What is content strategy? How to explain it to others.

A lot of people ask me, “What is content strategy?” It’s usually delivered before the question, “You’re a content strategist? What do you do?”

Fair question. A really fair question if you are a client that is about to sign off on content strategy on a project estimate. What’s surprising is that a lot of people, including many industry professionals who I’ve worked around (some even with the title content strategist and above), struggle to give you a quick, straight answer.

Can you use “content strategy” in a sentence?

Yea. Here’s one: “Get on with talking about content strategy.”

Often uncomfortable with defining it, I find the same industry professionals often use the term more like a buzzword or verb (doing content strategy). Many copywriters have quickly retitled themselves as content strategists. Yes, they can be. Yet when I query them about their understanding of structure, tools and processes during an interview, most quickly turn out to be very talented copywriters that have written for digital and know on-page SEO. The rebranding makes logical sense. A reaction to the way clients and professionals in the industry regularly use the term “content strategist.” In a sentence, it’s clear they mean copywriting and content creation ( i.e., “Could you put some words, here” ). But with the new demands and challenges for true content strategists exploding, especially on the client side and the client’s need to better structure and distribute content, copywriters are catching up on all the broader aspects of practicing content strategy tools and skills.

Either way, content strategy is still used a lot as a buzzword. A way to cap further or deeper discussion around the needs of structuring, valuing and distributing content.

Content strategy. Viewed as a black-box of processes.

Such lack of clarity or buzzword-ization often turns content strategy into a sort of black box of functionality, almost wizardry. This Twilight Zone of time and space (and…maybe..some writing?) where stuff goes into it and things come out. If this were Seinfeld, content strategy would be, “yada, yada, yada.” As in, “so we developed a content strategy and ‘yada, yada, yada,’ I built traffic and conversions.” It also doesn’t help the we fail to explain to the client that, even when you have a content strategist on your team, other people like, UX researchers, designers and SEO, can contribute or participate in different parts of content strategy. This is absolutely a good thing, but it sometimes makes a client uncertain about the mixing of roles – as if they want to ask, “why is the plumber, working on installing the windows?”

This black box viewpoint is one of the reasons that, while critical to an optimal digital marketing and digital presence, content strategy is hard to sell to clients who don’t have an acute, immediate content pain (like content sprawl). They are not sure what they are buying. Our industry doesn’t help in our responses…

CLIENT: Content Strategy? Are you doing copywriting?

AGENCY: We might. Depends.

CLIENT: Content Strategy? Are you doing information architecture?

AGENCY: We might. Depends.

CLIENT: Content Strategy? Are you doing SEO?

AGENCY: We might. Depends.

CLIENT: Content Strategy? Are you doing audience research?

AGENCY: We might. Depends.

CLIENT: Content Strategy? Are you doing brand alignment?

AGENCY: We might. Depends.

CLIENT: Arrrrgh!

Yes, clients are rightly frustrated about content strategy.

The frustration of clients trying to understand content strategy reminds me when comedian Howie Mandel joked his frustration to an audience member named Dave. Dave was fumbling to describe to Mandel what he did for a living. Annoyed, Mandel tried to get him to focus by asking him, “Ok, what’s got to happen at work for someone to say, “Oh, shit, get Dave!!”

Here’s what’s got to happen for a client to get a content strategist or do content strategy.

• You want content that stops users in their tracks
• You need structure or need to attach meaning around content so you can make content flexible in all the ways you need to present it across platforms and formats
• You want content that people can easily find via search, a digital app or a website
• You’re finding it hard to manage all the content you have
• Your content style, tone and topics don’t match your brand
• You want content people can find and want to engage
• You want to create content that drives action
• You want to know what content you have and if you’re missing opportunities to please customers and drive brand
• You need to understand how to effectively migrate, eliminate or update content

And here’s what content strategy is.

Content strategy optimizes the commercial value of your organization’s or client’s content by analyzing it, creating, assigning meaning or restructuring it, editing it, benchmarking and managing it. In the process, content strategy makes content or digital products easy to find, attractive to read, able to build trust and drive response.

But I know YOU know what content strategy is.

And I know you’re just coming to this page and asking for a friend. Yet I’m surprised that, from recruiters to senior digital professional and some content professionals, many don’t know enough beyond buzzwords to do an elevator pitch for content strategy skills and services.

Just tell them the definition above. It will be our secret.

That’s the basics. Content strategy is a lot more. I’d love to tell you about it. Reach out.

Also. Hey, I wrote a book on how to consume content. It’s called Does This News Make Me Look Fat? Check out or buy the book on Amazon.