Supper club & bon voyage to Kate Thomas

[Lisa Moore]

Hello everyone:

Another year, another content strategy supper club.

Only this one is a bit special, as it's also a bon voyage party for one of the original members of our little group: Kate Thomas. 

Later this year, Kate will be moving back to her beautiful Australian homeland. If you know Kate, you'll know what a great loss this is to our CS community here in London. While I'm sad to see her go, I'm also thrilled for her as I know how much she relishes a new challenge!

So, to send Kate and her partner Tania off in style, I've organised a soiree at this lovely new restaurant, Bronte. It's named after Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, Duke of Bronte, whose naval career took him to Australia, and its menu features Antipodean and Pacific influences that even a koala would love.

If you're interested in attending, please book a ticket via the Eventbrite page.

I've attached the menus - I've also asked if we can add another dish instead of the longhorn steak - unless anyone would be planning to order that! The restaurant is happy to accommodate any special dietary requirements.

Also, the restaurant has kindly waived the booking fee for us, but I will need people to commit to attending by 25th August so I can confirm numbers for dining.

I hope you will join us on 1 Sept - let's get Kate ready for her domination of the content strategy world down under!

--Lisa

[kate thomas]

Thanks Lisa! That's one cute koala :)

Yes, the time has come to draw a line under 10 years in London and
stage our own Brexit. (Which, I hasten to add, was in play before 23
June!)

I've met so many fantastic people in the CS community that I fear I
may now have dependency issues on the supportive network that you are.
Stand by for Skype calls :)

Meanwhile, I'd love to see you before I go. I hope you can make it on
September 1st.

See you then!

Kate

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--
Kate Thomas
katel...@gmail.com
+ 44 (0) 78 067 04335
skype: katethomas2
@ContentEdUsers

[Stavros Garzonis]

Thanks for organising this Lisa & bon voyage Kate!

It was a great evening, and as a UXer, I enjoyed the advice I got from multiple people on how to try and sell in more CS to our clients: basically appealing to their sense of ROI from content that otherwise cost them money while rotting away! (Common sense really but good to be reminded!).

We also talked about how Marketers are trying to dominate the CS terminology, while clients interpret CS just as copywriting. For example, one of our clients (IMeche) asked us to help them get the word out in the CS network for a new job role in London. But it seems to be for a Content Marketing Manager (http://www.imeche.org/about-us/work-for-us/content-marketing-manager). 

Do you get that a lot? Is it appropriate to post it here (Lisa?) because it's celebrating clients' small steps in the right direction or is it only reinforcing the misconception that this group would be interested in these type of roles?

Thanks!

Stavros

[kate thomas]

Hello everyone,

Thank you so much Lisa for organising dinner last week, and to all of you for coming. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will miss such gatherings. (At least I know what my first task will be once I settle: run a content strategy supper club :)

Thanks too Lisa for setting up the Slack group. I look forward to slacking about in it ;)

Apologies for my radio silence - I've headed up to the ridiculously beautiful Lakes District to squeeze in a last minute trip to the lovely English countryside.

Stavros, all I would say about your job ad is that yes, it's a *small* step in the right direction. Emphasis of the role seems to be on content creation - which makes sense, as it's a content *marketing* manager. However, they're potentially missing a very big trick: who's the strategic lead? If the PDF of the job description is to be believed, this role is meant to do that too, yet detail of the job seems to be all about doing, with lots of busy editorial activity.

If a decision was made to hire based purely on what you've shared, I don't think they would get a strong person. What might happen is during the recruitment process someone good bubbles to the top. But if I was your client, I'd want something more reliable than that.

Would it help to share a standard job description for a content strategist? Even though they've called this 'marketing', if the overall purpose of the job is strategy, they may as well call a spade a spade and hire a content strategist :)

(Not that I have a standard job description to hand. anyone else on the list?)

Kate

On 5 September 2016 at 13:55, Stavros Garzonis <stavros....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for organising this Lisa & bon voyage Kate!

It was a great evening, and as a UXer, I enjoyed the advice I got from multiple people on how to try and sell in more CS to our clients: basically appealing to their sense of ROI from content that otherwise cost them money while rotting away! (Common sense really but good to be reminded!).

We also talked about how Marketers are trying to dominate the CS terminology, while clients interpret CS just as copywriting. For example, one of our clients (IMeche) asked us to help them get the word out in the CS network for a new job role in London. But it seems to be for a Content Marketing Manager (http://www.imeche.org/about-us/work-for-us/content-marketing-manager). 

Do you get that a lot? Is it appropriate to post it here (Lisa?) because it's celebrating clients' small steps in the right direction or is it only reinforcing the misconception that this group would be interested in these type of roles?

Thanks!

Stavros

[Lisa Moore]

You’re very welcome, Kate :)

Yes, I do hope people will take advantage of the new Slack channel. But, for now... Agree with you, Kate – it’s a small step, but I, too, am not really convinced. These types of ‘content manager’ roles are cropping up a lot – they are really not that much different to the old ‘webmaster’ or ‘web editor’ roles of yore. Even the ‘social’ requirements of these current roles remind me of the old ‘sysop’ or forum manager jobs I had back in the day :)

As you say, why try and dress the role up to be more than it is or limit the pool of applicants who will never check all the boxes?

And as a matter of fact, I do have a standard CS JD to hand – happy to share with you on Slack (see what I did there<g>?).

--Lisa