“If web content were manufactured on an assembly line, (content strategy) would be the conveyor belt moving it from raw material to finished product.”
If there were any truer analogy for what a content strategist does, I have yet to find it. This quote was found on a web article titled, “Content Strategist: Create a brand identity through articles, videos, and other unique media,” and detailed what a content strategist does.
Content strategy is an essential piece in modern marketing because in a world where most people throw things out into the web to see what sticks, a content strategist works to create a strategic connection with the audience through social media platforms, blogs, video, web content and every other form of media.
My experience with content
I’ve been working in School PR for the last six years, which means having the opportunity to create content that’s both digital and physical. About 97 percent of the content we develop is digital and includes social media posts, web articles, website posts, digital billboards, original video, press releases sent out via email and in-depth features that highlight students, staff and community members. That other three percent is there because of the handful of community members who still request content they could read in our local newspaper, physical billboards and regional magazines.
In our office, deciding what content to keep and what to discard depends wholly on the person with said content (whether that be photos, videos and fliers). I am a strong believer in filtering out media based on metrics and prior analytics, but I have worked with others who feel that just having content means an obligation to post it— regardless of how it’ll do online. This can be a delicate situation in my line of work as every student, teacher and staff member feels their content is worth sharing and supervisors often feel the same, which often leads to flooding our follower’s feeds with content they are likely to ignore.
Because it’s important to track and measure how content does online, I’ve learned to appreciate the power of a hashtag as a means of monitoring how certain content performs during its short life on social media. Using brand management tools such as Meltwater and Class Intercom can help organize certain content via labels and hashtags and allows you to quickly and easily find what you’re looking for, which I have found incredibly helpful in tracking districtwide campaigns.
When you have 25 campuses, dozens of clubs and extracurricular activities, and other district accounts to keep track of, the best strategy for managing that content is utilizing those organization tools. Right now, you can find dozens of platforms to help sort your content, but it really depends on the field you’re in. When I worked in news, I loved using native tools for organization, such as TweetDeck and Facebook’s scheduler. Because I have more accounts to keep track of now, I’ve found that using a platform like Class Intercom has been extremely helpful in managing content for 40+ pages.
Consistently creating new and original content takes work, but if you have the time, it’s definitely worth doing as it allows your brand— or client— to compete on a serious level with other brands. Once that content is created (this includes anything your audience will see, read or watch, and hopefully interact with), I’m sure you’ve asked yourself how long it’s worth keeping on your site or social media platforms. If you do a good job of organizing your content with hashtags, a working search bar on your website or any other means, the answer should be as long as you’re able to. Having your content available for your audience allows past users to come back and new ones to find their way to your page. It doesn’t hurt anyone to keep content readily available.
Wrapping up
Our content should always represent our desired voice and tone, and having a strong brand message elicits the reactions we want our audience to have. On social media this can be seen through positive engagement and on the web, it means having a user-friendly website that is easily searchable and accessible to the audience. But while most everyone’s experience with content is different, our goal is most often the same: to get through to the audience.
References:
A, N. (2021). Chegg.com. What Does a Content Strategist Do? | Chegg.com. Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://www.chegg.com/career-center/explore/content-strategist.
Casey, M. (2015). Chapter 1: Identify Problems and Opportunities . In Content Strategy Toolkit, The: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right (Voices That Matter) (pp. 6–13). essay, New Riders.