The Content Strategy Podcast

Episode 39: Alexa Apallas, PayPal - Advancing into content leadership

Alexa Apallas was one of the first five content strategy leads at PayPal. Alexa talks to Kristina about her path into content and what it takes to advance to a content leadership role. Alexa also shares how content designers collaborate with product for a better customer experience, getting people to care about content and content success stories at PayPal.

Episode 38: Preston So, Oracle - Designing usable voice content

Preston So shares his thoughts and advice for new ways of delivering content. He offers examples and insights into omni-channel content audits, thinking about audiences holistically and techniques for enabling content strategy whatever the channel and format.

Episode 37: John Collins, Atlassian - Maturing content disciplines

With experience in technical writing, UX writing, content strategy and content design, John Collins shares his thoughts on maturing content disciplines. In his chat with Kristina John also talks about centralizing and scaling Atlassian’s content practice, content titles versus content roles and demonstrating the value of content work.

Episode 36: Helen Lawson, Co-op Funeral - The importance of empathetic language, voice and tone

When communicating about difficult topics, like death, using the right words, voice and tone is essential. Helen Lawson shares how she approaches this with empathy at Co-op Funeralcare to ensure clarity in their communication. Helen also gives an insight into leading on the change of language, building self-serve products and why avoiding euphemisms in content is necessary.

Episode 35: Erica Jorgensen, Microsoft - How research and content strategy work together at Microsoft

Erica Jorgensen offers an insight into content practices at Microsoft. From more content not being better, ensuring content is an asset and the relationship between content and brand. Erica’s chat with Kristina covers using style guides to talk the same language across teams, the way that content works with research and testing and measuring content.

Episode 34: Jonathan McFadden, Red Ventures - Working towards an inclusive and diverse industry

Jonathan McFadden moved into content strategy to solve problems and help people. He talks about using content strategy for change by advocating for underrepresented users, building designated spaces of inclusion and ultimately working towards an inclusive and diverse industry.

Episode 33: Jordan Craig, Twitter - Scaling content design at Twitter

Jordan Craig has worked at Twitter for 18 months as the lead of their content design team. Jordan shares her experience of growing the team, managing Twitter’s terminology, using AI for style guidance, finding a community and creating paths into content design.

Episode 32: Andy Welfle, Adobe - Building a content design discipline at Adobe

When Andy Welfle joined Adobe four years ago he got to work founding and building their content design practice. He now manages a growing team and talks about the relationship between content design and UX writing, content as part of a design system and equitable terminology in tech.

Episode 31: Robert Mills, GatherContent - Content Operations

Kristina welcomes Robert Mills of GatherContent to talk about his experience as head of content for GatherContent. He talks about what content ops is, not just in the context of his team’s product but also as part of a larger conversation about the field of content strategy. Rob also shares how he handles content operations internally at GatherContent (how very meta).

Episode 30: Beth Dunn, HubSpot - UX Writing and Full-Stack Content Design at HubSpot

As the UX operations lead at HubSpot, Beth Dunn applies a content strategy lens to the way she’s helping lead the company’s UX practice. In this episode, she and Kristina talk about how HubSpot defines UX operations and design, how she’s working to advance the practice, and how teams can get aligned on terminology and goals.