Every organisation needs a content strategy. But what a content strategy actually is can feel a little confusing.
We can help you cut through the noise and create a content strategy that works for you and your business. We’ll work with you to build it around your culture, ambitions and what success looks like for you. And we’ll deliver it in an actionable format that empowers your teams and integrates with your organisation.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy provides a framework for planning, writing, publishing and managing content. It brings together tools, systems and processes to help people distribute content across various touch-points.
A content strategy will help your team focus on user needs, and stay consistent and efficient. It’s a ‘how to’ guide to address your content challenges so you can start seeing results.
It’s usually made up of strategic documents like:
- workflows and processes for creating content
- brand guidelines like tone of voice documents
- governance processes for managing existing content
- publishing schedules and content roadmaps
- content management system (CMS) workflows, roles and permissions
We’ll help you discover what you need to have a robust plan and the right tools in place to develop your service or product.
Why is it needed?
A smart content strategy allows you to do more with less, saving time and money. It unifies teams around common goals, and makes it easier to track your success and iterate.
Content strategy harmonises your editorial approach and aligns it with your brand guidelines, system design and SEO strategy. This will help you reach more people with targeted and high-quality content, giving you a competitive advantage.
When everyone is on the same page and working to the same set of guidelines, you can stay on top of your content to make sure you’re relevant and fresh in the long term. In turn, this will make sure you’re delivering the right content to get the conversions you’re after.
Our approach
Content discovery
You’ll probably want to start with some content discovery, so we can get to know your users and what your goals are. This will also help us to understand:
- your processes, systems and tools
- the online and offline channels your content appears in
- what challenges your team currently faces and how we can help them
- where content is currently falling short and where we can make improvement
We’ll embed ourselves in your team and work closely together to knowledge share and make sure we’re really getting to grips with your needs. From here, we’ll be able to see what your content strategy needs to bring people, processes and technology together.
Content strategy creation
Usually we find that most issues with content are less to do with the words themselves, but a lack of clarity in the way they’re produced. That’s why we often recommend that content strategies include documents like:
- tone of voice and style guides for writing content
- best practice guides for naming and structuring content
- workflows for creating and publishing content
- governance processes for managing, reusing and retiring content
We also recommend partnering any content strategy with SEO reviews and analysis. This can act as a helpful benchmarking activity and ensure that your strategy is tracked correctly.
Content delivery
We’ll co-design your content strategy with your team and build it around their unique needs. This ensures that any documentation we produce is actionable and fits seamlessly into their day-to-day roles.
We also like to couple content strategies we create with workshops and training. By working closely with your team both in the creation of your content strategy and in its delivery, we can ensure you have all the skills you need to deliver excellent content.
Experience
We’ve worked with a number of clients to develop their strategic work:
- Lambeth Council
- Ramblers
- Ministry of Justice
- Cornwall Council
Let’s work together
If you need advice on creating a content strategy that works for you and your business, our team of experts are here to help. Get in touch today to find out more.
