Content strategy. What’s in it for you?

Let’s take a closer look at the definition by Kristina Halvorson, coauthor of the seminal book Content Strategy for the Web.

Creation

Your sales rep just spoke with a customer at State University who discovered a tweak that increases DNA sequencing reads by 30%. What’s your process for distributing this information throughout your sales, marketing, techncial support, and R&D groups?

For whom are you going to target this novel content? An academic or corporate audience? Both? For an academic, will you target the faculty member who heads the lab, her veteran post-doc, second-year graduate student or undergraduate intern? How important is it to immediately provide the information in languages other than English?

Is your objective to distribute this information as quickly as possible or do you want to take this opportunity to engage the reader? Will you include a link to a survey that asks the reader if a 30% improvement in sequencing read is valuable, and if so, why? Should you advertise the availablity of your latest sequencing handbook filled with tips and tricks? Would your reader be more likely to talk with your rep in the future if you include information about a new sequencing meet-up group?

And for you fans of Big Data analytics, would you want to take this opportunity to deliver additional content custom designed to match the interests of your audience?

New information doesn’t have to be a one-trick pony.

Publication
Your R&D team confirmed the State U. data and you’re ready to spread the word.

What’s your vehicle of choice?

• Email blast
• Twitter
• Flyer
• Podcast
• Webinar
• FASEB lecture
• Rep-delivered iPad presentation

On what device(s) will your audience read your information? Have you considered the time of day that readers will access the information and how this might affect the choice of device (refer to chart “Device Preferences Throughout the Day”)? And do you partner with organizations such as Scientist Solutions and Biocompare to spread the word?
The longest journey might begin with a single step, but relative to content marketing, your messages have to venture through many paths simultaneously.

Governance

Your tech support team reported 56 complaints in September and October involving 5 different lots of a cell staining kit that you provide for your flow cytometer. QA tested your retention samples, and they produced stellar results.

Yet the compaints continue to pile up. But then, someone in R&D notices that the recent update to the instruction manual for the staining kit recommends an incubation temperature of 37°C instead of room temperature.

Mystery solved. Time to activate your process for updating your print, online, audio, and video content. Then, you can activate your process that tracks every online and offline channel you travel to market your content.
You did develop these processes when you created your content strategy, didn’t you?

And does your process incude a step to update the slide deck that your research director created for the cell staining workshop that he’s leading at the NIH next week?

Governance describes all the activity that maintains and updates your existing content and helps you schedule and create new assets.

Scratching the content strategy surface

Forward-thinking groups have been applying content strategy for years, but with the publication of the Halvorson books, content strategy has blossomed into a formal discipline that enables practioners to save money and time while creating content more likely to persuade your customers.

This article discusses the concept and features of content strategy, but it’s only an introduction. Among other topics, we didn’t discuss content strategy for new product launches and whether or not additional issues come into play (spoiler alert—they do) and how to create a content strategy. We’ll touch on that in the next article in this series.

But until then, here are are few resources you might want to check out.

• Complete Beginner’s Guide to Content Strategy
• An Epic List (of Content Strategy Resources)

Reference:

1. How Content Strategy and Content Marketing Are Separate But Connected. Content Marketing Institute [Website]. Published October 16, 2013. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/10/content-strategy-content-marketing-separate-connected/. Accessed November 6, 2013.

Alan Gerstein