What is Content Strategy?

Table of contents:

Definition of content strategy

Let's first define the two words individually. Anything that conveys meaningful information to people is content. Content is data. Content is information. It describes things. Strategy is figuring out what to communicate with that information and how to communicate it.

So, what is content strategy? It is a framework for making choices about content and guiding its creation, delivery, and governance of that content. Content strategy considers the entire content lifecycle and its presentation across different channels (website, social media, marketing materials, etc). It helps us define, prioritize, integrate, systematize, and measure content.

You probably already do content strategy. Whenever you ask "why" for a feature request, limit the character count on a field, write guidelines for creating a content type, or determine the pages that should be in your website's primary navigation menu, you're doing some content strategy work.

Other examples of content strategy in action:

  • Recommended the retiring unused taxonomy terms
  • Talked to a site user about what worked and what didn't work
  • Writing a helpful error message that is displayed when something goes wrong
  • Rearranging the fields on an administration form so it's easier to use

Content strategy connects an organization's content projects with business goals and user needs. It helps projects succeed. Even more, it helps determine what "success" actually is.

From Rachel Lovinger:

The main goal of content strategy is to use words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.

 

 

Why is content strategy important?

Content strategy makes sense of messy content and structural problems. 

  • It helps designers and developers understand and build what's required without the burden of sorting through conflicting requirements. 
  • It lays a foundation so users can find what they need without getting lost. 
  • It creates an environment that helps site administrators and editors create and maintain content more efficiently.

Content strategy reveals complexities, especially to those unfamiliar with content, who think they just want to stuff words in a single body field and call it a day. These revelations can help teams communicate, define priorities and purpose with stakeholders, and prevent projects from falling into hidden traps. 

Content strategy reduces long-term costs by reducing redundant publishing efforts, making it easier to maintain content, and identifying outdated content. For example, if you're migrating to a new platform, content strategists eliminate complexity and workload by highlighting content you no longer need or opportunities to improve.

It helps align communication across channels. Businesses and organizations can communicate the right messages while maintaining brand consistency.

Good content strategists also help prevent project delays caused by underestimating the effort and time required to produce great content. They figure out what problems to solve so the project team isn't climbing the wrong mountain or taking a winding path through a jungle they never needed to take in the first place.

Areas of focus in content strategy

There are two overarching areas of focus in the practice of content strategy:

  1. Content design is the process of using data and evidence to give the audience the content they need, at the time they need it, and in a way they expect.
  2. Systems design is concerned with the architecture, operations, and processes around content, aimed at making it easier to maintain and scale content.

Within these areas of focus, there are further specialties.

Editorial strategy

Editorial strategy involves things like content style, voice and tone, editorial direction, language standards, readability, and strategic priorities. 

Content strategists lead workshops to review and improve the voice and tone your writing should take, create a web writing style guide, and find places to improve existing content for consistency.

Experience design

Experience design involves understanding user personas and paths through your site so that you can create and publish content that serves user needs. How do words shape the user experience? How can your content be inclusive and accessible to everyone who visits your site? What formats will the content take so folks can use it?

Content strategists conduct user research, interviews, and testing to get to know your audience. They examine design patterns and consult on the overall format of content regardless of its container—mobile, web, an app, or something else entirely. Designers and strategists often work shoulder to shoulder on experience design.

Structure (or information architecture)

Content structure covers content organization, categories and tags, navigation, omnichannel publishing, personalization, and translation. How do we organize content so users can find it at the right time? Not just external users, but also internal ones, including the editorial staff who maintain content. 

Content strategists create content models that outline content types, fields, attributes, and how they all connect. The focus is to build content types that are structured with meaning and purpose, which helps authors create consistent content for users that's easy to update.

Process (or content operations)

Process refers to editorial workflows, content governance, measuring content fitness and efficacy, the tools used to accomplish it, and who is responsible for what. Team structures, roles, shared guidelines, plans on when to deprecate or update content, and more all fall under "process."

Content strategists help your team create governance models, build tracking documents, and review existing internal policies to make improvements so your team is set for ongoing content maintenance in the future.

Common artifacts and deliverables in content strategy

Depending on the project type and engagement level, each of these deliverables could be a key component in defining your content strategy.

Content inventory and audit

You have to know where you are before you know which direction you should go. A content inventory is a list of every item on your website, and an audit is going through every item and determining what needs to stay, what needs to go, and what needs improvement. Creating an inventory and conducting an audit can be time-consuming, but there are tools to help.

Content strategists also provide frameworks and data to help your team make decisions on what stays or what goes, or what just needs some refreshing.

Domain model

A domain is a sphere of knowledge or expertise or activity. An organization exists to accomplish goals within a particular domain, like "higher education" or "software development." Your audience comes to you because they are interested in some part of this domain.

A domain model is a way of representing the sphere of the domain so everyone is on the same page. It encourages people to think about concepts using the same language, increasing clarity and collaboration. A degree has requirements. A class is taught by a teacher. These types of relationships make up the model of a domain. We usually create a domain model using a digital whiteboard tool like FigJam.

A domain model is the product of meeting with domain experts and stakeholders, doing research, and facilitating communication. It's useful beyond websites and content. For example, there's a whole paradigm of developing complex software called "domain-driven design."

Content model

A content model documents the content types and their structures necessary to rebuild a website. It may be visual or in a spreadsheet. The content model outlines individual content types and their attributes, including the fields an author might see on the CMS form, and the options within those fields.

A content model generally inherits the context of the domain model. Content types are defined using the same language as the domain model, though not everything in the domain will necessarily have a representative content type. 

The content model focuses on what you will publish on your site. Two organizations within the same domain might have completely different content models because their audiences and goals differ.

The marketing website for a university might not have a content type for class because they aren't marketing individual classes. However, the university's learning management system (LMS) will certainly have a content type for class. Same domain. Different emphasis. Different content model.

A good content model that is structured appropriately means you can create content once and publish it anywhere. It also helps you offer a consistent user experience to site visitors and all the non-humans visiting your site, like search engines, APIs, and models like ChatGPT.

Taxonomy

Most content models also include taxonomy recommendations. Taxonomies are controlled vocabularies—lists of terms that help to classify, sort, and connect content. You might hear taxonomies called categories, tags, or labels. It's all the same idea. 

Taxonomy helps authors create automatic lists of content and provides filters and facets for users to narrow search results or split content according to department or topic.

Like other content, taxonomy terms work best when they use the words your site visitors use and when the terms included in the vocabulary are distinct and descriptive.

Data dictionary

A data dictionary is a more technical content model. It describes each content type's fields, data types, options, and other details. It also notes whether a field is required, how many of each field is allowed (cardinality), and what the help text is. Usually, the fields are laid out in the order authors expect them to appear when building content on the CMS.

Data dictionaries work best when created collaboratively across teams. They help everyone keep track of field order, requirements, character limits, and ensure the website is built to match author expectations and content strategy intent.

Content matrix

A content matrix represents the future state of your website content. Like a blueprint, it outlines the entire site structure in a spreadsheet, finding a home for each page being migrated into the new system. It introduces light content governance and workflow processes by documenting content ownership and migration status. It also includes editorial or technical recommendations on specific content pieces or pages.

The matrix becomes a growing and iterating document. It can be as simple as a color-coded spreadsheet that identifies the pages, recommendations, and status, to something more complex depending on your organization's needs. 

Page table

A page table is a document for content authors to create content for the new system. It outlines all the sections of a content type, including field details and requirements. Authors can use page tables to build their content before they have access to the CMS. This structured content will be ready to copy and paste into the CMS when it is ready, easing the transition.

Strategy brief

A strategy brief collects the findings and strategic recommendations that come out of the discovery portion of a project. Every project's strategy brief will be a bit different. Still, most will cover project goals, risks and constraints, audience definition, a core strategy statement, strategic pillars, and an overview of the recommended content model.

The core strategy statement is a line or two that summarizes choices about why an organization produces content, for whom, and how it manifests. Here's the one we developed for our project with UMass Amherst:

The UMass ecosystem project will help increase enrollment by providing inspiring, clear, understandable content that makes prospective students feel confident that they belong at UMass so that they request more information, book a tour, and apply.

 

Strategic pillars are areas of focus, priorities, or themes that support the content strategy and drive content creation.

Again, for UMass Amherst, some of our strategic pillars were to cater to prospective students and the people who influence them and put academics at the center of the content experience.

When do you need a content strategist?

Content strategy problems are as varied as the people and organizations who have them. Luckily, content strategists are flexible. They're agile, shifting to adjust to their particular environment and circumstances. From Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson:

In my experience, the content strategist is a rare breed who's often willing and able to embrace whatever role is necessary to deliver on the promise of useful, usable content.

 

Despite their flexibility, they are best suited for particular times and for particular problems.

During project definition

It's hard to know what you want or need at the start of a project. Are you aiming for the proper mountain on the horizon, or should you shift your gaze a few degrees to the left? Before you reach out to contractors or agency partners to get quotes, a content strategist may help you clarify and document your goals. They can help you refine an RFP so you get quality responses that address your problems.

At the beginning of a project

Laying the foundation affects all of the work that follows. Content strategists work with designers and developers from the ground floor: Identifying needed content types, creating mockups, buttons, fields with their options and cardinality, and ordering components so they work efficiently together.

During project execution

Content strategists guide the development of content types via the data dictionary, label fields, and decide on attribute names, as well as enhance the authoring experience by adjusting CMS content entry forms, writing help text, and more. They also shepherd the design by ensuring that design comps accurately reflect content messaging hierarchies and character counts, use actual content representative of what will be presented on the live site, and that every designed component supports the content strategy with its visual design.

As your content and your organization grows

A website project is never truly done, and your team is constantly publishing, updating, or maintaining content. Your website is a living part of your brand and should evolve with your team, organization, and mission. 

Some things a content strategist might help you navigate:

  • Combining two content types to streamline content organization
  • Changing the global menu structure to accommodate another business goal
  • Running periodic content audits
  • Detangling confusing content relationships
  • Determining a better taxonomy scheme

Content strategists lead conversations, ask the right questions, and conduct more research so you can have confidence your new solutions are the right solutions. It helps to have trusted contractors or agency partners you can call upon, but also consider growing this talent on your own staff with training or hiring.

The difference between content strategy and content marketing

Content marketing and content strategy are often confused or conflated. Content marketing involves creating, publishing, and promoting content to engage with your audience, build trust, and sometimes drive conversions. Content strategy informs and directs content marketing efforts and can make them more effective.

Content marketing helps execute a part of the overall content strategy. It might be an important part, but it is not the entire house. And, of course, the size of that room will look very different based on the organization.

A government agency, for example, will place less emphasis on content marketing to drive conversions than a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. Yet both need a comprehensive content strategy.

Content strategy is crucial in every successful project

Content strategy guides the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content. It's important because it connects content efforts with business goals and user needs. It makes projects successful (partly by figuring out what "success" even means) and makes everyone's life easier. That's the goal, anyway.

Helping build websites built for longevity. Translating problems and stakeholder complaints into concrete technical specifications. Identifying patterns to inform design systems. Helping you most effectively use your CMS. All these reasons and more are why our content strategy services are an integral part of all of our successful projects.