Content Strategy - 4 Focus Areas of a Strategist

Tags: Product & Program Management, Content, Marketing, Communications, Pre-Sales, and Partnership

Content is a playback singer that powers marketing, branding, and communication initiatives at organizations. However, the tech industry now recognizes the phrase "Content is King", which in a way points out that content isn't just a playback singer but the real hero. Well! Content is freaking serious now, and having a content strategy must be a sure thing for enterprises, and influential individuals looking for awesome PR.

From what I've seen w.r.t employing content to drive clear business objectives for oneself and one's customers; an organization's content strategy is bound to be successful if the below focus areas are appropriately addressed.

Authoring Content 

If you don't write good content, it doesn't matter how well you deliver/broadcast it. That's why the highest investment goes in authoring the content. 

So, ensure that in your strategy, you know who creates your content and if the authors clearly know about the business objective/goals.

Organizations that do not have the bandwidth to micro-manage (or direct teams of authors) must ensure that their Chief/Heads personally create the kind of content that they want everyone else to create. That's the best first step and the one that is least likely to go wrong. 

Presenting Content

After it is clear how the content is authored. The strategy must be to focus on how the content is packaged for readers/viewers to consume. There is a level of difficulty and ROI for every content type (text, video, audio) you author; the text is non-negotiable, however, graphics/video/animation does the magic in the times of low user attention spans. 

As a thumb rule, have a strategy that ensures your content is both "scan-ready" and "long-form reading ready". Also, no surprises, most people read your content after they have found your headline interesting, so, your covering image and one-liner headline can fairly take 10-20% of your authoring time because that's what makes people open your content & read your post. 

Delivering Content 

After the content is production-ready, we think about how to deliver this superb piece of content. Content delivery & digital marketing experts will propose the best channels to reach the intended audience.

This is simply about employing all the available tools to reach the right people at the right time. A simple article/white paper/case study/blog post can get great traction if the strategist researches about the topic and optimally recommends the best ways to deliver it to the audience.

Monetizing Content 

Unless you are a media and entertainment company, content isn't the source of your income; it is only the means to get people to buy some product/service.

So, optionally, think about how your content (itself) can be monetized, that is, how can you make money off the content you produce. 

In the online world, monetization is all about the premium subscription fees, ad-impressions-based revenues, & affiliate-marketing-based sale commissions. For some content strategists, it is myopic to stick to popular CPC/CPM based ad networks as the content is pretty much the sales engine and it deserves more than the affiliate/brokerage fee, that is to say, it needs to earn the entire sales commission.   

Good luck with creating a content strategy at your organization. Do note that the above is for businesses to make the maximum out of their content. For (most) individuals, the best strategy is to write for the love of writing & forget about any freaking strategy. Cheers!

#content #marketing #writing #strategy #corporate #communications #operations

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