What is Content Strategy?

posted by Doug Minor on May 21,2012 in Content Strategy

I recently read a UX Magazine article entitled Content Strategy and UX: A Modern Love Story. If you aren’t familiar with content strategy it offers a great introduction.

Content strategy “plans for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content,” according to Kristina Halvorson, author of Content Strategy for the Web.

When you think about content strategy you need to consider all forms of digital content — text, photos, audio, and video (not to mention audience, messaging, voice, and tone) — and multi-platform — print, Web, mobile, syndicated content, and social media.

Content strategy is also about alignment of offline communication and marketing goals, strategic plans, messaging and brand guidelines, and other institutional priorities with your digital presence. Your offline and online strategy need to work in tandem to meet business goals (your Core Strategy).

Given the often highly distributed nature of website management in higher education, content strategy is much needed and a major challenge to implement (but it can be done with a lot of forethought and commitment from senior leaders and content contributors). It’s easy to do at the front end of a redesign project when you are thinking through strategy, messaging, themes, voice/tone, IA, and user experience, but it typically breaks down when sites are opened up to content contributors more focused on departmental objectives than institutional content goals. Hence the importance of workflow and governance.

The UX Magazine article really drives home the importance of thinking through your site’s content components (the substance and structure of your content) and the people components (workflow and governance).