Business
Andrea Ames Andrea Ames has been a content leader for more than 35 years. From her early work as a technical writer, she has gone on to guide huge content teams and to become an advisor to other content leaders. Some folks might get jaded after three and a half decades in huge enterprises. Not Andrea. Her enthusiasm for her work is always contagious and inspiring. Nowadays she focuses on helping content professionals become more effective and businesses more successful. Andrea and I talked about: her background in technical communications her work at IBM, first as an information architect and later as a content strategist, and how being a "pattern-oriented person" suited her for her information-architecture work at IBM the challenges of working at a huge scale on digital content experiences, helping 2,000 to 4,000 content creators be strategic and consistent different uses of the term "information architecture" at IBM and the ensuing "mud wrestling around terminology" and ultimate agreements and alignment on it how stakeholder relationship management is the key to content strategy her approach to selling ideas to stakeholders, asking: "Am I the right person to be making the ask?" "How do I relate to the people around me and especially the stakeholders to whom I am trying to sell something?" how she instills and develops professionalism in her teammates, which gives them the credibility to influence their colleagues the importance of being experimental as you try to implement ideas, because "there is no one right answer" her "quarterly exec technique" - a quick chat at least once a quarter with the highest-level executive that you can get access to - ask them about their biggest challenges and then experiment with content ideas that can help address it the importance of building a personal brand the benefits of having a polarizing personality - helps sort out who wants to work with you - "be the team member you want to have on your team" how to navigate these dynamics when you're in a more junior role the importance when you are in a strategic role of making sure that the folks doing the implementing get credit for their work the importance of tying content activities to business results the role of content in a digital business: "That's the conversation. That's the relationship with your customer." Andrea's Bio Recognized in 2018 by Relevance as one of the Top 25 Marketing Thought Leaders, in 2017 by [A] as one of the Top 25 Masters of Multichannel, and in 2016 by MindTouch as one of the Top 25 Content Strategy Influencers, Andrea Ames is a sought-after keynote speaker, workshop leader, consultant, and coach, as well as the author of numerous journal and magazine articles and two award-winning books. A 35+-year veteran in post-sales customer and content experience and the founder and CEO of Idyll Point™ Group — a customer retention and content experience strategy consulting and coaching firm — Andrea’s passion is helping digital businesses to grow through retention revenue by making their customers wildly successful with their offerings. Andrea is the Executive Editor of STC’s Intercom magazine, as well as a Certified Online Training Professional (COTP) and the curriculum designer and Program Chair for the UCSC in Silicon Valley certificate program in technical writing and communication, where she also teaches content design and architecture, human factors, and usability courses. She is a Fellow and past President of STC, a Distinguished Engineer of the ACM (the first content professional to achieve this distinction), a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a member of numerous other professional associations. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, where she is most active, or on Facebook, Instagram (@alames), or Twitter (@aames). Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/nraRGSMtBos