What Is Content Strategy?
I received an email today inviting me to CONFAB 2012
, the content strategy conference. Content strategy plans for the creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content, says conference host Kristina Halvorson, author of the book Content Strategy for the Web.
It plots an achievable roadmap for individuals and organizations to create and maintain content that audiences will actually care about. It provides specific, well-informed recommendations about how were going to get from where we are today (no content, or bad content, or too much content) to where we want to be (useful, usable content people will actually care about).
Halvorson, in her article The Discipline of Content Strategy, says that at its best, a content strategy defines:
key themes and messages
recommended topics
content purpose (i.e., how content will bridge the space between audience
needs and business requirements)
content gap analysis
metadata frameworks and related content attributes
search engine optimization (SEO), and
implications of strategic recommendations on content creation,
publication, and governance.
Ultimately, if you have a strong content strategy, every piece of content you produce will have a clear, specific purpose, and that can be easily evaluated against this purpose. But this doesn't guarantee that your readers are going to like all of your content or find it valuable. That's where Christopher Penn's simple formula comes in:
People spend a lot of time worrying about whether their content is valuable. This is a good thing, generally, as it means theyre legitimately interested in providing good content. That said, most of what gets produced isnt good content or great content; at best, its mediocre or downright bad content.
How do you fix this? Let me offer a simple test that I use to judge whether my content is any good.
If I didnt do one of these three things:
Laugh
Learn
Love
when I was creating the content, then it doesnt pass the value test.
Laugh: did I laugh or at least chuckle when I was creating the content? If it was funny to me, chances are its at least mildly funny to someone else.
Learn: did I learn something when I was creating the content? If I didnt find or create something new, then chances are no one else will get anything new or educational out of it.
Love: did I love what I have created? If Im not delighted with what I made, if I feel like its average, or I feel like Im just creating something to hit an arbitrary deadline, I know that it will be less valuable than something I love.
Put your content to this test and see if it passes. If it doesnt, its time to revise and rework it until it passes one of the three criteria. Obviously, if you can hit all three, youve got a winner for sure, but even one of the three is a terrific start when most other content is bad.
Does your organization recognize content strategy as a discipline?
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