‘Content strategy’ is a buzzphrase you hear a lot, particularly in marketing environments. But very few people can actually tell you what it is.
As someone whose previous job title was ‘content strategist’, I know for a fact how few people properly understand content strategy.
To the majority, I ‘did the words’. And if copy was needed, I was usually brought into the project only after the strategy had been agreed.
Now, working as a content design consultant, I feel as if what I do is actually a lot more like content strategy because of the way agile teams work.
But is a lack of understanding about the roles of both content strategy and content design leading to the misconception that they’re one and the same?
Or maybe they are the same thing and should be merged into a single role?
Content strategy and content design share a lot of similarities. I say this because it would be hard to do good content design without:
All these tasks are important to the success of your content – and none of them are solely content writing, content design, or content strategy.
Content strategy manages and plans the creation, delivery, and governance of content to help achieve an overall goal.
It ensures content meets the needs of the target audience, while also aligning to wider organisation goals.
A content strategy helps you to:
Content design is a user-centric approach to creating content that meets the needs of the audience by structuring and creating clear, accessible, and useful content.
Content design informs, guides, and supports users through their journey, resulting in a positive user experience and a successful product or service.
Content design:
Strategy is as important as design.
Time and money are wasted creating and maintaining content that doesn’t serve its users or the organisation, because there isn’t a content strategy.
Aimlessly creating content and publishing it won’t work.
You need a content strategy to ensure your content meets the right person at the right time and that every piece of content has a purpose.
So often on projects, content designers are brought in too late.
While a content-first approach to design is preferable, some projects can get as far as prototyping before content design is introduced.
However, getting your content strategy right from the start, makes content the first thing you think about.
A content strategist will usually be included on a project team at the discovery phase.
This is because people associate the word ‘strategy’ with planning.
So, having both a content strategist and content designer will make sure that content is thought about in every phase of a project.
But that’s not to say that a content designer shouldn’t be included in discovery. Please invite us to the table as soon as you can!
A good content strategy can also support your sustainability and search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts and help you to effectively optimise your budget. All things that good content design can do too.
Yes, there are a lot of transferrable skills between content strategy and content design.
But that doesn’t mean the jobs should be rolled into one.
Having both a content strategist and a content designer on a project allows both practices to do more.
It’s a bit like expecting a UI designer to do the job of a content designer, or not having a user researcher on your project.
Sure, people will probably make it work, but it puts a strain on the rest of the team who are doing double the work to complete tasks outside their area of expertise.
You’ll get much better results, more quickly with a specialist in each role.
To learn more check out our complete guide to content design for product owners.
There’s also plenty more insight on content design here on the SPARCK journal. I’d recommend: