What is content strategy? These definitions come from different sources and they each see it slightly differently. Send us yours!
Content teams want a content strategy, philosophically they understand that they should have one. Understanding what a content strategy is exactly, is a place to start.
We have to start here with the de facto definition:
Planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content.
Kristina Halvorson, founder of Brain Traffic, and author of Content Strategy for the Web.
Using ‘words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.’
This analogy is too good to leave off of this list:
Content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design.
Rachel Lovinger “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data.” Associate Content Strategy Director at Razorfish
Look at the fabulously intense Rahel Bailie contradicting Halvorson. Food for thought!
Content strategy deals with the planning aspects of managing content throughout its lifecycle, and includes aligning content to business goals, analysis, and modeling, and influences the development, production, presentation, evaluation, measurement, and sunsetting of content, including governance. What content strategy is not is the implementation side. The actual content development, management, and delivery is the tactical outcomes of the strategy that need to be carried out for the strategy to be effective.
Rahel Bailie, coauthor of Content Strategy: Connecting the dots between business, brand, and benefits and principal of Intentional Design
Planning for the creation, aggregation, delivery, and useful governance of useful, usable, and appropriate content in an experience.
Margot Bloomstein is the principal of Appropriate, Inc., a brand and content strategy consultancy based in Boston.
Content strategy encompasses the discovery, ideation, implementation and maintenance of all types of digital content—links, tags, metadata, video, whatever.
Robert Stribley Information Architect at Razorfish
A plan for adding unique, expert, and indexable content to your site on a regular basis.
Mark O’Brien, author of A Website that Works: How Marketing Agencies Can Create Business Generating Websites.
The mindset, culture and approach to delivering your customer’s information needs in all the places they are searching for it, across each stage of the buying process. It is a strategic approach to managing content as an asset, with a quantifiable ROI.
Another good one from Michael:
A content strategy flips the tables on traditional, linear marketing by defining the process and then securing the right resources for producing a consistent stream of content mapped to buyer needs across all phases of the buying cycle. This is done for each buyer type or “buyer persona” that is involved in the B2B decision-making process.
Michael Brenner, SAP, Author “What is Content Strategy and Why Do You Need it?” on Forbes.com
Content marketing strategy [must come] first and this requires goals, different forms of content for different customer touchpoints, mapping the needs of people, the channels they prefer and the content or stories, etc.
Joe Pullizzi Founder of Content Marketing Institute
We define content strategy as: getting the right content to the right user at the right time.
Kevin P. Nichols SapientNitro
I think Halvorson’s definition still is relevant, I would add: content strategy is what guides content teams to best processes for each stage of the content cycle.
Monica Bussolati, adding to the de facto definition by Kristina Halvorson
More about what content strategy is can be found in this article from Sarah O’Keefe with quotes from Joe Gollner, Scott Abel, Richard Ingram.
What a great summary of definitions of content strategy! I just came upon this.
—————————————————
Kevin P Nichols
Director and Global Practice Lead, Content Strategy | SapientNitro
Thanks Kevin, I was happy to include your definition.
Timing and timeliness are also important parts to a successful campaign.
Excellent addition to the list. We are kindred spirits, Hilary. We each approach content strategy from different ends of the spectrum, so to speak. I come from the marketing end, with the goal of identifying and achieving roi, and you from the content end, with the goal of clarity, consistency, etc. Both of us overlap in the middle with our focus on quality, appropriate content that aligns with business goals in order to achieve measurable results. I still don’t get why would anyone produce content in the absence of a content strategy.
A nice collection of definitions. Steph from Velir just wrote about Jonathon Colman’s talk at the 2014 IA Summit which details how to integrate data into your content strategy. That article is available here: http://blog.velir.com/index.php/2014/04/30/10-tips-to-build-a-data-backed-content-strategy/
Is anyone else using data to drive your content strategy? What are you doing?
Another word for data is insights. Yes we use data to inform content strategy, I guess most agree on that, the challenge is which data and how to translate those insights into strategy. We do it by focusing on goals that are measurable, from there we can develop a strategy — data provides us with a framework of understanding of the audience landscape.