How do you avoid common pitfalls when implementing a content strategy framework?

1 Lack of research

Before you start creating or updating your content, you need to do some research to understand your current situation, your target audience, and your competitors. Without research, you risk creating content that is irrelevant, outdated, or duplicated. Research can help you identify your content gaps, opportunities, and challenges, as well as your audience's preferences, pain points, and goals. You can use various methods and sources to conduct your research, such as surveys, interviews, analytics, audits, and benchmarking.

3 Inconsistent voice and tone

Your content is not only a way to convey information, but also a way to express your brand personality and build trust with your audience. Therefore, you need to ensure that your content has a consistent voice and tone across all your channels and formats. Voice and tone can affect how your audience perceives your brand, whether it is professional, friendly, authoritative, or humorous. You can create a voice and tone guide to help you and your team maintain consistency and clarity in your content.

4 Poor content governance

Content governance is the set of rules and roles that define how you create, maintain, and update your content. It can help you ensure that your content is accurate, relevant, and consistent throughout its lifecycle. Poor content governance can lead to content chaos, where you have no control over who creates, edits, approves, or deletes your content. Content chaos can result in content errors, inconsistencies, or conflicts that can damage your brand reputation and user experience. You can establish a content governance model that defines your content roles, responsibilities, workflows, and standards.

5 No content optimization

Finally, you need to avoid the pitfall of not optimizing your content for your audience and the search engines. Content optimization is the process of improving your content's quality, relevance, and visibility, so that it can reach and engage your audience effectively. Content optimization can involve various aspects, such as keywords, metadata, headings, images, links, and readability. You can use various tools and techniques to optimize your content, such as keyword research, SEO audits, readability tests, and A/B testing.

Implementing a content strategy framework can help you create and manage your content more efficiently and effectively. However, you need to avoid these common pitfalls that can undermine your content's success. By doing research, setting objectives, maintaining consistency, establishing governance, and optimizing your content, you can ensure that your content strategy framework supports your business goals and audience needs.