What is Content Strategy and Why Does it Need to Exist?
Alexis Hollett
Literature, Media, and Communication @ Georgia Institute of Technology
Maybe you're an individual inclined towards the humanities looking to transition your skills into the business sphere. Maybe you currently work in advertising or content development. Maybe you're a business owner trying to drive sales further with the content your marketing team is producing. Or maybe, just maybe, you're my father trying to figure out what viable career path I can pursue with a liberal arts degree. No matter who you are (see Dad I promise this is real!), this article will help demystify the role of a Content Strategist and explain why they are vital to marketing efficiency and results.
What is Content Strategy?
After scrubbing articles and the web for a solid definition of this term, I have come up with my own (perhaps not so unique) variation:
Content Strategy is a detailed plan for devising, generating, publishing, promoting, and maintaining content for a brand, company, group, etc. that streamlines the marketing process from inception to measurement and ensures continuity and credibility throughout passive and active marketing initiatives.
Whew, that was wordy. But in the aims of professional communication, wordiness is hard to avoid. In order to break this down, here are the main components that make up a Content Strategy:
Planning
This is one of the heaviest components, because all other components stem from the information collected and decisions made in this process. The main questions you want to answer when planning your strategy are: what do we have, and how well is it working?
From there, you need to focus on four main aspects (listed in order of attention and importance):
All of your decisions should come from your knowledge of your audience, which can be gained through research, conversations between sales and marketing teams, or simply by going to where your audience is (virtually or in person). Once you have an understand of who they are (a business? a consumer? etc.), you can then draft your mission statements, positioning statements, and content mission statements that justify the existence and your overarching goals. Topics should then derive from said mission and focus, and those can be boiled down to keywords that are used in content writing, design, SEO, etc.
Creation
The subsequent step after planning is, of course, creating content. This part still requires attention to detail, though, as following standards and maintaining continuity across platforms is essential to following a content strategy.
During this part of the process, you can focus on factors like:
"Borrowing" audiences from other creators in your space, paying attention to other publications or communities that share your audience, and choosing between different digital marketing tactics like social media or email promotion can aid in the creation and eventual rollout and promotion of your content. Figuring out what the creation stage should look like can help align different teams and avoid confusion down the line.
Maintenance
And finally comes the maintenance phase, where content goes to die. I'm kidding, this is actually where you keep your content alive and relevant (or sadly put it down if need be).
In this component, you are focusing on outlining how content engagement and progress is tracked over time. How you will look at your content's analytics? What are you going to pay attention to? When and how will you audit your work? This will make eventual optimization easier because you already have an analytical direction.
And last but not least, you must plan for when content will need to be retired. Old content can hinder progression of brand image, so setting guidelines in place for when, how, and where content will be removed and potentially stored can help you avoid backup of production in the future.
Content Strategy Quad
A more visual way to imagine what content strategy really is has been proposed by Kristina Halvorson and the Brain Traffic Blog in their Content Strategy Quad.
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A more descriptive rundown of each term can be found in their article, but to provide some immediate context, I will explain the two main areas of focus.
The terms in the red blocks on the bottom of the quad, Structure and Process Design, provide the foundation for successful content construction. One of the most obvious, but also vital, parts of the design process is the physical layout of information. Is it intuitive? Is it helpful? The answers to structural questions should always be coming from the initial, explicit content strategy a brand has created while also being influence by design theories and UX/UI standards and preferences. The other term, Process Design, literally describes how content will be created, but then how it will continually processed and maintained after release. It is this further step of maintenance that shows customers that brands are paying attention to their own messaging.
The terms in the blue blocks at the top of the quad, Editorial Strategy and Experience Design, are primarily based in the knowledge of a brand's audience. The strategies provided by Editorial team, which focuses on the textual and explicit parts of content, need to be informed by knowledge about an audience in order for said team to employ effective rhetorical strategies. Experience Design, again, focuses on the audience and involves more personal details than Process Design, instead focusing on appealing to audience preferences when it comes to their experience and emotions with a brand and their content.
Content Strategy vs. Content Marketing Strategy
Content Strategy itself is, in fact, different that a Content Marketing Strategy (despite the heavy overlap of these terms). In order to understand the difference, we must first truly understand content. Content can be described many ways, but in this instance it is the way a group's work manifests itself in the world it publishes in. The strategy employed here is finding out what the content produced is for, what it's measurable goal is, and what other content is being created or already exists that serves this goal.
Instead of focusing solely on the marketing aspect of content production and release, content strategy serves as a foundation to purposefully guide the choices of marketing and design teams on all levels. This example also why professional communication is a more complex and vital task than many people realize—marketing is not just creating and promoting material about a company, but a constant process of monitoring and reworking material in order to create cohesion and enhance brand credibility and customer trust.
Content Strategy vs. Content Tactics
One final specification I want to make is the difference between Content Strategy and Content Tactics. While yes, Content Strategy inherently includes these elements, it is different.
Content Tactics refer to the specific acts of editing, making videos, designing infographics, posting social media promotions, etc. Whatever the mode of communication you use to executive your strategy, that is your tactic. Content Strategy, therefore, comes before you decide on and execute your tactics—because when you don't use your outlined strategy, content can become messy, incoherent, and hard to work through which can drive users and customers away.
Conclusion
Hopefully by now I've been able to clarify what exactly Content Strategy is, while also illustrating just how much work (both humanities and sciences-based) creating and marketing content truly is. Content creation is not just about silly time messing around in Canva and Photoshop while you scroll Pinterest for inspiration (though this can be a part of the process...). When creating content for a company, research, purpose, and rhetoric is highly important on all levels from business teams to consumers.
About This Article:
This article was written adhering to the expectations and structure of the Weekly Reading Response assignments for LMC 3813: Content Strategy at Georgia Institute of Technology with Dr. Allegra Smith.
The information presented and cited in this article can be attributed to:
Crestodina, Andy. “Content Strategy Explained in 180 Seconds.” Orbit Media Studios, Orbit Media Studios, www.orbitmedia.com/blog/content-strategy-explained/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.
Halvorson, Kristina. “New Thinking: Brain Traffic’s Content Strategy Quad.” Brain Traffic, Brain Traffic, www.braintraffic.com/blog/new-thinking-brain-traffics-content-strategy-quad. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.
Kaley, Anna. “Content Strategy 101.” Nielsen Norman Group, Nielsen Norman Group, www.nngroup.com/articles/content-strategy/. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.