Get tools and templates to help you manage your content and its lifecycle.
If you’re ready to start making evidence-based content decisions you probably feel excited but also a bit overwhelmed. It can seem daunting to not only get the information you need from audience research, but also to figure out what to do with it.
Making evidence-based content decisions comes down to combining what you know about your particular audiences with best practices for content.
There are two distinct types of content strategy projects. Some are relevant to all areas of your content. We call these foundational content strategy projects. Others are relevant only to specific audiences, purposes, or moments in time. These are discrete content strategy projects.
Sometimes, your content team will be met with resistance when trying to remove content from your organization’s website. And certainly, there are some types of content that will need to stay. But a lot of “required” regulatory content isn’t actually required at all.
We’ve previously talked about four meaningful ways to measure content. Recall that defining success metrics falls under the strategize and ideate stage of content lifecycle, and that your content strategy working group can discuss and define them together. Here we’ll dig a little deeper and talk about defining key performance indicators (KPIs) for each area of measurement.
When you clearly define and communicate success metrics, you can help everyone work towards a common goal, ensure that content goals support your larger strategic objectives, and feel confident that your content will continue to evolve towards being a significant and impactful asset for your company.
Your core content strategy statement is a guiding statement that connects business goals to audience and/or employee needs. In practical terms, your core content strategy statement should inspire and align your content team. It keeps the strategy clear and the people on board.
If content people in your organizations are dispersed throughout departments rather than on a single team, it’s really important to have a mechanism in place to ensure all content aligns to a common strategy. Enter the content strategy working group.
Content mix is all about proportions. What’s the ratio of articles to infographics? Of topics for Sue to topics for Tom? This is what your content mix answers. It helps you find the right balance of different elements of content, taking into account your company strategy, audience needs, and available resources.
Messaging can help to move prospective customers through a targeted customer journey by meeting them where they are and then guiding them to make decisions and feel good about those decisions. People make decisions both emotionally and intellectually, and you want a mix of messages that appeal to both of these decision-making needs as people move through the customer journey.
Once you have personas for your major customer segments, you can create customer journeys for them. Go back to the interviews and online survey responses and gather your data as a start. Some content elements are quite straightforward, while others will require some creative thinking and extrapolating.
Audience messaging cards help you create content that may not be targeted directly to a persona.
The content strategy process isn’t complex.The challenge is in mustering the commitment and willpower to do it. Here are eight surprisingly simple steps for you to follow if you’re serious about implementing a content strategy.
Decision trees support decision-making by clearly laying out the questions that should be asked about content, and presenting the array of responses and consequences. This can be a really effective tool if your content team finds itself in these situations:
Filter by
Newsletter
