Here is my guide for creating a Content Strategy Brief

"The content strategy brief provides the common vision needed to keep you and your team focused on the correct content goals."

A content strategy brief ensures that you have useful and usable content that is well structured and easily found by a clearly defined audience.

• Sets the goals for both the customer and the business

• Establishes the KPIs

• Determines the best content channels to reach the goals

• Determines the target audiences

• Decides on the content types needed for customer engagement

• Drives profitable customer interactions

First and foremost, be flexible. This is a guide, not your warden. Think of this as modular by design, so you'll find anything you might want to include in a strategy brief to be successful. Keep in mind, not every project is the same, so not every module or section will apply to your project. Use only what you need.

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STEP 1: Define problem statement/objective

The problem statement provides a starting point and a common vision to keep you and your team focused on the correct goals. This example problem statement example comes from the design thinking methodology.

[User/Description] needs a way to [verb] because he/she feels [emotion/adjective] when [situation/context].

For example, "As a customer, I need to upgrade my phone, and find the answers to my questions quickly without having to interact with a rep. Time is a very precious commodity to me, so I don’t want to call customer support and wait on hold or go to a retail store and wait in line forever."

STEP 2: Define success

Here is where you will talk about the goals for the content strategy. Before starting to play with data and metrics for decision making, you must have a clear idea about what you want to achieve with your content strategy.

Define the goals

You are going to need to identify the goals by working through what success looks like for both the user and the business.

What does success look like for the user?

Every goal has related user actions. What task does the user need to accomplish? Mapping your goals to those actions can let you know whether or not you’re on track. For example, the user will quickly and autonomously complete a device upgrade in the app.

What does success look like for the business?

You should identify the Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) that this work will support. Work closely with your product owner/business client to inform this section. For example, the business will increase digital sales for device upgrades, and decrease call shed.

How will success be measured?

You'll need to identify how you'll measure your content strategy's success. What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) needed for measuring the success that you identified above?

Identify the signals for each goal

Every goal has related user/customer actions. How will you know when the user has been able to complete the task successfully? These are called the signals! Mapping your goals to the signals will help you focus on choosing the best metrics to measure the success of your content strategy. For example, the user will quickly and autonomously complete a device upgrade in the app. To know if the user is able to do this, we will need to measure task success.

Chose the best metrics to measure each signal

Now that you understand your goals and signals, you need to make your content strategy measurable. Metrics will help you find out whether your strategy is attaining toward your goals. Define metrics that have the most impact to the signals you identified.

Building on our example:

Goal: the user will quickly and autonomously complete a device upgrade in the app.

Signal: we'll need to measure task success

• Time spent on task

• Customer effort score (CES)

• Call shed

• Conversion rates

STEP 3: What is in scope?

What’s in scope? Identify, prioritize, and organize the following content elements. Will the project impact taxonomy, navigation, personalization rules, or other elements of the content architecture? How?

Navigation

Determine the impacts to your navigation including global, contextual / categorical, and on-page navigational elements.

• Utility navigation including links to x, y, and z and brand logo at the top which goes home on click

• Primary navigation that drives to the primary category pages

• Display mega menu drop downs on hover

• Keep menu items free of jargon or unclear, branded terminology

• Include site search is in the navigation

• Offset the navigation callout to drive to the contact page in a different color or style to draw the eye

• Global footer with footer links a, b, and c (sitemap, etc.), address, phone number, and logo

Segmentation and personalization

Define the target audience

• Is this an anonymous visitor, recognized returning visitor, or existing customer?

• Does this user have to have certain products or services to be targeted for this content? Be specific with qualifying plan names.

• Is location or market footprint a factor?

• Is this for a promotion?

• What products or services are being promoted?

• What criteria target a user for this promotion?

• Do we already have existing rules or will new rules need to be created?

SEO

This includes a basic list of search requirements for the SEO team and writers:

• Each page should have only a single H1 and title tag

• Each page should include a meta description and page title

• Provide a URL slug for the page

• All images and videos must include alt text that is descriptive and keyword optimized

• Target keyword must be used in the H1 Tags

• Target keyword (organically) in other header levels

• Sitemap must be included

Distribution channels

Distribute your content where you might find your audience. List the channels you'll use to distribute your content.If this is an omni-channel experience, then you'll want to identify all domains, applications and touch points that are impacted by your content strategy. It may span to multiple domains as well as apps, and possibly retail stores and call centers.

Technical requirements

Here, identify any functions or technical requirements you want the devs to plan ahead for. What processes and technology do you need to implement your strategy?

• Identify the core platforms. If this is an omni-channel experience, you may multiple domains, apps and channels. It is important to identify which are impacted

• Is any new development work required?

• Do we need to enhance existing components?

Sustainment model

• When will this content expire or have to be updated?

• How will we maintain and govern this content?

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STEP 4: Closing summary

Close your strategy brief with any final thoughts or additional items that you would like to flesh out or provide extra information to. You may want to note any elements you want to call out for future efforts. Consider nearby content you can't change now, missing content you can't impact in this effort or incorrect content that another team will have to address immediately (outside the standard process).