It’s a tough pill to swallow, but let’s be honest: most creators do not have a clear and effective content strategy.
Whether you are part of an organization or just an individual creator, most people focus on creation and overlook planning. While being focused on action gets things moving, that isn’t helpful if you are headed in the wrong direction or going in circles. This lack of strategy is a widespread issue, especially in science and technology, where technical details frequently overshadow strategic thinking.
This blog answers the question, “What is content strategy?” explains why content strategy is essential, and provides the ingredients needed to develop and evaluate your content strategy.
Table of Contents
What is Content Strategy? Summary
A content strategy is a coherent plan that aims to achieve specific objectives using content. It uses defined resources and targets a specific audience. It should exploit a strength, opportunity, or synergy that others have not.
There are five critical elements in this definition:
Objectives: what are you trying to accomplish?
Audience: who are you writing for?
Content: what type(s) of content will you use?
Resources: what tools and talent will you use to achieve your objective?
Differentiation: what is the strength, opportunity, or synergy your content is taking advantage of that others are not?
An effective content strategy should identify these components, though they need not be set in stone at the outset and can evolve over time. It is also critical that these elements fit together into a coherent whole. Content strategies can be evaluated by examining the assumptions made about each component.
If you need help developing a content strategy, you can contact me.
What is Strategy?
Before defining content strategy, let’s take a step back: what is a strategy? Here is my definition:
A strategy is a coherent plan that aims to achieve specific objectives. It uses defined resources and operates in a specific scope. It should exploit a strength, opportunity, or synergy that others have not.
The classic example of a strategy is David and Goliath. The relatively small David took down Goliath by using his slingshot. It is important to note that David’s “strategy” was the insight that he should use a slingshot. “Killing Goliath” is a goal, and his actions in the fight are execution. The strategy is the idea that connects his goal to his set of actions.
Strategy is about making a choice when solving a non-linear problem. By non-linear, I mean one without a defined solution, such as a math problem, riddle, or maze. Games of chance don’t involve strategy since no strategic assessment will increase your odds of success. It is also not about difficulty: doing 1,000 push-ups is hard but doesn’t require much strategy.
The choices also must be meaningfully different. David had many options when facing Goliath: swords, spears, bare hands, etc. Each of these strategies could have worked and have its advantages and disadvantages. On the other hand, if David’s only choice was which rock to use with his slingshot, that would be a tactical choice rather than a strategic one.
Elements of Effective Content Strategy
So, what is content strategy? I have italicized words that are different from the definition of strategy above (you will notice there aren’t very many):
A content strategy is a coherent plan that aims to achieve specific objectives using content. It uses defined resources and targets a specific audience. It should exploit a strength, opportunity, or synergy that others have not.
There are five main ingredients here.
Objectives: what are you trying to accomplish? Whether you are one person starting a blog as a hobby or a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate launching a documentary series, you need to define what your content is meant to do.
Audience: who are you writing for? Your choice of topic and style need to make sense for a given reader/viewer.
Content: what type(s) of content will you use? More channels will broaden your reach but also your workload.
Resources: what tools and talent will you use to achieve your objective? This should include a mechanism for distributing your work.
Differentiation: what is the strength, opportunity, or synergy your content is taking advantage of that others are not? There is a lot of content out there on the internet. Assuming you are not the first person to write about a given topic, what are you doing that is “better”?
A robust strategy should address each of these points. Often, there will be one or more points that are pre-set for you. If you want to start a TikTok channel, you already know your content type. These constraints may feel limiting, but they can help narrow down the infinite possibilities for content creation.
Applying Content Strategy: Real-World Example
This discussion has been fairly abstract, so let’s use an example: this website. What is my content strategy?
I write long-form blogs on my website and create YouTube videos to increase my reputation as a science marketer and to help educate scientists who want to learn about communication and marketing. I do this in my spare time.
How does this address the five points described above?
- Objectives: increasing my reputation as a science marketer and educating scientists who want to learn about marketing and communication.
- Audience: scientists who want to learn to communicate more effectively.
- Content: blogs and YouTube videos.
- Resources: my spare time, my YouTube channel, and a website that has been custom-built to support my workflow.
- Differentiation: my blogs are more in-depth than others which improves quality and supports search engine performance. I also pair my blogs with YouTube videos, which helps with generating organic traffic.
Why is this strategic statement useful? Firstly, it helps to focus my actions. Should I prioritize my LinkedIn? What about other social media? TikTok? Given that I am using my website as the foundation of my content, these other platforms are not the best use of my time. That doesn’t mean I should never use these channels, but this strategy helps me avoid diluting my efforts.
My content strategy also gives me some clear direction on what to write about: topics that will generate organic traffic and will appeal to science marketers. There is still work to determine what that would be, but we have a place to start.
This also guides me on style: appeal to scientists interested in marketing and communication. My tone is natural and informal. I also assume my readers have limited knowledge about digital marketing but have a general understanding of science and how academic research works.
How to Evaluate Your Content Strategy
Now that we understand what a content strategy is and what it looks like in practice, the next step would be to create your own. But how do you tell if a strategy is effective? You may be tempted to focus on whether they met their objectives, but that is incomplete. Let’s look at an example outside of marketing:
I want to grow my wealth. Instead of investing, starting a side hustle, or founding a business, I bought as many lottery tickets as possible. This strategy sucks: it is unlikely to work, and if it fails, I will be further from my goal. If I win, that doesn’t somehow make my strategy good.
Only evaluating your strategy based on outcomes also has a problem that only works in hindsight. How would you rate a new strategy? Unless it looks a lot like an old strategy, you can’t! This leads to derivative and unoriginal thinking. That doesn’t mean that strategy needs to be radical to be good, but it does mean you should not put such strict limits on yourself.
One of the best ways to evaluate a content strategy is to break it into its parts and assess each individually. Has a realistic and clear objective been set? Does the audience make sense, both in terms of fit and size? Do you have the resources necessary to carry out this plan?
This relates to one of the most critical foundations of effective strategy: information. The more you know about your audience, resources, and competition, the better you can conduct this analysis.
It is also essential to think about strategic coherency. Even if each ingredient of your content strategy makes sense, they many not fit together. If that happens, your content will be less effective the parts are fighting against each other rather than working together. Think of it like an engine where the various pieces do not quite fit together – it may still work, but it will be much less efficient. Coherency is one of the most important functions of strategy, so make sure you consider this point carefully.
What does strategic coherence look like in practice? Let’s return to my content strategy as an example. Why do I repurpose my content my blog content into YouTube videos and not TikTok? One of the reasons is that YouTube videos are more effective at boosting search results. If my primary goal were encouraging students to become science marketers, TikTok would be a better choice, but I would need to pivot my whole strategy.
Of course, all strategies are ultimately bets. You cannot know for sure how they work before you try them out. Don’t try to find a content strategy free of weaknesses – they don’t exist!
Strategy in Science Content Marketing: Unique Considerations
Given that I have explained that my content strategy is focused explicitly on science marketing, I should address how science marketing content strategy differs from conventional content strategy. While it is mostly similar, a few differences are worth mentioning. Let’s review the five factors I identified above and assess how they change when considering science content.
Objectives: the person/institution creating the content has more influence on this point than the audience, so this factor stays mostly the same for your science marketing content strategy.
Audience: this is the big one. Scientists are an unusual audience in many ways: they are hyper-specialized, data-savvy, and consume tons of highly technical content. Put time into understanding your audience.
Content: professional scientists in academia and industry respect the academic literature. Your content should include references to scholarly publications.
Resources: your audience is specialized, so your resources should also be specialized. A random SEO blogger will struggle to write compelling technical content for professional scientists. You should also ensure your content distribution plan is appropriate for a scientific audience.
Differentiation: fortunately, scientific content is less competitive than many other fields. If your quality is decent, you can often beat the pants off your competitors. Some topics – especially medical ones – are highly competitive, so make sure you understand the competition before you launch your content initiative.
If you are struggling with this exercise, the best thing to do is spend more time talking to your potential audience. Ask them about the topics they are interested in, the problems they are concerned about, and the types of content they consume. That information is will should help you develop your strategy.
Executing Your Strategy
While content strategy is important, developing a perfect strategy in a vacuum is impossible. One of the best parts about content strategy is that you do not have to lock in your plans on day one of your content creation journey. Iterate! Learn! Experiment! Scale what is working, and make sure your strategy is still coherent.
Need help developing a content strategy? I offer consulting and coaching! I’d love you create a content strategy that works for you or your organization.
