#25: Documenting your content strategy

How to get off the hamster wheel of short-sighted content

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You may have seen us talking about a new Content Strategy Quickstart course that we produced with the brilliant Bump Inbound agency.

CSQ gets content marketers from zero to a complete, data-driven, actionable content strategy in about a day.

This involves documenting fundamentals which you may already know (like audience personas, buyer’s journey, and KPIs).

But we’ve found that even experienced marketers skip a lot of those steps. Partly because content strategy is a huge, fuzzy thing! It’s hard to know which steps are most essential, and how to approach them.

Sometimes you’ve got to externalize the to-do list, even when the tasks feel basic.

✏️ The hidden advantages of writing things down

Simplicity is your friend. Simplicity is surprisingly tough to capture. When you write out the foundations of a content strategy, simplicity is within reach.

A single source of truth
Once a content strategy document is approved across your team, everyone is speaking the same language. It becomes the reference point for future discussions (or disagreements).

It also eliminates that feeling of, ‘What do we create next?’ Or, even worse: ‘Why are we writing this piece?’ When you have a documented strategy based on data and shared priorities, these questions are already answered.

Delegation support (especially for tiny marketing teams)
When you’re able to plan out content far in advance, you’re able to assign tasks efficiently to different people. If you’re a one-person marketing department, this provides you more time and space to work with freelancers.

Building something grand
All too often, the pieces we create feel unmoored in the internet’s massive sea of content. With a well engineered strategy, all of your little bits of daily work can build into something greater.

The greater project may simply be a blog catalog that proves your expertise. Or a series of posts that will become chapters for an e-book.

🏄🏼 What you can do

Get the rest of your team on board (or at least the executives who approve this stuff).

Here are steps you can take to advocate for a documented content strategy.

Pull some performance data
Get a quantifiable sense of how well your site is currently performing for metrics like search and conversion.

If you’ve never pulled organic search data, here’s a guide to help you get started.

Look for existing documentation
Which audience persona is your team currently targeting? What’s the topic strategy? When were these things last updated?

“Look” is the operable word here. You might not be able to find any such documents… because your company never created any.

Review the current Key Performance Indicators
How does your team measure success? Clarifying this will sharpen your strategic focus. It’s also a useful reference point when discussing employee performance.

As your company matures, its KPIs should evolve as well.

And, of course, if this all a bit overwhelming, you can learn at your own pace with the Content Strategy Quickstart.

xoxo, Ercule