When it comes to industry buzzwords, arguably none is hotter for writers right now than “content.” No longer do we simply file stories and write blog posts — these days, many of us refer to ourselves as content marketing writers or content creators. It seems like a simple equation: Clients need to share information with their audiences and we’re there to research, gather and package that information in a way that’s interesting and relevant.
But there’s more to the content story than a one-time deliverable. Savvy writers can use their research and analytical skills to offer clients an additional service — content strategy.
Good content strategy isn’t just an editorial calendar or a schedule of blog posts. It’s a comprehensive plan that looks at a client’s goals, determines how “content” can help the client achieve those goals and establishes a method for measuring success.
“Content strategy is about connecting and using content to achieve organizational goals,” says Dr. William J. Ward, director of education strategy at Hootsuite and professor of social media at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “These goals are different from tactical goals such as stories and ideas.”
For example, client organizational goals might be to generate sales leads, to increase the awareness and reach of their organization, or to reinforce and build relationships with their current audience. Once you know what a client’s business objectives are, it’s time to take a step back and think about how content can be used strategically to help reach those goals.
What is content?
As technology and storytelling have evolved, so has the definition of content. According to Ward, “content” encompasses everything from images, social media updates and videos to white papers, blog posts and long-form articles.
“Think about your goals,” he says. “Sometimes the goal might be just to get attention, sometimes it’s to educate and sometimes it’s to persuade people to purchase something. At a lower level, you might take a picture and make a few notes to capture attention while at a higher level, you might write something longer.”
Robert Rose, chief strategy officer for the Content Marketing Institute, encourages writers to help their clients think of content as a “strategic asset.”
“Content has so many different purposes within most businesses,” Rose says. “Content…that is created for ‘campaigns’ and for selling products is very different from content that is created for thought leadership or education. The difference isn’t really in the ‘container’ of the content, but in how and, more importantly, why it’s created to begin with.”
Start with a plan
Careful planning around how content is used — and why it’s created — helps organizations better align their content efforts, according to Rose.
“Most of the time, a good content strategy helps a business create less content, but increase its impact,” he says, adding that being strategic helps clients create better results (such as more and better leads, along with better customer experiences) and reduce costs by helping to organize content so that it can be re-purposed across multiple channels.
The planning phase is a vital part of good content strategy — without question, the most important part of the process, says Rose. “Great content marketing is developed like a product — it is treated as such and helps differentiate the brand,” he says.
So what process should you use in developing content strategy for a client?
It starts with thinking about the client’s business or organization, particularly its vision or mission. Also part of this big-picture thinking is considering the “landscape,” says Ward, adding that competition, environment and timing are all important considerations. From there, he says, it’s about establishing objectives for your content, as well as key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you know if your content strategy is effective in reaching the objectives you’ve established.
Once you know your client’s objectives and how you’ll measure the effectiveness of the strategy, it’s time to plan and implement. What are the key messages you’ll deliver? Will you create the content or will there be multiple creators? How will you maintain message consistency? And where will your content be distributed — will your client use paid advertising? Social media? Earned media? Determining the timing of your content distribution, the resources you have to create content and the channels you’ll use to distribute content are all important in the planning and implementation phase of content strategy, says Ward.
Back to the Beginning
Once you’ve planned your content strategy and your efforts are underway, it’s critical not to forget the most important component of good content strategy —evaluation.
“Too many people never measure their efforts,” Ward says. “But the content strategy process should be fluid and agile. It’s a cycle, and the process gives you guard rails to keep everything on track.”
Rose refers to KPIs as “mile markers” toward strategic goals, adding that defining measurement for content is too often done backward, with businesses setting goals such as X number of blog posts will be produced or X number of white papers will be written.
“Instead, we need to look to the goal of what we are trying to achieve and then work backward from that success point,” he says.“We need to understand ‘what needs to be true.’ In other words, if we’re defining X% more leads as a goal, we must understand how many days and weeks and months will contain the many other things that will indicate our progress along that goal.”
Both Rose and Ward see opportunities for freelance writers in the content strategy sphere.
Ward cites the “fresh eyes” and outside perspective that a freelance writer can bring to content strategy development for a business or organization. “By holding an organization accountable to the strategy process, you’ll get the input you need to do your job,” he says. “Ask: what is the objective? What is the mission? And how will you define success? Without a strategy, content is like a ship without a rudder.”
Got Strategic Skills?
Looking to add content strategy to the services you offer your clients, but not sure how to make the leap? Start with the skills you’ve already got:
- Big-picture thinking. Writers know how to dig into the details of a specific issue, but we’re also skilled at putting those issues into context and seeing how a single story relates to a larger trend. Those same analytical skills can help you think through how a client should be communicating across audiences and how various forms of content can work together to drive a client’s message.
- Rich storytelling. The strategic process can sometimes become cold, particularly in data-heavy scenarios, says Dr. Ward. Writers help bring data to life by telling the stories of individual experiences and how those experiences connect to the larger numbers.
- Re-purposing expertise. Content strategy often involves re-purposing content in different ways across multiple channels and platforms. Writers know how to spin multiple angles and stories from a single idea — a skill that’s useful in developing content strategy.
Learn More
Want to learn more about content strategy? Check out these resources:
- The Advanced Social Media Strategy Certificate, an online certification course taught by Dr. William J. Ward and offered by Hootsuite and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, covers content and social media strategy development, implementation and measurement. Visit https://newhouse.hootsuite.com. Follow Ward on Twitter @DR4WARD.
- The 7th Era of Marketing, by Robert Rose and Carla Johnson, illustrates why the idea of content creation management will become a core marketing discipline and how content-driven experiences can be created, managed, scaled, promoted and measured. Read three chapters for free at http://7theraofmarketing.com. Follow Rose on Twitter @Robert_Rose.