Content strategy is a discipline grounded in data, process and business results.
Yet I fear, when you say “strategy” to someone they imagine people lounging about dreaming of ‘blue sky thinking’ and fluffy clouds.
Of course content strategy does involve lots of thinking, ideas and creativity. But it’s always done with the goal of delivering business results through process and data.
What is content strategy?
It’s the plan behind the content you create.
It’s goal is to unite business objectives with user needs.
A content strategist does this using many tools:
- Data
- Stories
- Style, tone and voice guidelines
- Editorial workflow
Content strategists are usually very good at structuring content, identifying content gaps and analysing how your content is performing.
They should have key understanding of:
- Information architecture – meta data, taxonomies, hierarchical structure of content
- Content ops – editorial calendars, content workflow, governance
- SEO – how to rank web pages, identifying search opportunities, promotion
- Technology – Content management systems, HTML, how the web works
Copywriting skills are a must.
When to hire a content strategist
- When you don’t know what content to create.
- When you’re producing lots of content but it isn’t having much impact.
- When your organic traffic is suffering even though your website is technically optimised.