The Rock Creek Blog // Industry News, Trends & Insights

Zombies, Zeitgeist & Content Marketing

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Nov 18, 2011

From books and video games to movies and TV shows, zombies sell. Content marketers have taken notice, jumping on the zombie bandwagon to promote everything from emergency preparedness to content marketing itself.

Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drew an...

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Cooking with Content Strategy: Where Drupal Meets Gouda

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Aug 09, 2011

If you’ve heard me talk about content strategy before, you know I like to use food metaphors, specifically the culinary concept of “mise en place,” to explain why content strategy is essential.

At CapitalCamp, the DrupalCamp for Washington, DC, John Serrao and I expanded the idea into an...

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Plain Language Win: USDA’s ChooseMyPlate.gov

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Jun 16, 2011

Eat more vegetables.

Use a smaller plate.

Eat foods with ingredients your great-grandmother would recognize.

Simple, right?

How about this: Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.

That last one comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Surprised by the...

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6 Things I Learned at Confab: the Content Strategy Conference

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience May 26, 2011

Confab: the Content Strategy Conference ended two weeks ago: so why has it taken me so long to write this blog post? Honestly, Confab made my brain hurt. After two full days of keynotes and sessions—and the many conversations I had with fellow attendees—I needed time to process. What are my...

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Rock Creek Blog, Meet Wordle

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Apr 19, 2011

As a professional “word nerd,” I’ve been intrigued by tag clouds ever since I first saw one on Flickr. So once in a while, I like to plug this blog’s RSS feed into Wordle, a site that generates word clouds from an Atom or RSS feed, del.icio.us user name, or text you’ve copied over. The more often...

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Pranked? I Wish. What April Fools’ Day Can Teach Us About Mobile Content

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Apr 06, 2011

I spent most of April Fools’ Day away from my computer, which usually isn’t a problem. Having a smartphone means steady access to my e-mail, favorite websites, and social networks. But as I learned on Friday, access to mobile content doesn’t always equal getting what you want.

In many...

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Putting the “Gov” in Web Content Governance

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Mar 21, 2011

From a small local business to a government agency with international reach, to succeed online, every organization needs a solid plan to create, deliver, and govern its content. Government agencies are some of the largest and highest-profile organizations out there, and have a wealth of...

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Is Content Strategy Your Missing Ingredient?

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Mar 08, 2011

This blog post is about content strategy, but it was inspired by a tweet about cooking.

Cooking Light magazine recently compiled a list of the most common cooking mistakes. Number two on that list? Not reading the entire recipe before you start cooking. The outcomes of this mistake, Cooking...

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Is This English? Where Plain Language Meets Branding

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Dec 14, 2010

“Is this English?”

“Not plain English.”

“This just means they got my letter, right?”

“Yep.”

“Then why couldn’t they just say, ‘We got your letter’?”

This conversation took place in my parents’ kitchen after my brother received a letter from a state government...

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Lorem Ipsum: Friend or Enemy?

Posted by: Natalya Minkovsky, Director of Strategy & User Experience Nov 08, 2010

Working in marketing and design, we’ve gotten used to answering questions like, “Why is the copy on my website/brochure/ad in Latin?” and “The website is going to be in English when we launch, right?”

Why are clients asking these questions? Lorem ipsum. If you’re a content strategist...

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