Barbra Gago

If you want to make your life easier, yes. There are a number of reasons a content strategy is critical, but I’ll start with the simple fact that businesses are now being expected by their consumers to engage through content.

Magazines have always been good at creating content, re-purposing content, and planning ahead, but for B2B marketers this hasn’t always been the case.

Kristina Halvorson in her book, Content Strategy for the Web says “Content strategy will help you deliver content that inspires trust. Drives action. Builds loyalty. On time. One budget.”

With such a demand for content, how could you not have a strategy in place? I think ultimately a content strategy and marketing strategy will rival each other, or maybe merge. So much of our marketing strategy is dependent on the content we are creating, our marketing strategies have been shifting from talking about ourselves to truly arming people with the information they need to make better decisions regardless if they use our product or service or not.

5 Reasons for developing a content strategy:

1. Better Content

Developing a content strategy will enable you to create content that will be more engaging. In order to develop the strategy, you’ll need to do some research to determine a few things about your consumers. For example, where are they in the buying process and what kinds of content do they prefer to consume (video, blog posts, comments, tweets, etc). A content strategy will allow you to clearly identify the elements that will add more value and create more interesting experiences for your consumers, over time (allowing us to consider the BIG picture).

2. Consistency in Messaging

This is traditionally done within a marketing strategy, but the problem is that content extends beyond the marketing department. While they may be the ones responsible for most content right now, it’s really something that needs to be mandated company wide so that there will always be consistency. Within a content strategy you can outline guidelines,standards, quality control processes, branding, voice tone and messaging, so that anyone creating content of any format has some rules for the road.

3. Optimization

A content strategy will help you optimize your content as well as conversion. When developing content, it’s critical to identify user personas, and create individual content paths for each of them (all fitting into one content strategy). Since each has their own questions, concerns and interests, you’ll need to develop content around these specific characteristics. By doing so, you will optimize for search by using the right keywords, and you will also optimize your conversion rate because your content will be more relevant to those searching for it. The reason you need to consider this within your entire content strategy is because your content lives in various locations; your website, social networks, press, email marketing campaigns, etc. and you’ll want to have a system and plan in place for optimization over time. Like the strategy, optimization continues to evolve over time.

4. Limitation of Friction

A content strategy will help you avoid friction on your website and in other forms of content you are producing. You want to facilitate an engaging environment, so if there are disconnects between your messaging, information architecture or formats, you will create discomfort and stress for your consumers. You want to make sure their experience is easy and pleasurable. This ease will come from clearly defined goals, research, content paths, content, processes and the tactics that have been identified by the content strategy. This will also ensure that everyone responsible for content creation is on the same page, even if they are not on the same team or in the same department.

5. Improve efficiency

Ardath Albee likes to recommend the “Rule of 5” for content creation and marketing. She says, if you can’t think of five ways to use a piece of content then you shouldn’t start it. There are many ways to re-use content, like turing a blog post into a video or a series of tweets, or maybe an ebook. The idea is that you repurpose content to be consumed in various way, so you can always reach who you want while staying relevant and adding value. A content strategy outlines the thematic content and how it can be used throughout the year so you are not constantly trying to reinvent the wheel. It will help you organize an inventory and plan for releasing various kinds of content throughout the year, as well as streamline the internal processes needed to achieve the content goals.

Things to think about when developing your strategy:

There are many elements you’ll need to consider. For the purpose of not writing a book in a blog post, let’s assume you’ve already done your research, analysis and content audit. You already know what content you have, what content you’ll need, who your personas are, how they like to consume information and who will be responsible for what. All of these things will be important in developing a realistic strategy for your content. Here is a brief list of questions to ask yourself:

1. What content do we have? (that’s usable)
2. Who are the content sources?
3. What does the current content creation process look like? Is it working (probably not)
4. What are the content channels? External web: website, social media, partner sites, email, webinars. Internal: intranets, wikis, training sessions, seminars. Traditional: PR, print, events, outdoor, direct mail.
5. What are our competitors doing? i.e. Topics they cover, content formats, messaging

The reasoning behind a content strategy is to make informed recommendations about the creation, delivery and governance of content–web or otherwise (nurturing content for example). Your content strategy should outline the following:

• Current content, and what you’ll need
• How content should be structured–in various formats
• Long-term plan–starting point, ending point, and then where
• What will this mean in terms of business objectives

With the current proliferation of social media, and web based tools–including your website, it’s impossible to even consider not having a content strategy. Because so much of our communication, and now business is being done through content, it would be crazy not to clearly define the goals, objectives and plan for achieving those goals. It’s also important that everyone is on the same page. This is very difficult for most companies, but the development of a strategy and plan will only help things run smoothly, and actually have the business impact you are looking to achieve.

For more on content strategy:
Read: Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson