Product Content Strategy, Content Design, UX Writing Course

Two advanced courses for content strategists, content designers, UX Writers, content-driven UX designers, and for content and design practitioners who want to explore product and system thinking. 

Directions—for early stage career. Standards—for experienced people.

In addition to the foundational how and why of content strategy or content design, the program is an extension to our learnings at work to widen our sphere of impact for a product-success-centric approach. (See example assignment in the course.)

Audience centric. Select a product category.

How the course works

You can make the best use of the course if you participate actively, question me, and be proactive in discussions. In the Standards course, you get a chance to select one additional session that aligns with your interests, curiosity, and goals. In either course, you get:

  • Live calls—slides, Slack, and Miro
  • One continuous library—I will add relevant references for each topic or subject to this library
  • Special guests in some classes for their expertise on a topic
  • You get tasks with examples of real products that we see in the world (see example 1 and example 2, these open in a Google drive document)

Only 8 seats.

The course goals

The goal is to develop and channelize our learnings via an action plan so that we can apply these to see how a product works and scales. After completing the program, you can refine your working frameworks to apply your gains in the real work.

“To manage and overcome emotions like guilt that can prevent us from learning and achieving, we need to treat ourselves the same way we would the person we love most in the world.” writes Dennis Tirch. (source, Farnam Street blog)

Shaping a few repeatable patterns as habits

The course participants say

“I really enjoyed learning about content design and how to apply it to my daily work. This was a really informative and well-structured program. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a jump into the world of content design.”

Eiken Nurcelli, content strategist (see their LinkedIn)

“Because I knew nothing about content design, I chose the class in order to learn how content design and content strategy fit together and which impact good or bad design can have for the users experience. The class was well-structured with theoretical parts and real life examples. Vinish Garg was eager to teach us as much as possible relevant and valuable know how.”

Linda Schwarz, PR Manager and content strategist (see their LinkedIn)

You can apply

This program is not for absolute beginners. Apply only if you have some experience in at least a few things in:

  • Content strategy—Basic understanding of content types, customer journey, metadata and taxonomy, content publishing and management, content goals and ROI, content systems and design systems, and brand voice and tone
  • General—User research, user stories or JTBD, content for interaction design, UX Writing

If you are a beginner but you are confident to learn and respond quickly in this course, write to me at vinishjg (at) gmail (dot) com and we can discuss.

Experienced content strategists, content designers, UX writers.

Two courses—Directions, and Standards

  • Directions: For early stage content strategists, content designers, UX writers
  • Standards: For experienced content practitioners who work on the intersection of content and design and want to explore the deeper meaning of our work in products and system thinking

Help yourself. It starts in April 2022

Directions

  • Why we are talking about design or content? Why should we care? Why an organisation exists? What happens to the content over a period of time?
  • Understanding content and design, and content strategy in the context of UX, design, products, examples of content-led, examples of design failure and content failure.
  • What is content strategy, its relation and mappings with other functions and teams, content strategy and content marketing, content design, UX writing, product marketing, brand positioning, brand narrative.
  • Discovery and synthesis, customer journey practices, foundations and architecture, messaging, taxonomy and metadata, content models, content lifecycle
  • Interface—working with design for user stories, JTBD, designing interactions with words, alignment for org goals
  • Continuous discovery for customer journey—unified view for complex and unpredictable customer journey as viewed by different teams, customer moments, customer intent, customer sentiment, and customer goals
  • Content systems and design systems
  • Content and design—baked together across functions, for scale
  • Five live calls of 90 minutes each
  • Sixth class is of two hours
  • Additional two hours of recorded videos (4 videos, each of 30 minutes)
  • Slack and Miro for all discussions
  • Access to recordings of all calls and of Miro and Slack, for 30 days after the course is over
  • A $50 coupon to buy related books
  • A digital swag that you can use to showcase your takeaways

Standards

Everything in Directions

PLUS 

  • What makes an organisation? The people, the alignment, the goals, the incentives, and the changing dynamics when the product grows, the impact on different teams, workflow, and the benchmarks
  • Early stage functional alignment—shared goals, shared vision, systems-alignment for org growth—overview of product metrics
  • Operational cadence in product teams—the role of content
  • Our operating principles, models and frameworks, leadership trade-offs, align with systems and standards for the org’s vision—system thinking
  • Content strategy directly mapped with SaaS onboarding, retention, and churn, content for product metrics
  • Adjacent concepts: Cost of delay, decision models, transition to product management

PLUS 

After day 3, select a topic for deeper insights:

  • Content leadership to design or product leadership as an independent consultant, OR
  • Content and design for system thinking
  • Six live calls of 90 minutes each
  • Additional three hours of recorded videos (6 videos, each of 30 minutes)
  • Slack and Miro for all discussions
  • Access to recordings of all calls and of Miro and Slack, for 30 days after the course is over
  • A $100 coupon to buy related books
  • A digital swag that you can use to showcase your takeaways

A one-time workshop

A 1: 1 workshop of two hours that helps you see a wider perspective of how and why content driven design is important for your product onboarding, retention, UX, and for product metrics. See example 1, example 2, content design failure examples, example 4 (a post with multiple examples).

  • Product positioning and how it is aligned with onboarding
  • Onboarding and how content and design help the product 
  • Identifying patterns as the retention and growth levers
  • Intersection of product marketing, content strategy, UX writing, and brand positioning
  • One live call of two hours, we discuss your actual product
  • Slack and Miro for discussions
  • You get a formal report for the things to do

For Founders and functional leaders of growing product teams

Learning for the Meaning

As individuals, you can prepare yourself by separating the work rewards from the rewards of learning. Our learnings add strength to our belief system and to our decisions framework.

We need to find ways to fight our blind spots

Questions? Write to me at vinishjg (at) gmail (dot) com.

“With time, we obviously gain knowledge, wisdom, and more data points to inform our power of intuition. We build confidence and networks, but we’re also creating blind spots.”

Liz Wiseman

Advanced course in product content strategy, content design, UX writing, and content and design leadership, by Vinish Garg.

A dialogue between you and your manager

You—”I am fixing the directions in customer journey.”

They—”Thank you.”

You—”The revised form is good, we have just got it tested. It has the right message, we followed the design style guide, and the content strategist has reviewed it.”

They—”Perfect. So, it should work now.”

You—”I could do it because of Meaning.”

They—”I know, that is why we got your course sponsored. We all gained. Cheers.”

A dialogue between a product contributor and their manager

A product content strategy course

Product content strategy is the product-centric content strategy in an organization across the teams and functions for discovery and research, content plan for product and design strategy, content-driven design, product architecture, and measuring its role in the product metrics.

This product content strategy course brings more clarity and focus in how we plan content or design for products. The goal is not to hand over a content strategy certificate that helps your resume, we are talking about a serious product content strategy practice.

“Product content strategy is like the choreographer or the gatekeeper that oversees the function in the world of content, not only across product teams, but also making sure that voice, tone, messaging, the actual asset of the content as a product is in harmony with what’s happening over marketing, what’s happening over in support, what’s happening with technical content management, etc.” says Kristina Halvorson (source).

In a lot of ways, content strategy means operationalizing everything in content design, UX writing, product marketing, and brand positioning.

 

Product-centric content strategy for its role in product metrics

A content design course

Content design is a series of steps, processes, and activities that bring a content-centric perspective to planning the organization’s content via discovery, and designing the content-driven products that are a fine balance between user-centricity and organization goals. This tweet by Content Design London is a good reference to what is content design. 

This content design course is prepared to advance your understanding of how content makes products better. You will not get a content design certificate; your work in this course becomes your content design portfolio.

“Content design is answering a user need in the best way for the user to consume it. Content design is a way of thinking. It’s about using data and evidence to give the audience what they need, at the time they need it and in a way they expect.” Sarah Winters.

You cannot separate content from design

A UX writing course

UX Writing is planning and writing content that users see on the interface for their actions, interactions, and decisions. The UX content falls somewhere in the middle of the customer journey.

There are many UX Writing certifications that help you build your UX Writing portfolio. Our goal is much beyond the certificates and portfolio—you get a chance to get into UX Writing as a serious product content strategy business.

UX Writing is the content on product interface and these words define and establish the brand’s relationship with the customers.

Words on the interface that inspire confidence, trust, actions, and decisions.

We use Miro and Slack

Miro

The Miro board where Vinish Garg hosts their product content strategy, content design, and UX Writing course.

We co-design is in Miro.

In the course, you can work on a small assignment (see example 1 and example 2, these open in a Google drive document).

Slack

Vinish Garg is running a focused group on Slack for UX, design, content strategy, content design, UX writing, product management, and products in general.

We find and share directions in Slack.

Your Meaning

Our work is defined by how much meaning it adds to anyone who interacts with our work. If this course excites you as an organization or as independent contributor to sponsor its footprints, write to me at vinishjg (at) gmail (dot) com. 

Together.

If you are not sure, think again.

Questions? Write to me at vinishjg (at) gmail (dot) com.

Standards. Gains. Directions. Career. Folks and friends. Our working models and operating principles. We have everything to gain, for the Meaning.

If you are not sure, think again.

Everything.

See the course related writings