Talking content with Fourth Wall Content’s Rob Mills

Founder and Content Consultant, Robert Mills

Fourth Wall Content was founded in April 2021 and is home to content strategist and writer, Rob Mills.

As I’ve collaborated with Rob on a couple of things, it was pretty inevitable that I’d ask him to be an interviewee for Writeful!

What does a typical day at Fourth Wall Content involve?

“It involves a lot of excitement. The days themselves will depend on who I am working with.

“When I started the company I wanted to do meaningful work with companies that are truly making a difference to people’s lives. I also wanted to stay involved with pushing forward conversations in the content and UX community and also being able to contribute more as a practitioner now I am back to doing the doing on a daily basis.

“I’ve worked with a digital inclusion charity, in collaboration with Iain Broome who runs Very Meta. We restructured a lot of web pages and rewrote them to be in clear language. That was an interesting plain English project that really got into the details of every word.

“I’m also working with an end-of-life charity on various content creation and editing work. That’s been my first experience of using Episerver and I’ve enjoyed getting to grips with different systems.

“I’m also doing some content design work as part of launching two important hubs for the charity. It’s been interesting from a language perspective too and how they talk about death and they use their content style guide more than any organisation I’ve known so as you can imagine that’s been a joy.

“The third charity is focused on conservation. I’m working with the wonderful team at Llibertat as part of an Alpha. We’ve been mapping user journeys, facilitating some interesting chats about content and I’ve also presented on topics such as editorial calendars and style guides.

“On the community side, I am working with Kristina Halvorson to relaunch the Content Strategy Podcast. That’s been a lot of fun and has involved analysing previous episodes, research, strategy, making recommendations and also working on the production side to get the episodes complete. The first new episode is coming soon.

“I’ve also been working as a consultant for UX Writers Collective, as well as being an instructor/grader for their Marketing Writing course.

“The final thing that occupies my days is the group coaching I am doing with Tracy Playle. It’s been an incredible few weeks so far and really helping as I go through a huge transition in my life. It’s been great for my confidence and for staying focused on my values and principles as I take on new work.

“Plus I’m trying to make time for writing my own articles on the Fourth Wall Content blog.

“So to come back to the question - a day may involve writing, editing, presenting, mapping, facilitating, learning, researching. I could be designing a workflow, discussing user needs and acceptance criteria, analysing audience research data, defining content principles, planning editorial calendars and distribution tactics.

“No two days are the same - other than the fact they are all very fulfilling.

Your career history is heavily steeped in 'content' - what keeps you on that path?

“It was never a planned route, as is true for many of my peers, but ‘content’ has been the golden thread throughout my jobs.

“I’ve always loved writing and being able to tell stories. I'm a journalism graduate and I had a book published in 2011 by an independent publisher. I’ve since edited and contributed to several other books.

“Content was always part of my past roles in some way. When I was a studio manager for an agency, I used to work with clients on their content - writing content, facilitating voice and tone workshops, running card sorts, leading on persona generation workshops and content prioritisation tasks. I’ve also been a content strategist and head of content for a SaaS company.

“I also have experience in data analysis for local government and audience research at the BBC, so that has stood me in good stead as lots of tasks around content aren’t related to the words themselves. It’s about the people and the processes. I think that’s why content as a career is so exciting - there are lots of ways in and lots of routes to go when you’re there too. You can be a generalist or a specialist. You can focus on one area for years and then change to something else.

“A career in content is one that you can really mould to your wants and ambitions. I’m finding that’s very true now that I’m running my own company. Projects so far have meant I’ve done content strategy, content design and content marketing. Keeping an open mind is important.”

Do you agree with the saying 'content is king', or is it more complex than that? And how important is content for an organisation?

“Content is an intrinsic part of a business. Content is what forms, nurtures and keeps relationships with an audience. Content and UX determines the customer experience and will either allow your user to do what they need or not.

“Content is also a view on wider organisational issues and challenges. I tweeted this week saying how every time I talk to stakeholders about content it quickly becomes a conversation about the organisational structure, culture and priorities. so it is critically important to invest in your content because by doing so you’re really investing in the organisation itself.”

Work-wise, is there anything which you never seem to get around to doing?

“Writing a fiction book. I have the outline for a four-book YA fantasy series with lots of notes and have started writing it in bits. I'm hoping slow and steady wins the race with this one.

“On the work front, I always want to learn more about certain areas. On the list at the moment are taxonomy, accessibility and governance.”

Lastly, what advice would you give yourself five years ago, knowing what you know today?

“Don't be too hard on yourself. There can be so much (self-imposed) pressure and expectation to know everything, and that's not realistic in an industry that is changing all the time.

“It's actually OK not to know something, or not to have an answer. I've learned that through giving talks at conferences. I can't know every example or understand every use case or industry, so I'm totally comfortable now acknowledging it's a good question, admitting I don't know the answer, but committing to trying to find out.

“Instead, I try to turn to my peers for help and information to fill in the gaps in my own knowledge, and hear about their experiences and insights.

“Oh, and some bonus advice; always trust your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, then it’s ok to say no and walk away. Don’t let anyone or anything take more of you than you’re willing to give.”

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