By Melissa Breker
When it comes to content, organizations often understand that something isn’t working, but they may not fully understand how complex it is to create, manage, and maintain content.
They often have outdated beliefs around how much work it will be to create a plan and to implement it. Some businesses believe that it will result in more work or that it will be one of those “flash in the pan” approaches to change.
Yes, every business is different. Every organization has different content needs based on audiences, current resources, and stage of content maturity. But identifying the business value of content strategy can be a great first step to help create a larger vision for content, and to start bringing people together to generate results.
Aligning People through Vision
From the creative team to the content team, getting everyone on the same page can seem like an impossible task. With multiple roles, opinions, and requirements, it can be hard to align activities, people, and processes. In fact, it can seem hard to know where to start!
As technical communicators, we see different opportunities for sharing the right information. Just as you converge ideas to communicate value to external customers, your role is perfectly positioned to communicate the business value of content strategy.
Content Strategy for the Win
Collaborating with different roles through a targeted content strategy approach can help you bridge the gap between and across different stakeholders, so you know where you are today and where you need to head tomorrow. More importantly, having a clear strategy serves as your guide, your map for getting there.
Content strategy can ensure you know where you’re aiming, before you fire.
The Challenges of Content Strategy
You wouldn’t get in your car and drive without knowing your final destination. Would you?
The reality is, when it comes to content, many organizations follow a “rinse and repeat” process. They are so busy creating content they neglect to:
- Understand user needs to create a targeted experience though content
- Realize that they talk about themselves too much
- Appropriately estimate the cost associated with poor quality content (loss of reputation, customer complaints)
- Recognize the governance and people aspects of content
It’s not just about the content. It’s about how you strategically think and plan for the entire content ecosystem.
Setting a Content Strategy Map
The truth is, the perceived value of content strategy is dependent on the lens you use to assess it.
For example, an executive may consider how a particular strategy supports a specific program to meet its goals; from a marketers’ perspective, it supports a more consistent brand experience; and for a Web team, it allows for better alignment across different channels and standards.
Different roles have different values and content priorities.
By taking a more comprehensive view and approach through a content strategy, your organization can improve all aspects of content, including the internal costs of content creation, such as:
- Knowledge and transparency for content projects
- Process, systems, and governance to create better workflows
- Skill development and implementation to improve approach and output
- Reduced duplicate or conflicting content and reduced costs from redundant work
- Identification of content gaps and improved existing content to enhance visibility
- Challenges to assertions and assumptions, and identification of faulty logic about content needs
- Ensuring creation of useful and usable content
And the external experience your customers have with your content, such as:
- Improve findability of existing content
- Support a defined customer experience through a customer journey
- Motivate customers through the buying process
- Ensure all content has a targeted audience and goal
- Allow for greater clarity around user focus
And some improvements that cut both ways—internal and external—including:
- Thinking about user experience in a unified way (both internally and externally)
- Creating and maintaining better relationships and building trust
- Identifying other options or outcomes, or exploring the consequences of a specific course of action
One way to drive success for your content strategy project is to get management involved early in the process. The “show, don’t tell” approach demonstrates management’s long-term commitment to content and paves the way for project success.
When looking at the people responsible for creating content, here are some questions to consider:
- Does the team know what effective, strategic content looks like and how to create it?
- Do they understand why the new content framework is important, and how it will improve the content and their working environment?
- Do they have the knowledge and skills to deliver to strategic standards?
- Do they have the processes, tools, and training needed to complete the work?
- Is there a system in place to ensure that people don’t slip back into old habits?
You need to make sure the answer to each of these questions is “yes.”
Content strategy isn’t confined to a specific project or campaign. It impacts not only the kind of content you create, but also how you create it, how you distribute it, who’s involved, and the tools your team uses to improve consistency and efficiency for all content across the organization.
By adopting a strategic approach to content, you can better prepare for risks and benefits to cross the line to execution. And as a technical communicator, you’re already doing the work! So why not approach content in an integrated way and create a longer-term vision for your content, so you can stay focused on your most valuable contributions and successfully measure the impact of your work?
Get Ready for Change
Yes, strategic content is challenging, but not impossible.
When people understand and take ownership of both the why (purpose, meaning, and value) and the what (tools, structure, and requirements) of content, then transformation across the organization occurs.
So, before you sit down to respond to that next reactionary content request, consider how you might change your approach to content. How can you start to get the right people and processes in place and side-step the politics? How can you put a content strategy in place to set standards and get content done right?
Perhaps start by asking, “How does this content fit into our strategy?” It might seem like an innocent question, but it can expose a lot of gaps and start an important conversation with the content stakeholders in your company.
MELISSA BREKER is the Founder of Breker Group. With over 15 years of experience leading marketing, content strategy, and social media projects for agencies and large corporations, Melissa loves to make a difference through content strategy and governance. She has worked in multiple industries with large and entrepreneurial organizations to tie business goals and audience requirements together to create measurable results. She works with creative agencies, customer experience teams, product developers, and marketing strategists to inspire and evolve teams to generate results. From technology to government and non-profit organizations, Melissa takes a collaborative, systematic, thoughtful, and analytical approach to the projects that she completes. As a content consultant, speaker and teacher, she’s developed courses for the University of British Columbia, Langara College, Content Marketing Institute, and MarketingProfs. Melissa is passionate about helping teams deliver results through consulting, training, and workshops.
