Tracy PlayleTracy Playle has a super-power: people skills that help her run effective content strategy workshops. Clarify your "why." Get the right people together. Engage them in focused and creative activities. Great strategy is the result.

Tracy and I talked about:

her content strategy consulting work in the education sector

ContentEd, the conference she organizes

how she gets people together to get content strategy tasks done

how she uses the user story framework to introduce the concept of content strategy

her three-question framework - the why, what and how - for crafting and shaping workshops and other engagement activities

how she categorizes stakeholders

folks who know something that you need to know

others who have an influence, and

others who will be affected

how she delegates the process of assembling workshop participants

the possibilities and problems of conducting virtual workshops

her "content walk" method - a creativity exercise that she uses - at first she thought it wouldn't work virtually but then realized that with a good enough internet connection it could

tools that permit virtualizing workshops

a surprise benefit of virtual workshops: getting things off of paper and into a more permanent digital format

possible ways to create content ecosystem maps and similarly complex drawings/models virtually

her adoption of Austin Kleon's "Steal Like an Artist" approach in, for example, empathy mapping or content strategy statement formulation

how using the classic improv yes-and approach can help in workshops

how domain mapping can lead to fresh insights among diverse stakeholders

how her ability to find comedy and humor in content strategy led to speaking gigs

her process (or possible lack thereof) in developing new content strategy methods

the number of "apprehensive content strategists" she encounters

the benefits of developing our soft skills as content strategists (her super-power)

the importance of content strategists getting over our collective impostor syndrome (and her recent blog post on the subject)

the "myth in the content strategy world that there are people out there that have just got this stuff nailed"

how "content strategy" is a huge industry, not a specific role

her new coaching program

her belief that our success has content strategists depends as much on confidence and coaching as it does on our technical skills

Tracy's Bio

Tracy Playle is a CEO, coach, content strategist, and award-winning speaker known for delivering inspiring, energetic, and engaging conference keynotes and workshops at events around the world.

Founder of education sector communications consultancy, Pickle Jar Communications, Tracy divides her time between being a CEO, developing sector-leading thoughts on content strategy and marketing, coaching individuals to transform their work and their lives, and speaking at conferences to inspire large audiences.

She is also founder of ContentEd, Europe's first content strategy conference for the education sector.

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/ncAty5PKSUE

Podcast Intro Transcript

If you want to create good content strategy, You have to hold a lot of meetings and run a lot of workshops. Tracy Playle has mastered the art of getting people together to collaborate on content strategy projects. In this episode, Tracy generously shares insights about how to facilitate content strategy gatherings. Toward the end of our conversation, she also talks about how to deal with impostor syndrome - an affliction that she sees all too often in the content strategy profession....