A unified content strategy needs strategy… and tactics!

Posted on | avril 22, 2010 | 3 Comments

Search for « strategy » into Wikipedia and this is the definition you’ll get: « A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. The word strategy has military connotations, because it derives from the Greek word for general. Strategy is distinct from tactics. In military terms, tactics is concerned with the conduct of an engagement while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked ». How different are strategy & tactics in content strategy?

In other words, how a battle is fought is a matter of tactics: the terms that it is fought on and whether it should be fought at all is a matter of strategy.

Tactic tools & measures for a unified strategy…

Applied to Content Strategy, it means that tactics would refer to the practical measures, tools & actions that are choosen to apply the whole content strategy (it means a content strategy targeted to the whole media mix, i.e. a unified content strategy). It raises thus the « how » question on every step of the content strategy & targets all types of content-related activities :

• How to audit you existing environnement & content to get the best thoughts & ideas to optimize the workflows, the content production cycle, the authoring flow, the various content-products relevancy & quality, etc.
• How to set up the strategy per se – i.e. how to plan the optimization : which CMS to choose, which editorial tools ; which type of contents to boost conversion, which one to guarantee a sufficient « volume » of information, which complementary media will we choose to fulfill the « conversational » mission of the website ? etc.
• How to organize the copy production ? With or without training ? Which governance model ? Which authoring workflow ? Which credits & powers to give to the editor ?  How to apply the SEO work in the content creation process ?
• How to smoothly integrate the publication process ? How many correction batches do we provide for ? How many original authors will be implicated? Who are the editors (technicians? communicators?)?
• How to manage the update workflow, relevance & quality? Which measures to maintain the balance between the data (content), the interface (CMS, Twitter accounts, Intranet, Newsletter), & the resources (editorial webmasters)?

The means & the target

Recently, Kristina Halvorson wrote on her blog « Content strategy is a plan to get you from where you are now with your current content (assets, operations, distribution, maintenance, and so on), to where you want to be. But for some reason, we want to skip that part and rush ahead to the execution piece. Which is why we tend to mix up content strategy … with tactics. » She’s definitly right: thoughout all the process, we have to be cautious to clearly distinguish the means and the target…

Content Plan & tactics

An content strategy can serve as the foundation of a content plan. A content plan contains a set of specific actions required to successfully implement the content strategy. For example: « To be re-used for the monthly newsletter ». « To be updated all the 2 weeks », etc. In other words,  the strategy consists of a well thought out series of tactics to make a content  plan more effective.

Know more about this

•    Some tools to optimize your content strategy (a previous article on this blog)
•    The definition on Wikipedia
•   Kristina Halvorson’s article

Sur le même sujet

• When you think « content lifecycle », you ought to…
• Content is not enough
• Let they own their content!
• Some qualitative items to rate your content
• A short content review checklist

Comments

3 Responses to “A unified content strategy needs strategy… and tactics!”

1. Peter Inyang
   décembre 1st, 2010 @ 1:30

   Just stumbled on this post while research content strategy and tactics. Nice explanation

2. Scott Abel
   juin 1st, 2011 @ 21:09

   I agree, a unified content strategy is needed. And, there’s been one for ten years! It’s fully documented in « Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy » by Ann Rockley, the mother of content strategy and the creator of the unified content approach. You can find more information about this best-selling (now sold out book — available used or via Google books) here: http://www.managingenterprisecontent.com or at The Rockley Group website http://www.rockley.com.

3. Muriel Vandermeulen
   juin 1st, 2011 @ 22:27

   Hi Scott. Rockley’s book was my first reading in this field, and you’re right : she’s the mother of unified content strategy. And since, I’ve been applying her approach on a daily basis in my work. Thanks for your comment.

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