Content Strategy: Intuition 🤝 Analysis
“Strategy is intuition and analysis.
Both are crucial, because each does a job the other can’t.
Intuition allows you to take a holistic view of the situation, and generate truly original and unpredictable ways of tackling it.
Analysis allows you to check your intuition against basic facts, and prevents you from making stupid errors, or falling in love with your own nonsense.”
Content is… well, everything. It is words, images, video, audio, graphics and multimedia. The formats and channels are endless, limitless, infinite.
In brand and marketing terms, content is the laughably broad term that covers anything that is made for or about your brand—the core brand storytelling mixed with fleeting exchanges on social and everything between.
Is it how-to clips you add to your product pages? Yes, that’s owned video content.
Is it this blog post? Yes, that’s editorial content.
Is it the campaign photo shoot? Yes, that’s visual content.
Is it the meme you posted on Instagram? Yes, that’s social content.
Is it the quick confirmation message after you submit a form? Yes, that’s user experience (UX) content.
Is it your website FAQ? Yes, that’s customer service content.
Is it the review someone wrote about you? Yes, that’s user-generated content.
Is it potentially anything where your brand is interacting with people in any form and any place? Still yes. And that’s kind of what we love about our work!
What is content strategy?
I tend to think of content strategy as the real life translation of a brand.
Your branding will define who you are inside and what you generally want to look like on your very best day, but that won't mean anything to anyone until you put yourself out there.
Content strategy is what you do and what you say and where you show up—connecting the right people with the right message in the right place at the right time for the right reasons.
And when you’re doing it well, you are creating real value for your customers and for your business. (At least that’s the way we approach it!)
Because the concept of “content” is so broad, content strategy starts at the brand governance level (how will this brand’s personality come through in all its content?) and goes all the way to the grain-of-sand tactical level (what is the subject line for this email?).
Depending on the organization, the job of someone in a content strategy role could be a very specific piece of the puzzle or the whole puzzle.
What makes a good content strategy?
A brand strategy: Before tackling content strategy, you first need a solid brand strategy—a clear understanding of your target audience, mission, values and positioning. When we begin working with new clients, we often begin at this brand level to workshop and build these internal resources together to ensure everything is grounded in research, insights and what is authentic and unique to the business. Then we create…
A brand guide: This is a practical resource that establishes how you want your brand to show up in the world. The most useful brand guides include your brand strategy (mission, values, target customers, etc.) along with visual identity guidelines (logo, type, colors, design usage, photography, etc.) and writing guidelines (voice, style, Oxford comma usage, yes/no words, etc.).
Questions, and lots of them: Once you have a clear brand strategy and guide, it’s time to get curious.
Who are you creating content for? (target audience—get specific!)
What will your content cover? (pillar topics, angles, formats, POV)
Where will you reach your audience? (distribution channels like website, email, YouTube, print, etc.)
When will you deliver content? (content calendar, frequency, relevant moments)
Why are you creating content? (goals and gut checks: why will this matter to your business and your audience?)
How will you execute? (tactics, production schedules, budgets, team members, resources, measurement approach)
Regular reflection: This is the important analysis that keeps you from falling in love with your own nonsense and helps sharpen your intuition. Look at your metrics against your goals to assess what’s working and what’s not. Make adjustments, develop testing plans and repurpose high-performing content to work harder for you.
Answer these questions thoughtfully and you’ll have a content strategy that connects with your audience, reinforces your unique brand and makes sense with your real life resources.
Need a few expert hands to help put this into practice for your business? Get in touch to learn more about our content strategy services.
