How do you approach building a strategy? Why do you even need a strategy?
Similar to any other strategy you may need, a content strategy will help you define your goals and set your priorities. It will allow you to plan the work that is ahead. Also, it ensures your efforts laid out in the strategy are driven by your goal(s) and delivers tangible results. Anyone who has put together a content strategy knows how much work goes into it. It may even require an additional strategy stage to simplify how to determine your goal(s) in the initial planning stage. Knowing where you want to go can be the easy part of the planning process, but how to get there is a little more complicated, regardless of the kind of strategy at hand.
If you think about building a strategy like going to the grocery store, it can still be a successful trip without a grocery list or a meal plan. However with an idea in mind of what you are trying to achieve, it will be a lot more productive. We strategize every day, big and small, thinking about the outcome we want to accomplish and doing what is required to get there.
Once your content strategy is complete, it becomes your guide with the plan of action with many moving parts to achieve your goal(s). How you approach this can vary as the strategy will likely go through several different planning and reviewing stages. Making sure the initial step is efficient can make it easier when it comes to execution.
Set your self up for success
Rita Gunther McGrath, Professor at Columbia Business School, recommends creating a spine for your strategy and explains how to do this in her article Does Your Strategy Have a Spine which formalizes this initial planning stage of creating a strategy.
Before any work is done on the strategy itself, understanding the current landscape and where you want to go is essential in the process. How you reach the goal is the crux of the strategy. And it is easier to fill in this part if you know what you are trying to achieve. Creating a spine for the strategy is a creative way to formalize the brainstorming stage. By imagining five years into the future from here, you get a better understanding of the goal to work backwards and outline the tactics.
The strategy spine consists of six elements to consider for the future:
- Sources of revenue
- Key assumptions
- Key Goals by your time horizon
- Revenue implications by your time horizon
- Necessary supporting investments
- Additional infrastructure needs
This approach formalizes the brainstorming stage as the initial research is vital to creating and delivering a successful content strategy. It helps determine the goal(s), what resources are available and what support is needed to achieve what has been projected five years into the successful future.
Never underestimate the importance of a strategy and the time put into it. Even the simplest of strategies can take a substantial amount of time to create. As we head into a new year, there is no time to waste to reach your goals.
If you want help developing your next strategy, contact us today!