Episode 64: Meghan Casey - Improving approaches to content with collaboration and curiosity

Kristina Halvorson:

So I want to let listeners know that Meghan is still a very active collaborator with Brain Traffic, our content strategy consultancy, which we are super lucky about and our clients are very lucky too, and I realized, much to my horror and dismay, that I have never had Meghan on the podcast, which is so stupid because Meghan is one of the smartest content strategists I know.

And I was like, am I just taking it for granted that I work with her all the time, and I don't think it is. I decided that what it is is that I just assumed that she was one of my very first guests. So we are here today to rectify this grave oversight.

Hello, friends and neighbors. Welcome back. I'm so glad that you're here with me today because I have a very long time friend and collaborator and smart person I admire here with me on the podcast today, and I'm going to tell you a little bit about her and then we have a lot to talk about. I am thrilled to introduce you to Meghan Casey. Meghan Casey owns Do Better Content Consulting, a content strategy consultancy that helps organizations do good with better content.

She's also the author of the seminal book, The Content Strategy Toolkit, The: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right. She was also one of the first content strategists at Brain Traffic, the world's leading agency devoted exclusively to content. Meghan. All right. I have more to say. Meghan has worked with a wide variety of clients, startups, nonprofits, colleges, and universities, Fortune 50 companies, and everything in between to solve the messy content problems enterprise organizations face. She holds a master's degree in nonprofit administration and is committed to social justice personally and professionally. Meghan, welcome to The Content Strategy Podcast.

Meghan Casey:

Hello, Kristina.

Kristina Halvorson:

It's so nice to speak with you, which we do on a daily basis, at least on Slack.

Meghan Casey:

Yeah. It's actually in person.

Kristina Halvorson:

And in person, that's right. It's in real time. So thank you for joining us, Meghan. One of the first things that I always ask my guests is if they can please share their journey to where they are now in content strategy. So I wonder if you could tell your story starting right now.

Meghan Casey:

Sure. I can tell my story. It's direct and windy, I guess I would say about my story. So I'll say that I've always been a fan enamored with words and storytelling and communicating, and ever since I was a kid writing short stories. When I went off to college, I went to a liberal arts school and I didn't really know what I wanted to major in and my brother, who was in law school at the time, said to me, "Well, everybody needs to know how to write. No matter what you're going to do, you need to be able to write."

So I took that as a good reason to get my degree in writing, which was a combination of creative writing and a lot of technical and business writing as well, which is probably why people still come to me to work on their resumes as we did resume writing, and so after college, my first job, I was lucky, I got into an organization that I cared about since I was old enough to know what it was and why it mattered, Planned Parenthood, and I wrote health pamphlets focused on puberty and other women's health topics, men's health topics.

And it was an interesting, fun time in my life. I learned a lot, and while I was at Planned Parenthood, I met somebody who became a bit of a mentor to me who went on to work at a public relations firm and become a leader in a public relations firm who encouraged me to apply to become an account executive in PR where I learned a whole lot about content and communications, and the web was just starting to take off then. So I dipped my toe in the waters of online content back in, I guess 1998-ish, it would've been, and had a couple jobs after that.

Landed at a financial services company in the early 2000s, which is actually where I met Kristina Halvorson. I was the editor of the intranet along with some other internal communications things there, a big hairy project to detangle two intranets apart because the companies split off from each other, and then from there, I became what I would now call a content designer at the same companies like logged in financial services website. So yeah, went a little bit all over the place, and then finally, when I was ready to do something different, I reached out to Kristina and said, "Hey, should I come work at Brain Traffic," and she said, "Come on into my office, let's talk about it," and we did and the rest is history.

Kristina Halvorson:

And in fact, you were reminding me, we had met each other when Brain Traffic came in to do some website copywriting for the financial services organization you were working with, and it was like immediately recognizing a kindred spirit. Within the first meeting, I was just like, that woman is really tired of getting content and having to constantly explain the value of content over and over and over to everyone else in the room, and so we became fast friends and allies on that project, and so when you contacted me, I don't know, are you hiring? Should I come work for you? I was like, yes, and don't bother bringing a resume, or I guess you tried handing it to me and I was like, put that away. There's no need. 

So you were one of the very first folks that I was lucky to hire, and you were really instrumental in helping to establish some of the foundational practices and principles that exist at Brain Traffic for our content strategy consultancy today and that you have certainly helped to evolve over the years.

When we were talking about doing this long overdue podcast, I think that we decided very recently, possibly within the last half hour, is that we would actually approach this more as a co-interview, which is pretty exciting because nobody interviews me on my podcast, but I'm going to let you do it. So we came up with three questions to ask one another, and so I'm going to start because I'm the host and I get to do what I want. So are you ready, Meghan Casey, friend of mine, colleague, longtime partner in crime for me to ask you the first of your three questions?

Meghan Casey:

Yes, I'm ready.

Kristina Halvorson:

So my first question for you is what are you most proud of having accomplished on a project or collaboration?

Meghan Casey:

There is a public benefit agency that I have partnered with several times on some various clients. So they do digital transformation kind of work and they needed, at the time, they didn't have any content strategists when they first reached out to me. So they were like, okay, well, let's see if Meghan Casey is available because I had just gone off on my own and I was. So at the time, I came in, I was the only content strategist. No one else really understood it, but very quickly, people started to really appreciate the work and the thoughts and the insights and those kinds of things that I brought to the table, and so while I was there, they asked me to help them build out their content strategy discipline. So I helped develop their job bands and job descriptions and what is somebody looking like at an entry level to senior level content strategist, was some of the work I did for them.

I helped them hire their first two content strategists, one of which is still there. I just talked with her yesterday and she now leads content strategy at the organization and they have 14 content strategists, which is really amazing for a shop that was really much more UX and tech focused, and then the really cool thing is that the reason that I was talking with them yesterday is because there's a project coming up that the design lead person just said to me, I started learning about this project and I was like, this is a content strategy problem, a content problem, a content project, and they don't typically lead with that, I think, but they have now started to recognize when content really should play a more central role, and not saying it wouldn't have happened without me, but I do feel like I certainly was a bit of a catalyst to help them grow that practice and then start really making content a central part of the way they do their work.

Kristina Halvorson:

That is a dream project for any content strategist, walking into the room and people just saying, okay, we want to do content strategy from the ground up. How should we build that into our organization, and it just sounds like you made some really extraordinary recommendations to create that foundation.

And congratulations to that organization for having 14 people now. That's like a small army of content strategists. Amazing, and you're right, having a design lead to recognize, wait, this is a content problem, genius. That's great. You did it, Meghan and the organization, but still, that I am very proud of that as well. That is definitely something that's worth cheering about. Thank you for sharing that.

Meghan Casey:

Yeah, you're welcome. In fact, it just came to me. I'm like, this is the thing. This is it, that thing I'm most proud of.

Kristina Halvorson:

That's awesome.

Meghan Casey:

Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Kristina Halvorson:

Okay, it's your turn. You can go.

Meghan Casey:

So my first question for Kristina is what is one thing or a couple of things you wish every client, especially when I'm thinking like bigger clients, bigger budgets and that kind of thing, wish that they knew when they came to you? What do you wish that they understood before embarking on an engagement with the Kristina Halvorson?

Kristina Halvorson:

That's funny. Well, I will say that, and you know this, that the majority of the clients that we work with these days are enterprise organizations, and the reason that those tend to be a good fit for us is that when I get out of bed in the morning and I'm thinking about content strategy, I am thinking about the really large complicated issues that live beyond the website or beyond the content marketing organization or beyond the internet. What are the things that are connecting content across these cross-functional departments and teams?

And I think that that might be where I would go with this answer is that leaders will come to us and they'll think, okay, well, I'm going to own content strategy. I'm going to own this process. I'm going to own oversight and people are going to have to just take direction from us, and yes, I do think that it is helpful within an organization for content policies and standards and guidelines to potentially sit in one place. Those have to be born from somewhere and they have to have a central seat so that they can be constantly evaluated and evolving.

And there needs to be active collaboration, but content is everywhere. It is everywhere and everybody does it, and this idea that it can just be controlled from one control tower is just not realistic, and the second you start suggesting this to other teams, everybody's going to have huge flare ups because content, as we both know, is emotional and it's political and it's people get territorial and that's completely normal.

So the thing that I wish clients understood when they came to us is that this is a very, very large party that we're going to have to invite a lot of people to. It doesn't mean that all those people should be equal collaborators in shaping decisions, but that they need to be able to help shape the questions that we are asking. So that means these projects take a long time and that there are several phases and that we can't just take organizations from chaotic, splintered, siloed processes to this lovely synchronized, well choreographed content ops or enterprise content strategy where content is consistent across all platforms and channels, and everybody understands why everybody else is making decisions and so people have purview into that, and it just comes down to, I wish that people understood that content is really, really, really complicated and that it is not a thing that one project is just going to magically fix.

Meghan Casey:

Yes, so true, and on a couple of the projects we've collaborated on recently, yeah, it's resonating flashbacks. No, not really flashbacks, but one of the things I think about is how often clients want to shut certain people out of the process because they're known for being difficult or whatever, and I always say that that's the worst possible thing you can do is to shut people out of the party because people have power in organizations, and if you're not figuring out how to harness that power, then you're going to end up in some trouble later.

Kristina Halvorson:

Well, and oftentimes, those people just want to be heard. They just want to know that somebody is listening and we're really good at that. We're good at listening.

Meghan Casey:

We are.

Kristina Halvorson:

I love it. Well, and that's the other thing too, and we can talk about this. I think this will come up, is that a huge part of what any good content strategy team does or content strategist is just not only models curiosity, but works to foster it within an organization.

And that in and of itself is simply going to uncover some of the complexities, but if we remain open, those will evolve and be awesome over time and we have the best job. Okay. So this feeds into my next question for you, which is when you are collaborating with clients, where do you see the primary points of friction within an organization and what do you think helps people to navigate those points of friction?

Meghan Casey:

One I think is this idea of scarcity where people just tend to get turfy because, well, that's my thing and if I work on that with you, then what value do I have and what if your stuff is better than my stuff, and all of this idea that collaboration is a problem. So I think that's one thing, and where that comes from often is leadership. Leadership sets the tone and the culture.

So if people are really feeling that turfy, almost every time, you can trace it back up to something happening at the leadership level and sometimes that is that lack of curiosity. It's like, well, I do this part and I don't need what you do and you don't need what I do because we're not being very curious about how we bring our skills and our mindsets and all of those things together to solve a problem. So I think that that's one of the biggest ones, and then I think a lot of times, one of the biggest points of friction is just time.

People consistently underestimate how much time content takes to do well, to think about, to really be strategic with, and sometimes we're still in these boxes and arrows. Your job is just to fill in the boxes, and so I think the more that we can collaborate, the less we run into that because we recognize each other's strengths more so, and one of the ways that I've really seen that play out is I used to be terrified of content modeling and structured content.

I'm like, I don't understand it. I don't know how to make recommendations for it until I started collaborating with developers and then it was like, this makes so much sense now and I'm already doing this. I'm just not doing it to the extent that you might need it to do what you need to do. So let's work on that piece together. So I really think collaboration is the key to softening some of those friction points, collaboration and curiosity.

Kristina Halvorson:

Those two things really need to go hand in hand because otherwise, it's not really collaboration. It's more going through the motions of, all right, I think that we need to partner on this and what part are you going to do and what part am I going to do, and hurrah, we're doing it together, but you're right. So oftentimes, that ends up in clashing priorities and opinions.

And I think exactly what, leading into what you were just saying, if we can enter into those points of collaboration with, I know that what I am doing is having an impact on your work, whether it is positive or negative, and I would like to learn more about that because I want to help you do your job better and feel like a rockstar, and entering into it with that vantage point, I think automatically is just going to ease some of that friction.

Meghan Casey:

Yes, I agree. And I do think that leadership really needs to foster that expectation and that desire to do that because sometimes people don't feel like they have permission.

Kristina Halvorson:

I do want to say, I'm going to pay you a compliment. I feel like I'm going to just keep paying you compliments. I do want to say one of the reasons that you are such a joy to collaborate with and that I see clients reacting so positively to you over and over is that you bring zero ego to your work, that when you are in the room, although you oftentimes probably are the smartest person in the room, you don't act like it.

And you don't assume that you're walking in with the answers even though so often, we do see the same points of friction, the same challenges, the same problems come up over and over and over again, just manifesting in whatever unique culture the organization may have or that leadership may have fostered, but that being able to walk into the room to talk about content not from a place of ego or defensiveness, it speeds up the process and the conversation just tenfold. So that is a gift that you have.

Meghan Casey:

Thank you.

Kristina Halvorson:

You're welcome.

Meghan Casey:

Really good.

Kristina Halvorson:

Okay, go.

Meghan Casey:

Okay, your turn or my turn. All right. So this seems to flow fairly well. Talking about leaders, how have you helped non-content leaders or content leaders understand the value of content and/or what's at stake when it is not valued, demonstrably valued in an organization?

Kristina Halvorson:

I have a deck that is called what is content strategy and why should you care? No, I'm just kidding. That is the most ineffective thing that we can do as content strategists is put a deck together and just explain what we do because guess what? Nobody cares. Nobody cares. What they want to know is how is what you are doing making my life easier or harder, and that is essentially it, and so helping people who are not in content or content leaders understand what it is that we do, the value of it and the risks involved in not engaging or not investing in content strategy 100% is dependent on what that person cares about. A way that you can often talk to several people about this at once is understanding what their boss cares about because what their boss cares about inevitably is what they're going to have to care about. So what this comes down to then is identifying a couple of points. Either it's points of friction, so is it risk, is it efficiency, is it money? Is it audience or visibility, or points of opportunity.

So AI is a really good example right now, or market share or increased visibility or sentiment among audience members or efficiency of internal processes or protecting integrity of information over time. Depending on where people sit within an organization, what they care about is going to be different, and so again, it's bringing that curiosity to the table ahead of time, and oftentimes, what that means is asking the people around whoever you need to demonstrate value to. What is it that they care about right now?

What are their hot topics? What are they afraid of, and also honestly asking what are the words that they use over and over? What are their mantras? What are they leaning into? What are their catchphrases right now because those are all things that you need to build into that conversation or that presentation around, here's what this is, here's why you should care about it, here's what it can do for you and here are risks involved if you don't invest the time and the money and the headcount and everything else into it.

There is no silver bullet. There is no article that you can hand over to people necessarily in those positions. You've got to speak their language, and it's not even about building a business case because a business case doesn't relate to everyone. It's those conversations one-on-one. I will say the one other thing that I have been doing quite a bit is trying to craft mantras that people can latch onto and share with other people throughout the organization, and that has been very effective as well.

Meghan Casey:

Yes, I have seen that in action from you and I think it's brilliant, and one of the things that in a recent project we worked on, asking about those mantras, what are they constantly saying and because we all have them, and that really gives you some clues. It's one of the reasons that I use for almost every client, something I call a stakeholder matrix.

It's just a table with names, but we ask our clients to sit with us and think through what is this person most concerned about? What are they excited about? What is their expertise that we can make sure that we bring into the conversation because yeah, I agree. People want to be heard and they also want to feel like you understand what's at stake for them personally within the organization and what they're accountable for.

Kristina Halvorson:

And if you can lead with creating that sentiment and fostering it, they're going to be more curious about what it is that you bring to the table as well.

Meghan Casey:

Agree.

Kristina Halvorson:

Okay. So we're talking about leadership a lot, and I do want to say I think that this is a result of the kinds of projects that we have worked on over the years and content strategy within some of these organizations gaining visibility beyond the ground floor where writers, whether it's UX writers, marketing writers, tech writers are waving their hands when content is important and we need to be thinking about this strategically and we need to be thinking about it as a business asset.

Frankly, those people that we were talking to and waving our hands along with them 10 years ago, they have been promoted and they have a little bit more power in their organizations and they are able to do more than just wave their hands, and so we are having more conversations with senior leadership around beyond just the website and fixing the website or just the intranet around how do these systems work together? How can we make better, more informed choices?

And because of that, I think that that is why this conversation is skewing towards how do you actually make change in a larger organization beyond, hey, we fixed this section of the website. Not that that is not important because we still do a lot of how do we fix this section on the website because it does matter, but here's my question for you. This is more of a comment than a question. Okay. Here's my question for you. If you could give leaders one piece of advice to help them evolve their content process maturity, what would that piece of advice be?

Meghan Casey:

One piece?

Kristina Halvorson:

Okay. You can have more than one piece. You could have as many pieces as you want, how many pieces of advice. That's right.

Meghan Casey:

I will start with, if it's okay, just naming what I've observed over time and the four things that really need to be in place for processes to work well, conditions that need to exist, a theory of change, if you will, and then I'll try to think of one piece of advice around those that ties that together, but one of the biggest things is having the right people with the right capabilities doing the right work. So a lot of times, you see people doing stuff that probably isn't what they should be doing. Or you see people not getting supported to develop the kinds of skills and capabilities they need to do their jobs well, or just really hiring the wrong person for what the work really is, and that comes from a little bit of the title stuff we've got going on in the field and probably most fields where things don't mean the same to everybody. So that's one big piece.

I think another one is that people really do understand their roles and their responsibilities, and especially around what decisions they are empowered to make and accountable for.

The third is having processes. They don't have to be wildly formalized and specific, but having some process and associated guidance that goes with those processes so that you're saying, okay, this is our process for defining what we're going to work on in the third quarter, in a quarter, but then you just leave people like, okay, now go do that. We need to support people in doing those things, and then the final one, and this goes back to something we've already talked about, but collaboration and experimentation and iteration is built into the way we work.

And maybe that's the one that I'll go with there for the one thing. I think a lot of times, collaboration ends up being like, you better run this by so-and-so or we didn't really build in time to iterate on what we're doing. We didn't build any time for testing, and so then you get something out into the app or the website or whatever it is you're working on and you spent all this time on it and you haven't built in time to learn before you actually launch something.

Which is one reason why we're recommending a lot of pilots right now. Learn and iterate, and you can still do that quickly, but one, that helps to ensure that you've got all the, I hate sports metaphors, bases covered. Do you have all of the things, have they been considered, and you'll learn what hasn't been in your iteration. Give people more meaningful opportunities to collaborate and develop that curiosity about what all of the different roles do and just make better stuff because you really figure out how to optimize, I think, the way you do things by having iteration be a key part of the way that you do it.

Kristina Halvorson:

Okay. I have a follow on question to that because when we talk about pilots and learning and iteration, what I see a lot of the time happens is that people get real worked up about the pilots and about making the thing and about QAing the thing and launching the thing, and then there's not really a plan for what is it that we are measuring?

How do we know if this is a success, how do we know where to find and where to prioritize the things that we're going to iterate and optimize and improve? How do you set that up circumstantially? How do you set that up to make sure that launch is not just the milestone where everything else just drifts off into whatever other interesting thing we can make is?

Meghan Casey:

Yeah, that's a really good point, and the main way I do that is that I recommend to all of my clients, really, but that we have some sort of a strategic framework that helps to guide what we should even be working on to begin with, and part of that strategic framework is knowing how you will know if it's working. So it's what are our business goals and how will we figure out if we've moved the needle on those? Who are the audiences that we're trying to reach and why are they important and what do they need from us?

And based on those two things, what does our thing need to provide or do, and then saying how will we know when it's done those things? So that needs to be set up ahead of time and whenever possible, if it's something that's you've been doing for a while, a baseline, so you can actually say we moved the needle here, we didn't, and we should go back to the drawing board, and that measurement during the iteration process is very much user interviews, user testing to figure out if it's working, and then there's some stuff you just can't really tell until it's out there for people to experience and do what we hope that they will do with it.

Kristina Halvorson:

Fair enough. Great answer. Great answers, Meghan.

Meghan Casey:

Well, what is your answer?

Kristina Halvorson:

I think that because, you know this, I inadvertently find myself running two companies right now. I am proud and excited to be producing Button, which is the conference focused on content design, which is really writing and content strategy within digital products, and then our consultancy, Brain Traffic, which is really focusing on enterprise and website content strategy projects. So I am less involved on the front lines than I have been. Although, as you know, I am becoming far more involved because I just love it so much.

But having said that, I have not had the opportunity to be on the front lines on these projects the way that you have been, and that's part of why it's so important when we do have the good fortune of bringing you in as a Brain Traffic collaborator, that to have you more on the front lines and leading these because you are so wise and experienced at helping people understand, okay, if we're going to make the thing, we need to do it from a strategic perspective and here is how, exactly everything that you said, here's the framework to see if it's working or not. So all of that, that is my big excuse to say I don't know. I don't know, Meghan. You tell me.

Meghan Casey:

Oh, yes. Well, I'm smarter than you.

Kristina Halvorson:

It's really, as long as we've clearly established that not only between ourselves, but also my listening audience, then I think everybody's going to just sleep better tonight just knowing what the truth is.

Meghan Casey:

Absolutely.

Kristina Halvorson:

Okay. That's right. All right. Is it your turn? Do you have another question for me?

Meghan Casey:

Yeah, I have the last one for you, I think.

Kristina Halvorson:

I think we're going to have to go to a bonus round. I'm not lying to you.

Meghan Casey:

Okay. I'll see.

Kristina Halvorson:

All right. Okay.

Meghan Casey:

After this, but for right now, what are you most excited about in the field or the umbrella or the big tent of content, as you often describe it? What are you most excited about, and partially, I ask this question because you've done some things in the way that in your offerings, your knowledge type offerings lately, and I'm curious what you're learning and what's most exciting coming up in the field.

Kristina Halvorson:

I will tell you what I am most excited about. I have seen and talked about this larger discipline of content strategy over the years that initially, I think was really a mishmash of a lot of different stuff. Tech writers had been talking about content strategy in one form or another for many, many years. Then we started talking about website content strategy and then there was the rise of content marketing, which started out as a bunch of messy tactics and now really has matured where people are able to talk about content marketing strategy.

And then of course, we have the rise of content design over the last four or five years, which has been equally exciting. There's been a lot of up and down across these different practices, as you are well aware and as our listeners are well aware, in terms of just focus within organizations and the degree of investment and enthusiasm and so on, but here's what I see happening. What I see happening is that these specializations in these practices are starting to formalize a bit more and that folks are starting to find each other a bit more.

My hope is that organizations start to work even harder to understand within themselves what the different kinds of content are that folks are focused on. So do we need people who are primarily working on the website? Are those folks, do we want to call them UX content strategists, website content strategists? How formalized is our content design community of practice internally? Do we need to ensure that the organization understands that the content designers are the folks who are working on product?

How about within our tech writers? Do we have specific content engineers who are really working with them to talk about content models and reusable content and making sure that updated consistent product content is getting to the right customers for support and customer service, et cetera, et cetera? So what I am excited about is that I think these different communities of practice, these different fields are starting to better understand and own their identities within this larger big tent.

And my hope is that we will continue to see more and more resources available to folks, specifically in the form of blog posts and books and videos as well. I'm a little concerned, I will say, about a lot of this knowledge being cranked out by formal organizations instead of folks who are sharing their work to their peers. Looking at all of my listeners here, did you know that you can contribute to both the Brain Traffic blog and the Button Content Design blog. Check out our websites and see about submitting a draft because we want to see them.

Anyway, point being, I am excited about how people are starting to better understand and identify within their fields of specialization, and my hope is that organizations will also continue to recognize and invest in these fields of specialization, and that I want everybody to remember that the work they are doing in content has an impact on the other people who are doing content within an organization.

So everybody still needs to talk to one another and show curiosity about different content areas of specialization. Basically, I'm just excited about content strategy. I'm always excited about content strategy, no matter what is happening in the larger milieu of tech or higher ed or the market or anything. I just feel like there is a large enough population of people who are constantly out there advocating for better content for our users and meaningful, purposeful content for our organizations that we're just going to continue to move forward.

Meghan Casey:

Yes.

Kristina Halvorson:

That was a long answer. That was a lot of talking for my own podcast.

Meghan Casey:

Great. You had one thing that, well, a lot of things you said, but one thing that I think you're really good at is recognizing when people who have a lot of smart things to say and really encouraging them to say them. In fact, who told me I should write a book? It was Kristina Halvorson on a business trip, and I was like, "What? There's no way I could do that," and she said, "Yes you can," and helped me write the book proposal and all of those things.

So I think, I do love seeing so many exciting, newcomers isn't quite the right word, but people I didn't know about before who have been doing this work for a really long time, but people are just more visible, more out there, and I think you helped to foster that, and then of course, yes, people should submit. There's a couple of people I know we've talked about need to write books. Yeah, I think that's exciting. There are so many smart people, so many smart people in our awesome field.

Kristina Halvorson:

There are so many smart people, and I do want to acknowledge that so many smart people are so, so tired, that it has been a long, long couple of years. I do also want to say though, for the first time in many, many years, I wrote a short story the other night, and no, you can't read it, but it is incredible how it gave me energy over the next couple of days, that I carved out that space for myself and said, I'm going to write about something besides content strategy and content design, and it made a big difference.

Meghan Casey:

I so agree. I went on that writing retreat last year or this year, I guess, in June, and wrote more that kind of writing for the first time in a very long time and I have ideas for what I can do with that. So yeah, other ways to be creative that aren't your work ways can be really helpful. Ukulele, I also do that, and watercolor.

Kristina Halvorson:

I don't do either one of those things. Those make me tired just thinking about them. It's like yoga and meditation. I can't do those things either. You know what I've recently gotten into, I'm not going to lie to you, is K-drama. Have I talked to you about this? Oh my God, I'm so far down. The Netflix K-drama rabbit hole. I can't even describe to you. There have been too many series.

Meghan Casey:

Okay. Well, send me a list.

Kristina Halvorson:

I will, but then I'm going to drag you down with me. I'm just saying. Yeah, go down kicking and screaming. Okay. If you have made it to this point in the podcast, congratulations. That is your little Easter egg. If you are interested in K-drama, may I recommend starting with The Extraordinary Attorney Woo. You can skip right over Squid Game.

And then I went into Celebrity, which was just terrible, but then I did Crash Landing Into You, or in you. Crash Landing Into You, which is a delight. I'm not going to lie to you. So you can start there. All right. Meghan, this has been a delight. This is a very good idea to host you on the Content Strategy Podcast. I appreciate you and I think you're very smart and I can't wait to work with you until we are old ladies rocking in rocking chairs, although hopefully by then, we won't be doing content strategy anymore.

Meghan Casey:

That's true, but yes. Same, same.

Kristina Halvorson:

Meghan, where can people find you online?

Meghan Casey:

My website is dobettercontent.com and the Content Strategy Toolkit is on peachpit.com, all the places.

Kristina Halvorson:

We will include links to those in our show notes. Thanks so much for joining and me today, Meghan. I appreciate you.

Meghan Casey:

Appreciate you.

Kristina Halvorson:

Thanks so much for joining me for this week’s episode of the Content Strategy Podcast. Our podcast is brought to you by Brain Traffic, a content strategy services and events company. It’s produced by Robert Mills with editing from Bare Value. Our transcripts are from REV.com. You can find all kinds of episodes at contentstrategy.com and you can learn more about Brain Traffic at braintraffic.com. See you soon.