So hands up – who has a content strategy? Who’s never even heard of one?
Content strategists would be horrified to learn about the ad-hoc approach that small businesses often take to their content.
You do not need to have a zillion online pages to benefit from a strategy. The typical small business with a small website and blog and using social media will benefit from regular content audits.
By understanding your content and where it lives you will be able to identify redundant or missing data. Inefficient content on the web can often do more harm than good. You’ll be able to identify a strategy in-line with your business goals and plan for improving your content over time.
So what does a content strategy look like?
There are a number of steps involved. You will need to ask yourself a number of questions. The key elements are:
- What content do I have?
- What does the content look like?
- How large is this content?
- Where is my content?
- What is it for?
- How do I measure my content’s effectiveness?
- What is the metadata for my content?
- How do I manage my content?
- When was the content last updated?
And the list can go on and on.
Documenting your content will be both productive and liberating. Once written down in black and white you should easily be able identify content that needs urgent attention and formulate a plan for refining the remaining content.
I’d suggest that content strategy is key – the website is ALL about the content. Have you heard the phrase “content is king”?
