Content strategy is only as good as its implementation

The great advantage (indeed, the privilege) of my work is that I get to "look inside" many companies in a short space of time and help lay the foundations for operationalization/implementation.

In my experience, the current situation is that Excel rules the world and the rest is stored as a static format (PDF, PPT). I travel a lot by train and regularly ask myself when I take a quick look at screens: "When did Microsoft Office actually take over the world? Excel and PowerPoint in particular... But well, that's another story.

Content (marketing) strategies must not be allowed to gather dust in the attic

At some point, this sentence came to mind and now it regularly "pops" into my head at work: "A content (marketing) strategy is only as good as its implementation". By implementation, I don't just mean what gets out there, but also everything that also changes the work and, at best, makes it more exciting, more enjoyable and more productive.

If a company has such a documented content strategy, it is often dusty or even dead. By this I mean, for example, that PDF file that nobody ever opens and integrates into their work process. Or that PowerPoint file that was once presented. Back then, everyone clapped but in practice it is far too time-consuming to find it ("Have a look on the server under Company > Marketing > Strategy > Documents > Content > Content Strategy") or to translate the concrete effects on everyday working life.

A content strategy must be a living "document". It should:

• be communicated,
• be easy to find or accessible
• be made understandable for each individual ("what does this mean for my daily work?")
• and it should then actually change the daily work.

When I come across a document like this at a company and it's time to implement it as a solution, my first question is: "Who uses this document in their day-to-day work?" In most cases, the answer is a brief silence, followed by not a single raised hand and slightly raised corners of the mouth. The same also applies to personas that have been elaborately developed.

A content marketing strategy should live, not gather dust!

The problem with this is that no one can blame these intelligent, capable and thoroughly competent people for not doing so. The flaw in such documents is that they are 1) static by nature 2) often far too long and 3) too "detached".

The implementation of a content (marketing) strategy usually fails at three points

Of course, there are software solutions that can help make the strategic part easier to put into practice, but that's not what this article is about. My aim here is not to present (paid) tools, but to address basic elements that you should bear in mind.

50-page strategy documents sell well, especially at C-level. The longer, the better. For a holistic implementation of such a strategy, you also need the "ok" from the top. But you can't expect those who are supposed to implement it to read this document every morning before work and filter out for themselves what is relevant to them and what will change in their day-to-day work.

My tip for those who are familiar with this challenge: Break this strategy document down into role-specific individual parts (without losing sight of the strategic approach, of course) and systematically ask yourself whether and what this "parameter" means for those who implement it.

• How does it contribute to him/her doing his/her job differently? If it appears in a briefing, would it be feasible or is it too "vague"?
• Which tools are used by the different roles / persons?
• How do we best incorporate these elements so that it corresponds to a work step without it feeling like tedious extra work? The answer can be a checklist, a good/better briefing from a conductor or simply a more agile process.

"Why should someone who is already more than busy with their own work get involved in the content strategy?"

K. Hoffmann

Source: Content strategy: When employees are no longer on board

Imagine a content strategy to be implemented like an orchestra, an analogy that our esteemed colleague Babak has already used. Everyone has to be able to play their part well and the conductor is also able to hear when the big picture is not right and correct it, if necessary by accompanying an individual musician. Just like the conductor, a good content strategist should not only be able to lead the orchestra well "from above", but also ensure that everyone can play along and that the score is comprehensible at all...

If you go through such a formulated strategy with the aforementioned question, at least 30% to 50% disappear. The classic phrases that sound great but are not tangible should have disappeared... And that's a good thing.

Because at the end of the day, any content strategy can only be as good as its implementation, right? Everything else is just poetry (HT Carsten Rossi).