Recommended content strategy resources & tools

In April 2019, we surveyed 400+ content strategists and asked them to share their favorite resources for learning and working. They delivered over 300 different recommendations! If you’re looking for a new book, podcast, blog, community, conference, or tool, there’s likely something here for you to pick up.

If your favorite content strategy resources and tools are missing from the list, tweet @Get_Writer to let me know.

Table of Contents

1. Websites & blogs
2. Email newsletters
3. Books
4. Podcasts
5. Online & offline communities
6. Conferences & courses
7. Individual experts
8. General resource ideas
9. Analytics tools
10. Content, asset, & website management tools
11. Content creation & design tools
12. Content intelligence tools
13. Development tools
14. Education-focused tools
15. Localization tools
16. Marketing-focused tools
17. Research tools
18. Teamwork, collaboration, & communication tools
19. Miscellaneous tools

Websites & blogs

• A List Apart
• Adaptive Path
• Ahrefs
• AP Stylebook online
• Brain Traffic blog, contentstrategy.com/blog, and its associated strategists’ individual work
• Cision
• TheWPX.com
• Content Company
• Content Design London
• Content Marketing Institute website
• Content Strategy Inc
• Contently blog
• Copyblogger blog
• Fast Company
• GatherContent blog and case studies
• Higher ed blogs (e.g. mStoner, Ruffalo Noel-Levitz) and marketing websites
• HubSpot Academy and Blog
• “I’d rather be writing” by Tom Johnson, a technical writing blog
• IDEO
• Influence & Co’s Content Strategy Checklist
• InVision blog
• Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning
• Marketing Profs
• MecLabs
• Medium articles on content strategy
• Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g)
• Orbit Media Studios blog
• Pickle Jar Communications
• Ragan Communications
• Schema
• Search Engine Land
• Search Engine Watch
• SEMRush Academy
• Shopify blog
• Smashing Magazine
• Social Media Today
• The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Content Strategy
• The New York Times (follow the best!)
• The Verge
• Usability.gov and their Content Strategy Basics
• UX Booth blog
• UX Collective
• UX Writing Hub
• 3dcart

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Email newsletters

• Ann Handley newsletter
• Avinash Kaushik “The Marketing and Analytics Intersect” newsletter
• Daily Carnage newsletters
• Gerry McGovern “New Thinking” newsletter
• Hubspot newsletters
• InVision “Inside Design” newsletter
• Nielson Norman Group newsletters
• UX Collective newsletter
• UX Magazine newsletter
• UX Writing Hub newsletter
• UX Writing Jobs newsletter

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Books

• Content Audits and Inventories: A Handbook by Paula Landenburg Land
• Content Design by Sarah Richards
• Content Everywhere: Strategy and Structure for Future-Ready Content by Sara Wachter-Boettcher
• Content Strategy: Connecting the Dots Between Business, Brand, and Benefits by Noz Urbina and Rahel Anne Bailie
• Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach
• Conversational Design by Erika Hall
• Designing Connected Content: Plan and Model Digital Products for Today and Tomorrow (Voices That Matter) by Mike Atherton and Carrie Hane
• Developing Quality Technical Information: A Handbook for Writers and Editors by Michelle Carey, Moira McFadden Lanyi, Deirdre Longo, Eric Radzinski, Shannon Rouiller, and Elizabeth Wilde
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (“The Polar Bear Book”) by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville
• Just Enough Research by Erika Hall
• Letting Go of the Words by Janice (Ginny) Redish
• Microcopy: The Complete Guide by Kinneret Yifrah
• Nicely Said: Writing for the Web with Style and Purpose by Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee
• Rise of the Revenue Marketer by Debbie Qaqish
• Strategic Writing for UX by Torrey Podmajersky
• The Content Strategy Toolkit by Meghan Casey
• The Digital Crown: Winning at Content on the Web by Ahava Leibtag
• Why you need a content team and how to build one by Rachel McConnell
• The book list from A Book Apart
• The book list from Rosenfeld Media
• The book list from Story of Telling

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Podcasts

• Content Design Podcast
• The Conversation Factory
• Copyblogger FM
• No-Budget Filmmaking
• The Content Strategy Podcast
• Writers in Tech
• Writers of Silicon Valley

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Online & offline communities

• Facebook group: Content Strategists
• Facebook group: Microcopy & UX Writing Group
• Facebook group: for female content strategists
• Facebook group: Any for UX, SEO, etc.
• Listserv: Content Manager Listserve (it’s a government resource)
• Meetup: Content Melbourne
• Meetup: Content Strategy Seattle
• Meetup: San Francisco Content Strategy
• Meetup: San Francisco UX Writers
• Meetup: UX Content Design NYC
• Meetup: UXPAMN gatherings
• Network: Campus group meetups
• Network: Community around the Master’s program at University of Graz
• Network: DTA content design
• Network: Federal Communicators Network
• Network: International Association of Business Communicators (IABC)
• Network: National Association of Government Web Professionals (NAGW)
• Network: Public Relations Society of America (PRSA)
• Network: Society for Technical Communication
• Network: The Usability Lab at University of Minnesota
• Slack group: Content + UX
• Slack group: Ethical Content
• Twitter: #contentstrategy conversations
• Twitter: Individual experts and chats like #CMWorld

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Conferences & courses

• All conferences that have hands-on sessions
• Confab
• Content Marketing World
• Content Strategy Camp
• Master’s of Content Strategy program at FH Joanneum (Graz, Austria)
• The 15-Day UX Writing Challenge
• Usability Day at UMN
• UX Writers Collective courses
• UX Writing Hub free course
• Webinars by dotCMS
• Webinars on content strategy in higher education by mStoner
• Webinars/web conferences by GatherContent
• World Usability Day

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Individual experts

This is certainly not a complete list of all the amazing content leaders out there, but it is the list of those who were specifically mentioned in our survey. Perusing the websites, blog writers, book authors, communities, and groups above is a great way to find more people to follow.

• Ahava Leibtag (@ahaval)
• Ann Handley (@annhandley)
• Anna Pickard (@annapickard)
• Brafton (@brafton), a content marketing agency
• Colleen Jones (@leenjones)
• Erika Hall (@mulegirl)
• Hilary Marsh (@hilarymarsh)
• Kristina Halvorson (@halvorson)
• Lisa Welchman (@lwelchman) for all things governance
• Neil Patel (@neilpatel)
• Phyllis Davidson (@phyllismusings) with SiriusDecisions
• Robert Rose (@robert_rose)
• Sarah Richards (@ContentDesignLN)
• Scott Kubie (@scottkubie)

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General resource ideas

• Airtable templates, especially for content audits
  • Content audit template created by Holly Munson, content strategist at Think Company
• Audible — see book suggestions
• B2B marketing research portals — see website suggestions
• Blogs — see blog suggestions
  • Posts by design departments at leading companies (less for learning how to do something new and more for validating that I’m doing the right thing)
• Books — see book suggestions
• Case studies
• Conferences/events + presentations/materials — see event suggestions
• Consultations
• Courses
• Facebook groups — see community suggestions
• Google
• Key external speakers — see favorite experts
• LinkedIn articles & groups — see community suggestions
• Meetups — see community suggestions
• Newsletters & emails — see newsletter suggestions
• Podcasts — see podcast suggestions
• Reports
• Seminars
• Slack groups — see community suggestions
• Social media — see community suggestions
• Style guide websites
• Training, online and offline
• Twitter — see community suggestions
• UX books — see book suggestions
• Web articles — see blog suggestions
• Webinars — see host suggestions
• Websites — see blog suggestions
• YouTube videos
• Internal organization knowledge:
  • Conferences at my company
  • Colleagues IRL (“in real life”)
  • Developers
  • Internal strategic relations team
  • My content strategy team
  • Onboarding and training at my company
  • One or two good strong hires
  • Other content strategists at my company
  • Our content competence
  • Our own internal analytics and testing
  • Staff research and sharing
• Personal:
  • Crowdsourcing my tech network
  • Feedly (my feed of content strategy blogs) — see website suggestions
  • Informal networking
  • Observing those in my industry — see favorite experts
  • On the job experience, past experience
  • Other comms professionals — see favorite experts
  • Peers and personal connections
  • Strategists in my wider agency network
  • Trial and error
  • “Doing the work!”
  • “The creativity in my mind”
  • “Honestly, I don’t even have the time for proper research.”
  • “There is woefully little available for my sub-discipline of CS (support/customer experience).”

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Respondents submitted nearly 200 different tools they use in their content strategy roles. We organized those into loose groups based on the purpose or functionality of the tool.

Analytics tools

• Analysis: Facebook Insights
• Analysis: Google Analytics
• Analysis: Google Data Studio
• Analysis: Iconosquare
• Analysis: Twitter analytics

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Content, asset, & website management tools

• DAM: Adobe Bridge
• DAM: Aprimo
• DAM: Cumulus
• DAM: SAP Digital Library
• DAM: Widen
• CMMS: Hippo
• CMS, Intranet: Confluence
• CMS, Knowledgebase: Adobe RoboHelp
• CMS, Knowledgebase: Salesforce
• CMS, Knowledgebase: Zendesk
• CMS: Adobe Experience Manager
• CMS: Cascade
• CMS: CKEditor
• CMS: Contentful
• CMS: Contentstack
• CMS: CraftCMS
• CMS: Directus
• CMS: DNN
• CMS: Documentum
• CMS: dotCMS
• CMS: Drupal
• CMS: Ektron
• CMS: Episerver
• CMS: IBM Lotus
• CMS: Kentico
• CMS: Madcap Flare
• CMS: SiteCore
• CMS: Tridion
• CMS: TYPO3
• CMS: Veeva Vault
• CMS: Wagtail
• CMS: Webflow
• CMS: WordPress
• Content inventory: Content Analysis Tool (CAT)
• Content Ops: GatherContent
• Content Ops: Kapost
• Content Ops: Oracle Service Cloud
• Content Ops: Oracle Web Center Sites
• Content Ops: Oracle WebCenter Content
• Website governance: Jump Chart
• Website governance: Siteimprove
• Website governance: Slickplan

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Content creation & design tools

• Create, Video: Camtasia
• Create, Video: Wistia
• Create, Write: GDrive Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Folders)
• Create, Write: Internal style guide
• Create, Write: Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Onenote)
• Design: Abstract
• Design: Adobe Creative Cloud (Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Premiere, Spark)
• Design: Canva
• Design: Figma
• Design: InVision
• Design: Sketch
• Diagramming, User Journeys: UXpressia
• Diagramming: Flowmapp
• Diagramming: LucidChart
• Diagramming: Real Time Board
• Diagramming: Skitch
• Diagramming: Visio
• Diagramming: Xmind
• Form builder: Formstack
• Ideation: Miro
• Ideation: Mural
• Wireframing: Axure
• Wireframing: Balsamiq

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Content intelligence tools

• Content analysis: Acrolinx
• Content analysis: Grammarly
• Content analysis: Hemingway
• Content analysis: SmartLogic
• Crawler: ParseHub
• Crawler: Screaming Frog
• Crawler: URL Profiler

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Development tools

• Code editor: Sublime Text
• Code editor: TextWrangler
• Code editor: Ultra Edit
• Development, learn: ww3 schools
• Development, web: Adobe Dreamweaver
• Development, XML Editor: Oxygen
• Development, XML Editor: XMetaL
• Development, XML Publishing: XPP
• Development: Apache SVN
• Development: Assembla
• Development: gulp
• Development: Git
• Development: GitHub
• Development: GitLab
• Webpage builder: Google Sites
• Webpage builder: Web Express

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Education-focused tools

• Education software: Chalk
• Education software: Docuvera
• Education software: Inkling

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Localization tools

• Localization: PhraseApp
• Localization: SDL
• Localization: Smartling

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Marketing-focused tools

• Brand management: Frontify
• Brand management: Google Business
• Marketing, Email: Constant Contact
• Marketing, Email: MailChimp
• Marketing, Public Relations: TrendKite
• Marketing, Sales Enablement: Highspot
• Marketing, SEO: BrightEdge
• Marketing, SEO: Moz
• Marketing, SEO: SEMRush
• Marketing, Social Media: Hootsuite
• Marketing, Social Media: Sendible
• Marketing, Social Media: Sprout Social
• Marketing, Social Media: Tweetdeck
• Marketing: Atomized
• Marketing: Buzzsumo
• Marketing: Contently
• Marketing: Eloqua
• Marketing: Hubspot
• Marketing: Marketo
• Marketing: Meltwater
• Marketing: Mention
• Marketing: NewsCred
• Marketing: Percolate
• Marketing: UberFlip
• SEO: Google Keyword Planner
• SEO: SEMRush

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Research tools

• Research, UX: Optimal Workshop
• Research: AnswerThePublic
• Research: Google Trends
• Research: OptimalWorkshop

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Teamwork, collaboration, & communication tools

• Collaboration: Quip
• Collaboration: Zeplin
• Communication: Bluejeans
• Communication: Microsoft Outlook
• Communication: Microsoft Teams
• Communication: Slack
• Anonymous Whistleblowing System: Vispato
• Document generation: Webmerge
• Document management: Box
• Document management: Dropbox Paper
• Document management: Microsoft OneDrive
• Document management: Sharepoint
• Proofing: GoProof
• Proposals: SmartDocs
• Scheduling: Google Calendar
• Work management: Airtable
• Work management: Asana
• Work management: Basecamp
• Work management: CoSchedule
• Work management: Desksite
• Work management: InMotionNow
• Work management: Intervals
• Work management: JIRA
• Work management: KeyedIn
• Work management: Microsoft Planner
• Work management: Monday
• Work management: Notion
• Work management: Robohead
• Work management: Smartsheet
• Work management: TaskRay
• Work management: TeamGantt
• Work management: TeamworkPM
• Work management: TeuxDeux
• Work management: Trello
• Work management: Workflow Max
• Work management: Workfront
• Work management: Workgroups DaVinci
• Work management: Workzone
• Work management: Wrike

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Miscellaneous tools

• Misc: Advantage
• Misc: Contour
• Misc: eNews Pro
• Misc: GovDelivery
• Misc: TRIM

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I hope this helped you find your next great resource. Remember, you can tweet @Get_Writer with any additional suggestions for the list.