Content Strategist or Content Designer? My experience at PayPal
It happens to me often, at a dinner or a networking event, that I try to explain what I do and watch the same kind, slightly lost look settle on people’s faces. Content Strategist, Content Designer, UX Writer: to anyone outside the field, they sound like synonyms, and that is partly fair, because they all work on the words inside a product. At PayPal, I held two of these roles at different times, and from the inside, the difference is huge. Let me tell it starting from what I actually did every day, without textbook definitions.
What I did as a Content Strategist
During my time as a Content Strategist, I oversaw the Help Center and Knowledge Management. In plain terms, I was responsible for content governance, the set of rules that keep a huge, constantly growing content library standing up. I managed the editorial calendar, set priorities, and, above all, monitored the data. Which articles were searched for but not found, which still triggered a call to support, and which had grown old and misleading?
That is where the strategic decisions came from, and they were the most delicate part of the job. What to publish, what to deprecate, and when to refresh a piece of content before it becomes a problem. I like to think of that role as a form of gardening on a large scale: I did not write every single leaf, but I decided what to grow, what to prune, and in which season. Good governance looks a lot like what I describe when I talk about building a modern content system, where order matters as much as the writing.
What I did as a Content Designer
As a Content Designer, my reach changed shape. I focused on content strategy for the “Microbusiness” segment, the small operations that use PayPal to get paid and manage payments. Here, I was no longer working from above on an entire library; I went down into the flows, side by side with designers and product managers.
The work ranged from strategy for that segment to the actual writing and governance of UX writing itself: button labels, status messages, errors, and onboarding screens. Every word had to fit into a precise space and a precise moment in the user’s journey. Having been a strategist first turned out to be very useful, because I brought the same attention to consistency and rules into the flows. I have written separately about how much this discipline matters, in my piece on the discipline of UX writing and in my piece on how error messages are really opportunities.
The differences in a table
To pin down the idea, here is how I tell the two roles apart based on my direct experience.
| Dimension | Content Strategist (Help Center, KM) | Content Designer (Microbusiness) |
|---|---|---|
| Point of view | From above, across the whole content library | Inside individual flows and screens |
| Main goal | Governance, quality and content lifecycle | Clear, usable experience in the product |
| Daily activities | Editorial calendar, data analysis, priorities | UX writing, work with design and product |
| Typical decisions | What to publish, deprecate, refresh | Which word, in which space, at which moment |
| Unit of measure | Articles, internal searches, support deflection | Buttons, messages, completion rates |
| Collaborators | Knowledge managers, support, stakeholders | Designers, product managers, researchers |
| Guiding question | “Is this content still needed and working?” | “Does this screen make sense at first glance?” |
The table simplifies, of course, because in reality the boundaries are softer. Still, it captures two crafts that share the same raw material, words, and use them with different purposes and rhythms.
Where the two roles meet
There is a point where the two experiences intersect, and it is governance. In both roles, my job was to keep chaos at bay: in the first case, on a library scale; in the second, on an interface scale. Consistency, standards, and a uniform tone of voice are the threads that hold everything together, and they are also the reasons why moving from one role to another felt natural to me.
The Nielsen Norman Group puts it well: content strategy is the layer that plans and enables, while UX writing and content design work on the text and its form within the experience. In practice, this means strategy sets the rules of the game, and design plays them out, match after match. If you are curious about the more theoretical distinction between the two areas, I have written about it in my article on UX writing and content design.
What I learned moving from one to the other
The most useful lesson is about perspective. As a strategist, I learned to think in terms of systems, the long term, and numbers, and I stopped falling in love with the single perfect article that nobody actually searches for. As a designer, I brought my feet back into the concrete experience, where even one wrong word on a button can make someone abandon a payment. Holding both views together has become the way I work, and I apply it today as a freelance writer, too, in my 10-step copywriting process.
Another thing I carry with me is the weight of small choices. At PayPal, I saw how a single well-adapted word can move the numbers, as with the signup button in Italy. Strategist or designer, the substance stays the same: you need someone who makes decisions methodically, looks at the data, and then chooses the words with care. The titles on the business card change, but the attention stays the same.
So the next time someone at a dinner asks me what the difference is, I will probably tell exactly this story. Two roles, one single obsession with content that genuinely works.
Related sources
- Nielsen Norman Group, on the difference between content strategy and UX writing: Content Strategy vs. UX Writing
- Nielsen Norman Group, study guide to content strategy: Content Strategy: Study Guide
- Content Benefit, on the differences between the two areas: UX writing vs. content design
- Content Benefit, on the day-to-day practice of UX writing: The discipline of UX writing
- Content Benefit, on content systems and governance: Building a content system with AI
- Content Benefit, on a word choice that moved the numbers: The PayPal signup button in Italy
- Content Benefit, on the hidden value of error messages: Error messages are opportunities
- Content Benefit, on my way of working: My copywriting process in 10 steps
