How should you start a content strategy?

This question, one of the Top 100 Questions on content marketing, comes from a marketing manager at Old National Bank.

Marketers work hard to align internal clients, executives and their own teams around a coherent content marketing strategy for the year ahead.

The truth is, aligning your company around a content marketing strategy can be a struggle. Why?

We see clients suffering from:

• A lack of internal understanding about what content marketing is, sometimes even inside the Marketing department.
• The absence of a clear mission and role for content marketing on a brand.
• A false expectation that you need a 3-inch-thick binder to create a solid strategy.

In fact, co-creating a 1-page content marketing strategy is the best way to get your company all on the same page. Gaining alignment now will make it easier for you to run content marketing next year – since you go into the year with an agreed-on plan.

1. Include everyone in a big-tent workshop

Convene all your company’s key players to co-create your content marketing mission and strategy.

When you take this big-tent approach to marketing mission and strategy, include everyone who will have a say in the marketing from the get-go – product managers, sales, R&D, even executives.

Yes, this approach feels tougher – at first. But by listening to others’ input, and enabling people to see their own thumbprints on the strategy, you save a tremendous amount of time. Time that otherwise will be wasted next year with second-guessing and endless reviewing.

2. Co-create your content marketing mission

With your company’s best brainpower in one room, first write one sentence. It’s your content marketing mission, which answers 5 key questions:

• Who is the source of content?
• What types of content does the source provide?
• Who is the content audience
• What topics will you cover?
• What’s in it for them?

Here’s how to create your content marketing mission statement – including our free template.

Writing down your content marketing mission will leapfrog you ahead of most competitors. How so? Research from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) finds that only 1 in 5 marketers has written a content mission statement.

Without a clear mission, you can’t write a clear strategy. So write your mission first.

3. Co-create your content marketing strategy

Now, write your strategy. For years, CMI studies have shown that a written content marketing strategy correlates with success.

The most successful content marketers are three times more likely to have a written strategy. The least successful marketers are least likely to have written a strategy.

Yet, only 2 out of 5 B2B marketers has a written strategy today, the latest CMI study shows. And even fewer B2C marketers have a written strategy:

The lack of a written content marketing strategy is more likely to lead to failure than success.

Benefits of a written content strategy

Marketers gain many benefits from a written strategy. Among them, CMI studies show, are alignment, focus on priorities, and easier-to-determine content types. Plus better accountability and resource utilization, and clarity about audiences and metrics.

Yes, you can do a written strategy

Strategy? Yes, you can! Use our free 1-Page Content Marketing Strategy Template to fit everything you need on one page.

You can write a strategy by yourself, but it’s far better to co-create your strategy together with a team in a workshop. You not only gain a strategy, you gain essential buy-in.

If you're looking for a facilitator to make your strategy workshop go smoothly, contact us.

With your written 1-page strategy, your VP, CMO, executives and even your CEO will actually take the time to read and engage with your content marketing strategy. That’s how a 1-page strategy helps you align marketing with the needs of the business.

How to start a content strategy

Tape your 1-page strategy above your computer screen so it guides your decisions day-to-day.

Here’s a CMI blog on how to create your 1-page content marketing strategy.

Need help? Reach us here.

“How should you start a content strategy?” is one of marketers’ Top 100 Questions on Content Marketing. Here are the Top 100 questions and answers.