I’m Robert Weller, an independent content strategist based in Mainz, Germany, raised bilingual in German and English. I teach content strategy at FH JOANNEUM in Graz, Austria, and at FHNW in Switzerland, I have written three books in German, and in February 2027 I publish my first in English, Nobody Decided This.
I keep a list of things I mean to write. For years I blamed its length on time: everything on it was worth doing, and there was more of it than there was of me. Then producing content got cheap, for everyone at once. My list did not get shorter. Neither did anyone else’s.
In 2022 I had asked the people I worked with and taught what held them back. Two answers came back. They were carrying more than they could deliver, and they were measured on traffic and rankings. I built a course on the first answer. The second was the real finding, and it sat in my own results for three years before I saw it.
What I was short of was never the hours. It was a reason to choose, and no amount of capacity produces one.
That is what the book is about: deciding what not to make, and being able to hold that decision in a room where somebody outranks you.
In content-marketing roles in e-commerce and software companies, I wrote content strategies that were complete by every checklist I owned. Not one of them forbade a thing. Mine was a to-do list too.
I spent six years in a conversion-optimisation and strategy consultancy whose whole method rested on cognitive and consumer psychology. That is where decision science stopped being something I only read about.
Since 2021 I have taught on the part-time master’s in content strategy at FH JOANNEUM in Graz, Austria. My students are working practitioners, and the questions they bring to class each week are the ones this book had to answer.
I started writing about content in 2007, on the blog that became toushenne.de. Three German books followed. Several chapters of this one began as German articles I wrote while still arguing the point with myself.
Read Chapter 1 free and judge the argument for yourself.
Whatever form it takes (a book, a workshop, a semester), my work does one thing. It helps you decide what is worth doing and what to refuse, and it gives you a basis on the page that others can inspect. When you’re challenged, you have more to point to than your own intuition.
You probably already know what your team should stop doing. The hard part is defending it upwards, against a senior colleague with a plausible request. The book gives you instruments for that, each ending in a decision you can state and hold.
Start with Chapter 1I work with in-house teams and agencies on the decisions that sit above production. Those are positioning, what the content portfolio should and shouldn’t hold, and a no-list the whole team can point to. I grew up speaking both German and English, so sessions run in either language, with nothing lost in translation. If you are weighing one of those decisions right now, write and tell me which one.
hello@robertweller.meI teach content strategy for a living, so a lecture hall is home ground. I speak on strategic refusal, on why content teams are measured on output, and on what that costs them. I have spoken at CMCX, ContentDay and SEO CAMPIXX, on stage and in-house, in German and in English.
Send a speaking requestWhat I won’t sell you is a checklist that decides for you. Everything I do ends in a judgement someone on your side has to make and defend. My job is to make that judgement easier to reach and harder to overturn.
About twenty years in and around content, and freelancing since my school days, first as a designer. In-house roles in e-commerce and software companies, six years in a conversion-optimisation and strategy consultancy, and about a decade of advising content teams. Formerly an Adobe brand ambassador, and an external adviser to contentbird and founding director of its Digital Content Marketing Academy.
At FH JOANNEUM in Graz, Austria, home of Europe’s first master’s programme in content strategy, I teach three courses, added in 2021, 2024 and 2026: Content Marketing, Topic and Editorial Planning, and Editorial Processes and Project Management. At FHNW in Switzerland I teach on the module Content Marketing Strategy & Transformation, part of its digital marketing CAS programmes.
Three books in German, with mitp, Hanser and Springer Gabler. Content Design, co-written with Ben Harmanus, reached #1 on Amazon.de in seven categories. Nobody Decided This is my first book in English.
Writing at toushenne.de, in German, since 2007. Articles in W&V, t3n and Website Boosting, among others, and on the Adobe, HubSpot and Searchmetrics blogs. Talks at CMCX, ContentDay and SEO CAMPIXX, in German and English, both of them native languages.
Education. BA in Sports Management in Tübingen, Germany: sports science, with business administration as a minor and a specialisation in marketing. Desktop publishing at the Hamburger Technische Kunstschule (htk). Currently an MBA candidate at Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK.
Every job and every date: full CV on LinkedIn.
How Content Teams Decide What’s Worth Doing and What to Refuse
With Ben Harmanus. A handbook on designing content that converts; #1 on Amazon.de in seven categories.
An introduction to managing digital content as a portfolio, by the value each piece adds.
With Michael Firnkes. Content, marketing, design and SEO for blogs, in an updated edition.
I have also contributed chapters to other authors’ books and worked as a technical reviewer for Rheinwerk.
I studied sports management, and sport never shrank to a hobby next to the job. Today I coach Parkour and Functional Fitness, and track and field for children aged about six to nine. And I still compete.
Sport is also where I learned the principle I teach by. A good coach doesn’t praise what’s working. They find the one or two things that would make the biggest difference and say exactly how to change them. I try to give feedback on a strategy document the same way.
| Current best | HYROX Mixed Doubles, 1:13:02 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Coaching | Parkour, Functional Fitness, kids’ track and field | |
| Studied | Sports Management (BA), Tübingen, Germany | |
Copy what you need. If you need something that isn’t here, such as a photo, a different length or an interview, write to hello@robertweller.me.
Robert Weller is an independent content strategist and a lecturer at FH JOANNEUM in Graz, Austria, and at FHNW in Switzerland. He has written three books in German, among them the Amazon.de bestseller Content Design (Hanser). His first book in English, Nobody Decided This (2027), argues that content strategy is missing a deciding layer: strategic refusal.
Robert Weller is an independent content strategist based in Mainz, Germany, raised bilingual in German and English. He has spent about twenty years in and around content: in-house in e-commerce and software companies, six years in a conversion-optimisation and strategy consultancy, and now advising teams from the outside.
He lectures at FH JOANNEUM in Graz, Austria, home of Europe’s first master’s programme in content strategy, and at FHNW in Switzerland. He has written three books in German, published by mitp, Hanser and Springer Gabler. One of them, Content Design, co-written with Ben Harmanus, reached #1 on Amazon.de in seven categories. He has written about content at toushenne.de since 2007.
His first book in English, Nobody Decided This: How Content Teams Decide What’s Worth Doing and What to Refuse, is published in February 2027. It brings the strategy literature and decision science to bear on one question content teams rarely ask: what will we refuse?
The fastest way to find out whether we think alike is the opening chapter of the book. It’s free, with a ten-minute test you can run on your own strategy document.
Get Chapter 1