hardwired to reject anything that might gunk up the works. In the past, I might have organized a meet-n-greet/dog-and-pony/brown-bag extravaganza to educate to my colleagues about the benefits of content strategy. But my usual approach wasn’t going to fly at a company that valued action far above talk. Instead, I heeded the “move fast” writing on the walls and focused on gaining quick wins.

I first set my sights on a group of links in the lower corner of the Facebook homepage. These links offered people the chance to invite friends to Facebook, connect with friends already there, and try Facebook Mobile. The links didn’t drive a lot of traffic and weren’t an important piece of the team’s strategy, so they didn’t want to dedicate resources to improving them. But I was welcome to change the copy. So I did, relying completely on my content strategy intuition to guide my decisions (there was no time for testing, after all). At the very least, I knew I could make the calls to action clearer and more compelling.

Mere hours after I made my quick-and-dirty changes, we rolled out the new version of the content module. The result? Net traffic to this area of the page rose 56%. Which is to say, six million more people found friends, invited friends, and tried Facebook Mobile every week, purely as a result of those tiny improvements.

Over the next few months, I gained a few more quick wins for content. And each time I tackled a project or fulfilled a request, I carefully framed my proposals in the context of the larger Facebook content strategy that was beginning to evolve. I also tailored my recommendations to the audience at hand: When working with engineers, I tried to make things simple and empirical, often relying on spreadsheets and “if-then” statements. With designers, I went visual. And with executive stakeholders, I always made an effort to reference bigger-picture goals.

When someone championed the cause of content strategy, that person became a “FOCS” (friend of content strategy), and was awarded a coveted FOCS tee. As in, “You know that guy Matt? He’s a total FOCS.”

Soon, people started to solicit my help on more complex problems. Questions about tone, structure and site-wide consistency began to outnumber those about grammar and syntax. The company began giving enthusiastic support (and budget) for longer-term, content-driven initiatives.

Today, a mere two years later, there are nine content strategists on the Facebook team, and we hope to welcome several more by the end of 2012. We work alongside product managers, designers, engineers, and user researchers on every major product launch. We’ve developed a comprehensive set of content standards for the company. And we serve as a hub for the teams throughout Facebook that touch user-facing content, including product marketing, user operations, and the lawyers.

In the two years since I started at Facebook and Content Strategy for the Web first came out, the discipline has come into its own. Meetup groups have formed all over the world. People are gathering at conferences dedicated exclusively to content. Not unlike Facebook itself, content strategy has spun into a spirited community of people who are excited to share new ideas and perspectives—allowing the discipline to advance at an amazing clip.

Content Strategy for the Web has played a huge role in educating web practitioners and business leaders about why good content matters. Not only does the book champion a strategic approach to content, it also demystifies how to do it. Whether you’re a seasoned content strategist or it’s your first time at the rodeo, you’ve got everything you need to create, deliver, and govern useful, usable content right here.

Facebook’s culture is unique, but what moved the cause of content strategy forward here could happen anywhere—including where you work.

• Demonstrate value on your own terms. Be proactive, and identify tiny projects that will showcase the benefits of content strategy. Then get them done, with or without resources.

• Apply content strategy to your content strategy. Frame each recommendation and each success within the context of the larger content strategy, even if the request was tactical in nature. And do it in a way that will appeal to your audience.

• Friend everyone. Cultivate allies, find your FOCSes, and make them T-shirts.

In 2009, the content strategy community was small. Now it’s vast, and eager to support you in your efforts to make a better web through better content. Today, when you tell people you’re a content strategist, the question is no longer, “What’s content strategy?” Now it’s, “When can you start?”

Join us as we move toward a web where content strategy is not simply nice to have, but an essential part of what we make and imagine.

Sarah Cancilla
Content Strategist, Facebook