Content strategy crosses over

Last updated on January 23, 2023

I’m a huge advocate of content strategy. All too often, clients bring me in to work on the content side of things, without giving any real thought to the “why” behind the words. And I find myself saying largely the same things over and over:

• Yes, you need content to fill this website, but what’s the story you want to tell?
• Who is the audience?
• What elements of your existing content worked (or didn’t work)?
• How are we going to make this content come to life, both now and six months from now?
• Who has responsibility/ownership for creating and maintaining content?

More often than not, this is met with blank stares.

Someone will inevitably suggest the status quo: Let’s start by porting all of the existing content into the new site. I try to explain that this defeats the purpose of a new site, and is much like slipping a new dust jacket on an old, worn library book. But every once in a while, someone will surprise me.

One of my clients — a multinational corporation who I’ll refer to as Redacted — recently overhauled their website. Redacted had hired an agency to handle the overhaul, from design to content. While the design was attractive, the content was… well, I hate to criticize, but clearly no one had given it much thought before cutting and pasting the same mediocre phrasing into 14 different places around the site. The best part? The team at Redacted knew enough about content strategy to understand that this was of no benefit to their customers.

I came in to work a two-phased approach: a first round triage to improve the existing content prior to launch, and a second round rebuild of the content from the ground up.

But wait: it gets even better.

Redacted has taken their web communications strategy — the story that they want to tell their customers — and gone a step further. They’ve modernized their mission and vision statements to set the tone for the company and all communications. Yes, ALL communications. They’re gradually updating collateral with these principles in mind: does this boilerplate / datasheet / job description / call center script / email blast / internal communication necessary? Does it reflect our goals as a company? Is it informative? Are we using the right voice and tone? How can we simplify our communications?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this company is an absolute joy to work with. With any luck, I’ll be able to take this experience, learn from the roadblocks that we encounter, and help other companies to do the same.