Thoughts and resources

Provocations and useful things to improve your content and your content systems

Guides, checklists and collections to help you make better content and build better content systems – alongside the opinions and provocations behind them. Always Contentious, occasionally contentious.

Filter for practical Guides or thinkier Thoughts.

16 June 2026

Clean floors and great cooks

Scrubbing the AI tells out of your writing is only hygiene – the first and smallest of three jobs. Craft and identity are the harder, more valuable work, and AI can help with all three.

11 June 2026

How to use AI for better content

Artificial intelligence can be used to improve the quality of content, and content systems, and not just to produce faster content slop. This resource shows how.

11 June 2026

Who does what?

The evolution of digital content into a complex, many-headed beast, means that to do it well you almost certainly need a diverse team, with a range of skills. And these days, not all the team members are human. But who does what exactly?

11 June 2026

Atomic content

Atomic design proved that smaller, reusable components beat whole-page layouts. Content mostly still lives on pages. Composable content – and AI that reads and writes in chunks, not pages – is making that finally impossible to ignore.

11 June 2026

Content transformation, not digital transformation

Digital transformation has fundamentally changed many things. But content-led change could be the way to create more human, more effective purpose-driven organisations.

11 June 2026

Longing for longer

The web is brimful of reports that nobody reads. With time and money, some of these could be turned into excellent long-form content that would reach and engage more people.

3 June 2026

The content operating model in the AI age

Many organisations treat content as something that describes value rather than delivers it. In the AI age, a clear content operating model is needed in order to transform and thrive.

13 January 2026

How and why to move from WordPress to Astro

A journey from a monolithic content management system to a modern tech stack. And how AI can help create a smooth path to get there.

13 January 2026

Content and pace layers

Different layers of an organisation move at different speeds, just as different parts of a society evolve slower or faster. Content is crucial at all of them.

20 January 2025

How to be human

In an AI-infused world, organisations' content can feel more like a relentless stream than the basis for a mutually supportive relationship. There are many ways in which organisations can get off the automated content conveyor belt and become more human.

20 January 2025

Commas, colons and capitalisation

Consistency and clarity of language are as important in a world of AI as they were in the time of Gutenberg. Nothing beats having your own style guide, but if you're still saving up for one of those, there are some good ones online that you can use.

20 January 2025

Ten website pitfalls to avoid

Making an organisation website is tricky. Remaking one seems as if it should be easier but often isn't. In fact it's usually harder. These are ten holes we often find people have fallen into.

20 January 2025

The best content strategy resources

A curated collection of the best books, blogs, podcasts and tools for content strategists. Regularly updated.

2 October 2024

Taking a thematic approach

There are many ways to organise your bookshelves: alphabetical by author, by size, by the colour of the spine, by whether you want it to appear behind your head on a video call…

29 September 2023

Create less crud

The flotsam and jetsam of abandoned microsites and neglected, out-of-date pages float in a flood of content that threatens users and organisations.

29 September 2023

Advocates not parrots

When we facilitate intellectual and emotional engagement, we encourage action. Using content strategically moves us beyond clicktivism to something more substantial, and therefore more effective.

29 September 2023

The depleted bookshop

A good bookshop is full of books that inform but also books that entertain, move, or frighten. They make you laugh, they make you cry, they make you see the world in a new light. This isn't the way most would describe the web.

29 September 2023

The speeding up of slowing down

There's a whole world of content where efficient information transfer isn't the end goal. There's a world of content where understanding is important. Where contemplation and thoughtfulness are key.

Thoughts and resources

Clean floors and great cooks

How to use AI for better content

Who does what?

Atomic content

Content transformation, not digital transformation

Longing for longer

The content operating model in the AI age

How and why to move from WordPress to Astro

Content and pace layers

How to be human

Commas, colons and capitalisation

Ten website pitfalls to avoid

The best content strategy resources

Taking a thematic approach

Create less crud

Advocates not parrots

The depleted bookshop

The speeding up of slowing down

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