The way users interact with your content is a measure the effectiveness and therefore value of this asset. As a result, the design, language and organisation of your content must be intuitive and accessible for those outside of your association.
Why is it Important?
You already have plenty of work to do, so why should you dedicate time and resources to content strategy? Firstly, a content strategy draws all your content together as individual parts of a coherent whole. When all content produced across an organization is coordinated, the overall message is more consistent and as a result, infinitely stronger. Without a content strategy, your online presence and print publications could quickly become a static dumping ground for disparate content. A content strategy safeguards the quality of your content, ensuring it is harnessed as an asset, never left to become a weakness.
Secondly, a content strategy minimizes the amount of time wasted each week deciding what to post, as that will be defined already. By planning your association’s Twitter activity in advance for example, you can decide to only reply to @mentions and private messages 24 hours after they have been sent. Allocating a finite time period to reply to your social media messages ensures they do not trickle steadily through your working day, saving you time and minimizing interference.
Thirdly, without a content strategy you may be left with folders full of well-intentioned text, videos and images that never quite make it online. Such material reduces your association’s resources but makes no improvement on its image. A content strategy maximises and streamlines production speeds and processes by creating coherent connections between people who have expressed their belief in the company’s mission.
How to Begin a Content Strategy
The first stage in your content strategy is to pull together the content resources and assets your association already has. This means filing and recycling all print material spread across your office and carrying out a review of your website. Then select the content that is relevant to your company’s future and get rid of anything outdated.
Once you have surveyed the content, it is time to create a content calendar and decide the direction of your strategy. The calendar will succinctly define the focus areas your strategy will cover and dictate how often the content will be sent out. Make sure you compile a list of all on and offline communication channels you have available at this point and ensure your content is spread across them all.
The next step is to consider and open additional means of communication. However, if your association is small, always consider the time and effort required to maintain new channels of communication. While a blog for example may be simple to create, it will require constant updating and unless you can guarantee its constant maintenance it will become more of a hindrance than an asset. Always maximise your output channels, but remember a static channel conveys a negative vision of your association.
Regardless of the size of your organization, your content strategy should be distributed across all departments. If staff members from each department, particularly those involved in communications, agree to meet on a monthly basis to discuss content integration and coordination, there is no need to hire somebody to deal solely with content strategy. There could be, for example, two designers in charge of updating the appearance of your blog, another two staff members responsible for online networking and a few more senior employees charged with writing new industry articles. A content strategy aims to harness and optimize already existing talent and resources, and by spreading out the responsibilities you ensure a range of views that mirrors the diverse makeup of the audience consuming your content.
Remember though, your association should not favour one form of communication over another simply because it is trendy. Just because similar associations are in the mobile app race, doesn’t mean your team should dedicate time, energy and resources to developing the next hit mobile chat platform. Recognise your customers’ needs and satisfy them competently, regardless of online trends.
The Role of Social Media
Social media is a crucial component of any content strategy. Despite their rapid and inexorable growth, many associations shy away from such communication platforms. Venturing into the unknown landscape of social media may be daunting, but once you have identified the platforms that best suit your current material, they will become and invaluable channel through which to broadcast your expertise.
Experts suggest that most associations do not need a specific department dedicated to social media. Instead, a team of issue-specific experts who already communicate with customers, the media and other public figures should be charged with social media. This team should then decide how best to achieve the smooth integration of social media into your wider content strategy. Selecting the most relevant social media platforms is essential. Twitter, for example, can place weighty time demands on a smaller association due to the frequency of activity it encourages. A small association may, therefore, favour Facebook. Choose the platforms that suit the skill set and size of your association and pursue a coherent strategy relevant to you.
However, if your efforts are spread across a variety of social media platforms, do not be tempted to reproduce the same content on each channel. This will undoubtedly reduce the number of social media platforms through which each user chooses to engage with you. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have different features and approaches that allow a wide but harmonious choir of voices in your online presence. Differentiating between each channel will help you define content priorities and distribution according to the various audiences each channel attracts. Those who follow your activity across all platforms will witness your association’s diverse but coherent expertise.
There are tools that will help your team track the progress and impact of your social media activity such as Google Analytics, Google Alerts and Social Mention. These are great ways of keep a record of what people say online about your organization.