The elements of a powerful content strategy

Clear, Compelling Vision

This is the heart of the content strategy endeavor: to create the vision for a new way of working.

Content Strategy Playbook

It will take a while to determine what the guidelines are and create the content strategy “playbook” for your organization. The content strategy needs to answer a multitude of questions that may never have been nailed down before, including:

• Who in the organization should be creating the content?
• Who are the right audiences to target, and in what priority?
• What is the optimal tone that the organization’s content should use, one that is cohesive and strong but flexible enough to accommodate the diversity of content?
• What content types, formats, and channels make sense?
• What process needs to be in place to ensure that all content that remains online is consistent, current, and relevant?
• What are the best measures of success for content?

(For the complete list of questions, download our content strategy checklist (Word, 37k))

Even though an executive may not want all the details, he or she will want to know that it’s all figured it out. Even more important, management will need to be assured that while the content strategy vision is solid, it is also flexible enough to accommodate unpredictable circumstances, and will evolve over time to keep up with new audience expectations, technologies, and business shifts.

Test the vision with a pilot effort (or two)

In just about every organization, there’s a small group of content owners/creators who are early adopters. They sign up for new social networks and are eager to get involved in new digital endeavors. These are the ideal people to approach to try new ways of publishing.

Pilot projects are an ideal way to “kick the tires” on guidelines for content practices and take baby steps on new ways of working.

Some suggestions for pilot projects:

• Create stories that depict how the organization makes a difference using qualitative and quantitative information that comes from multiple departments. This will require collaboration among two or more groups.
• Test various types of headlines – try publishing some content with that are simple, declarative headlines and others that present information from more of a marketing angle.
• Add dates to content.
• Try creating an infographic.
• Write content from a user’s perspective instead of the corporate perspective.
• Promote content at different times of day and in different channels.

Some of these endeavors will be successful and others won’t. And that’s okay. Their purpose is to help the organization learn.

If you’d like to create a complete playbook or test the vision, reach out today!