6 simple steps to writing a content strategy

I had the pleasure of speaking at last week’s virtual internal communications conference about content strategies and how to tap into the great stories that exist within the organisations we work for. This article simplifies building your content strategy into six easy steps. I can’t promise they will change your life, but they will offer ways for you and your internal communications team to tap into their creativity more. Because after all, we could all do with a little creative lift this year. Right?

Watch this short video by Garret Goodman for the conference highlights.

Step 1: Agree your objectives collectively

Start with why. Before you begin your content strategy, consider why do you want to communicate? What are your objectives? The best content strategies are aligned to your external communications objectives. Talk to your colleagues in marketing – are they seeking to acquire new customers? Or retain existing ones? A caveat here; not all internal communications objectives will align to external communications objectives, but the majority of them will. Agreeing an integrated set of objectives will help on so many levels: you can use your communication assets for external and internal communications, you can join forces to find great stories and you can connect with your customers and your colleagues in a more heartfelt, emotional way.

Step 2: Make them care

Andrew Stanton, writer and director of arguably some of the best children’s animated stories of all time (Toy Story, Finding Nemo) says that good stories are about making your audience care. The psychologist Andy Gibson tells us that this is because of our human memory, or lack of it:

“Essentially we have limited slots in our working memories,” he explains. “Whenever we’re trying to take in new information, if we’re hit with too many things to remember simultaneously, we can’t remember it all. Stories are a way of..joining together different elements..so we can remember the whole thing.”

Stories not only draw us in, they can help us to see how connected we are to an organisation, how its values resonate with ours and how other people like us are out there, dealing with challenging circumstances and succeeding. Encourage your audience to respond to the story via comments, or a short survey, or with a follow up question. Consider what options for two-way feedback are available. This will help on two fronts – you can get a qualitative sense of how the story is landing internally, and your colleagues will feel more of a part of something if they are invited to participate.

Step 3: Map your milestones

Get everything down on paper making use of everything available to you to build your content strategy for the next year. Start with known dates; product launches, events, campaign launches and days of significance (such as awareness days which happen on the same date every year). If you’re struggling to map out these dates, do a shout out to your organisation inviting colleagues to make suggestions about big events and initiatives coming up in the year ahead. Once your plan is on paper you can see what you’re seeking to communicate and decide what audiences you want to engage with and for how long.

Step 4: Match channels to audiences

We all know how annoying it is to be bombarded with relentless emails from companies we’ve once signed up to a newsletter for. The same applies to your internal audience – not everyone needs to know everything all the time. Audit how your internal communications performed last year: what content resonated most? Which audiences read the content? What times of the day (and night – if your colleagues are shift workers) did they read the content? Use this insight to inform what channels work best for your different audiences and plan your content accordingly.

Step 5: Hone your investigative (journalism) skills

Seeking out great stories can be part of everyone’s job in internal communications. Ask great questions, approach people who have stories to tell, ask permission of others to tell their stories. You’ll be surprised how many people are happy to do so. Check in with yourself (if you are a one person band) or your team about whether they actively use the 5 Ws of journalism - Who, What, When, Where, Why (plus the sixth unofficial W: Why should I care?). Consider upskilling your team if these skills are not strong in your team – there are lots of great writing courses offered by communications bodies out there from the CIPR, PRCA and the Institute of Internal Communication to name but a few.

Step 6: Pause, evaluate, pause

If there’s one thing we learned from last year’s pandemic it’s that you will agree a strategy, roll out a communications plan, pause, then embark on another communications strategy. This step is about revisiting step 1: agree your objectives collectively. Before you embark on your content strategy, consider how you are going to measure the effectiveness of the strategy. Consider:

• Awareness – The number of times people saw your story (impressions, reach)
• Engagements – The number of reactions, comments, clicks and shares your story gets
• ROI – Conversions, referrals and actions taken as a result of your story

Given the impact of the global pandemic how are you approaching your content strategy this year?