The truth is that many firms position themselves generally and let their portfolios do all the talking. This undermines marketing by being too unclear about what a firm does best, often out of fear of losing potential business, and provides no platform on which to create content that effectively shares its thought process and strategic value. As agency consultant David Baker has written, many firms struggle with marketing because they haven't confidently focused their positioning by identifying what kind of business they are.
A good content strategy is directed by a firm's positioning. This means that in order to establish and execute a worthwhile content strategy for your website, you'll need to focus in on what you do best. Once you've taken the step of clearly and confidently identifying what you offer, you'll be able to determine the kind of content that will best articulate your positioning to potential clients online.
Specialization is a Good Thing
Ultimately, specialization is a good thing for marketing. If someone says to you, "How about the weather?", you might as well reply, "Yep, we're having some." This conversation is going nowhere because it wasn't specific enough to be relevant to either party. But, if that person says to you, "Hey, did you see that lightning last night?", then you can have a conversation. In the same way, a tight positioning makes content creation strategy easier to implement and a more effective form of marketing.
I really enjoyed this article and am using it to stimulate conversation amongst our staff about critical changes that need to be made to make our site work for us.
Lori,
Thanks for your comment. Are you part of a creative agency? If not, I just posted a short article on a successful content strategy for a non-agency company.
Chris
Great article, Chris. It will help us a lot in developing our content strategy for wanderlust and keep smithandjones.com up to date.
Mark,
Thanks for reading! I'm looking forward to seeing the new and improved smithandjones.com that you've been working on with Mitch.
Chris
Very nice article, content is king!
Great article! Would love to know how the 'What we are reading' addition to the site worked for them. I am sure there are plenty of ideas like this, but how much extra value / insight into the company do they provide i.e myspace - What are we listening too?
Tim
Tim,
I tend to think that having those kind of cultural additions strengthens the personal credibility that a firm can build online. Though that's not directly related to the bottom line, it does help to share that kind of information if for no other reason than to show who the people are behind the service. Of course, depending upon what is listed among those books and music, they could have a potentially alienating effect, too. So, it would probably be wise to choose those items carefully.
Thanks for reading,
Chris
Content is without a doubt, should be a priority and is king. Brings value to end user. Nice Article!
Russ,
Thanks for reading. I couldn't agree more!
Chris
A nice article indeed Chris! It got me into an introspecting mode... I couldn't agree more to what you said about how positioning plays an important role in directing ones content strategy. Lack of a strong and persuasive content can only prove detrimental for the growth of a site in the long run.
Hi. great article. Could you throw some light on the rate of adding new content to ones site.. How frequently should we do that and is it a good idea to hire a professional for doing so.
@Search Engine Optimization, This all depends upon the kind of content you're creating. For newsletters, we like to publish them monthly since they are much longer and developed than a blog post. As far as blog posts are concerned, we recommend to our clients that they plan to post at least several times a week to their blogs. We have multiple people blogging for the Newfangled blog, so we're tending toward once a day on average. I don't generally recommend hiring a professional for content creation because I feel that the person who is best suited to create appropriate content for your website is probably you, not someone else.
Well apparently all the blogging in the world didn't do much as they seemed to have gone under.
Hi Chris,
This is a great article, I'm currently doing some work for a NFP and I'm trying to develop a content strategy for social media. Could you recommend any specific tips or resources that I might find handy?
Thanks,
Sarah
As a freelancer and proponent of content strategy I looking for as much information as I can on content strategy and the benefits of it during development and after launch. The more data I have at my disposal to use when convincing my clients to agree to the extra costs and time the more success I will have in ensuring they make the right choice. Thanks for this article, it was very informative.