From our newest Essential Short Guide, this is a sampler from ‘Web Content Strategy and Planning’
Content Strategy as a Team Effort
Unless you are a one-person blogging enterprise, defining a content strategy is not an isolated activity. An effective strategy comes from a collective effort of many roles within organisations, not least the key stakeholders around the organisation who set or deliver those top-line goals.
Consult those with specialist skills, getting input and/or validation from
- user experience (UX) design,
- interface design,
- web development,
- search engine optimisation (SEO),
- content marketing,
- traditional public relations and “offline” marketing.
In a large organisation, lines of accountability need to be clear. The content strategy needs a small steering group, a wider input group and a very specific point of senior sign-off. This should produce an effective content strategy that meets users’ expectations and fulfils the business or organisation’s goals.
Failing to do this won’t produce a single, coherent strategy, just a collection of competing wish-lists and agendas.
Kristina Halvorson, co-author of Content Strategy for the Web and one of the web’s first content strategists, developed a simple model “The Quad” that identifies Content Components and People Components.
The Content Components:
- Substance – topics, tone, style, what message we need to communicate
- Structure – how we prioritize and break up the content into building blocks
The People Components:
- Workflow – the process, tools and resources we need to create and maintain content
- Governance – consistency, integrity and quality of the content