Serving up content strategy

With the holidays coming up, people start thinking about food and planning meals. The approach you take when preparing a holiday meal has a lot of similarities to a content strategy project.

Planning the menu (Content strategy assessment)

Similarly to planning the menu for a big holiday meal, it’s important to have a plan in place before starting a content strategy project. If you don’t have a plan in place before you start cooking, you might not have all of the ingredients you need. It’s never fun to get halfway through a recipe and realize you are missing a key ingredient.

During a content strategy assessment, you identify where workflows need improvement, where the opportunities exist, and establish specific goals to ensure your “content recipe” is successful and that you have all of the necessary tools/ingredients.

Dietary considerations (Localization)

With a localization strategy in place, you consider all of your global audiences right from the start, and reduce the risk of unknowns. When preparing a holiday meal, you have to consider the dietary needs of all of your guests. Do you have any vegetarians attending? Is there anyone with dietary restrictions?

You need to ask yourself these types of questions when considering the needs of your customers as well. What languages do your customers need to receive content in? Is there any slang that needs to be avoided or is offensive? Do some people require different content or different treatment of that content than others?

Preparing the meal (Implementation)

After you’ve planned the menu and considered all dietary restrictions and needs, it’s time to start preparing the meal! This is the most time-consuming part of holiday meals. Follow the plan you’ve laid out. You can’t make a pie until you’ve made your pie crust. Sequencing and timing matter because your oven only has so much capacity. If you follow your plan and take these things into consideration, the result can be a delicious holiday meal that pleases the hungry guests.

During a content strategy implementation, you put your plan to action! When preparing a large meal, you might need to ask for some additional help in the kitchen. Executing a content strategy can be a lot of work, so you may want to consider engaging with a consultant during the process.

Just like when you prepare a holiday meal, there are many things to consider during a content strategy project. If you need help with your content recipes, contact us.